The Laodicean Church

The Laodicean Church - which, unfortunately, bears a striking resemblance to the American Church - is referred to in Rev. 3:14-22 as being particularly apostate, but which nonetheless thought of itself as being blessed by God because of its great wealth; but Christ condemned it as worthy only of being vomited out of His mouth. The reason for its condition was that it had confused material wealth for spiritual wealth.

As evangelicals, we say that we believe we are living in the "Last Days," but we live as though they will never come - as if ignoring it all will make it go away and give us time to relax and enjoy the "Good Life" that we - as citizens of the richest and most powerful nation on earth - think accrues to us as a result of "divine right."

Of course, insofar as God is concerned, it doesn't really matter what we think. His plans do not exist for our convenience - they will come to pass whether we approve of them or not. In the long run, it only matters to us - AND TIME FOR RECOGNIZING THIS FACT IS RUNNING OUT! To continue to ignore God's Word with regard to the "end of days" is as stupid as what the Jews did with regard to Hitler on the eve of the Second World War. L.S. Dawidowics, in her authoritative account of the Holocaust, War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, wrote:

"The Jews, whose dazzling success in business blinded them to the encroaching blackness of National Socialism (Nazism), were caught unaware by the onslaught of Hitler. The model German Jew was metropolitan, a businessman or professional, (moderate) ... in his practice of Judaism ... (and) in his politics, with a more passionate attachment to Germany than to his Jewishness (a fact which strangely parallels the seemingly stronger attachment of American Christians to America than to their own Christianity - editor). Most German Jews regarded Zionism (the longing of certain Jews to return to their ancient homeland) as an alien doctrine; the son who left Judaism for Communism was less likely to be rejected than the one who chose Zionism."1

Yet Zionism was the very vehicle that God had chosen to fulfill His promise to bring back the Jews from out of the nations to which they had been driven nearly two thousand years before by the Roman general Titus. Zionism was rooted in the Hebrew Bible and was toasted once every year at the Feast of Passover with the words, "Next Year in Jerusalem." But the toast had become a meaningless, empty ritual, and success in the world had blinded the Jews to the words of their own prophets. It was not so much the fact that they had denied their own Jewishness as it was the fact that they wanted to have the best of both worlds - the wealth that their success in Europe had brought them, as well as their own Jewish heritage. It could never be! Yet the Jews pathetically persisted. Heinz Kellerman, a Jew writing shortly after the advent of Hitler to power in Germany, wrote the astonishingly naive words:

"The time has now come which requires a renewal of the synthesis of Germandom and Jewry; holding on to one's German identity and acquiring a Jewish one."2

But Kellerman wasn't alone in his breathtaking naiveté. There were many others! For example, Joseph Lehman, Rabbi of Berlin, blindly wrote in the Spring of 1933:

"Fleeing Germany is cowardly, just because five months of pain lie behind us and probably years of misjudgment, hate, and need lie ahead of us. Practically speaking, we