To the Church in Thyatira
Christ’s Revelation
Revelation 2:18 And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write; These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass;
Good Works Commended
Revelation2:19 I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience, and thy works; and the last to be more than the first.
Antichrists Denounced
Revelation 2:20-23 Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.
Overcomers Reward
Revelation 2:24-29 But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I will put upon you none other burden. But that which ye have already hold fast till I come. And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father. And I will give him the morning star. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
They received the revelation of Jesus as the son of God in order to overcome Jezebel and then they are given power over the nations whose kings are drunk with the wine of her fornication and they are also given the morning star against the dark ages. Jesus is the morning star.
Now to get this in the same sense that we have been following, remember that the Catholic Church replaced Jesus the Son of God with Mary, and their Mary is not the maid who conceived the Word in her womb, but that is Jezebel, the goddess of whoredoms. That same woman seeks to replace Jesus Christ as the mediator between God and man. They exalted the traditions of their church above the Word. They take the church to be above the Word of God. They claim that the church is the mouthpiece of God, and that the Word of God is the history of the church.
We know very well that to all Catholics, Mary is placed above Jesus in so much that they even refer to her as the Mother of God. If God has a mother, then that mother is above God! And is more of a god than God! What a lie of the devil! God has no mother! Before Mary was born Jesus was already there. That is why Jesus never recognized Mary anywhere as his mother; he always called him as woman. Yet the Catholics being so blind to that calls her the mother of God. Jesus was the Word of God made flesh in the womb of Mary. All that Mary was to him was a nurse, a maid!
So, the revelation of Jesus Christ to the fourth age was meant to combat that lie, and therefore he revealed himself as the Son of God, not the son of Mary!
Now do you know every church does the same thing ever since! All of them exalt their own tradition above the Word of God. Protestant churches are as much guilty, the Pentecostal are in the same pit. Now Branham churches have gone headlong in that pit. Don’t be angry with me please, I only testify the truth. Let us proof it. That church does not receive anything beyond what they received from Branham which they have mis-taught and mis-interpreted to suit themselves. Now they claim that for anybody to be Christian he must join up with them. That outside their churches no body is a Christian. That unless one joins them, he is not a Christian. They have exalted their church above the Word of God, for they reject any other prophet with the Word, and have closed their doors to any further revelation of the Word. That means they deny Jesus Christ as their head. And in presuming that one can’t be a Christian unless he belongs to one of their camps means their church is the Saviour, the mediator between God and man. Sincerely speaking that is what all churches claim, which are mere lies!
Yet the same churches have tens of thousands of unconverted men and women walking after their own lusts.
Then through their lies they place their churches and their traditions above the Son of God who is the Word of God. He who is to overcome is to receive this revelation and walk in it against Jezebel. To overcome her he needs the eyes of the Son of God and his feet. Eyes means true witnesses, while to be shod the feet with brass means the preparation of the Gospel. Jesus with beautiful feet upon the mountain brings the good tidings of great things. He is the only messenger of Salvation. No church can save! They all end up as Jezebels! Only Jesus saves by the Gospel way prepared by his shod feet.
For those who are overcome by Jezebel God casts them into great tribulation and her children he kills with death. This is all in history. In the 1300s, a third of the population of Europe died of a plague brought by fleas, shocking the medieval world to its foundation. This plaque was called Black Death. Here is its account
And at least from biblical times on, there has been sporadic allusions to plagues, as well as carefully recorded outbreaks. The emperor Justinian’s Constantinople, for instance, capital of the Roman Empire in the east, was ravaged by plague, in 541 and 542, felling perhaps 40% of the city’s population. But none of the biblical or Roman plagues seemed so emblematic of horror and devastation as the Black Death that struck Europe in 1347.
Rumours of fearful pestilence in China, and throughout the East, had reached Europe by 1346. “India had been depopulated,” recorded one chronicler, “Tartary, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia, were covered with dead bodies; the Kurds fled in vain to the mountains. In Caramania and Caesarea none were left alive.”
Untold millions would die in China and the rest of the East before the plague subsided.
The first symptoms of bubonic plague [as it’s scientifically known] often appear within several days: headache and a general feeling of weakness, followed by aches and chills in the upper leg and groin, a white coating on the tongue, rapid pulse, slurred speech, confusion, fatigue, apathy and staggering gait. By the third day, the lymph nodes begin to swell.
The swellings will be tender, perhaps as large as an egg. The heart begins to flutter rapidly as it tries to pump blood through swollen, suffocating tissues. The victim’s nervous system begins to collapse, causes dreadful pain and bizarre neurological disorders, from which the “Dance of Death” rituals that accompanied the plague might have taken their inspiration.
By the fourth or fifth day, wild anxiety and terror overtake the sufferer – and then a sense of resignation, as the skin blackens and the victus of death settles on the body.
The sick, turning black, stumbling and delirious, were objects more of disgust than pity; everything about them gave off a terrible stench, it was said, “their sweat, excretion, spittle, breath, so foetid as to be overpowering; urine turbid, thick black or red…”
Whenever the plague appeared, the sadness of death was terrifying. People went to bed perfectly health and were found dead in the morning. Priests and doctors who came to minister to the sick… would contract the plague with a single touch and die sooner than the person they had come to help.
“…brother was forsaken by brother, nephew by uncle, brother by sister and, often times, husband by wife; nay what is more and scarcely to be believed, fathers and mothers were found to have abandoned their own children, untended, unvisited, to their fate, as if they had been strangers…”
Some people, shut up in their houses with doors barred, would scratch a sign of the cross on the front door, sometimes with the inscription “Lord, have mercy on us.”…In Avigon, Pope Clement was said to have sat for weeks between two roaring fires.
A multitude of men and women, as Boccacio writes, “negligent of all but themselves… migrated to the country, as if God, in visiting men with this pestilence in requital of the iniquities, would not pursue them with His wrath whenever they might be…”
Some who were not yet ill but felt doomed indulged in debauchery. Others, seeking protection in lives of moderation, banded together in communities to live a separate and secluded life, walking abroad with flowers to their noses, “to ward off the stench and, perhaps, the evil airs that afflicted them.” It was from this time of plague, some scholars speculate, that the nursery rhyme “Ring Around The Rosy” derives: the rose coloured “ring” being an early sign that a blotch was about to appear on the skin; “a pocket full of posies” being a device to ward off stench and (it was hoped) the attendant infection; “ashes, ashes” being a reference to “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” or perhaps to the sneezing “a-choo, a-choo” that afflicted those in whom the infection had invaded the lungs – ending, inevitably, in “all fall down.”
In Siena, dogs dragged bodies from shallow graves and left them half devoured in the streets. Merchants closed their shops. The wool industry was shut down. Clergymen ceased administering last rites.
In Milan, when the plague struck, all the occupants of any victim’s house, whether sick or well, were walled up inside together and left to die.
In 1351, perhaps 24 million died in the first onslaught of the plague; perhaps as many as another 20 million died by the end of the century – in all, it is estimated, one third of the population of Europe.
I cannot be able to record all that happened here with ink or pen from the history books; for it is more than one can write. People ran to the mountains, lived in secluded areas to avoid infection, all in vain. City authorities closed gates to visitors and merchants, no one allowed to visit areas already infested, no corpses allowed back home, restricted funeral attendance. None of these strict regulations helped.
The plague moved from country to country, town to town: Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Marseilles, London, Bristol…
In the city of Venice alone, it was said 600 were dying every day. In Florence, as much as half the population might have died. In Italy as much as one-third of the population succumbed.
Medical personnel and their organisations were simply at a loss. Some abandoned their work; others simply ran away. They had no answer either by treatment or by explaining the cause of the disease. All simply lamented.
Christians believed that the cause of all these was the sin of man. It was the Wrath of God on man’s sin, and they were correct, though the masses deep in science might have hardly given ear; yet it was obvious, the Hand of God was upon the man for his sins. “The trumpet had sounded, who could but fear…”
It was reported that the disease was three-fold: some died instantly, others suffered for a long time; others got a pneumonic form and death was almost a hundred percent. A few could be healed.
Echoes From Paradise 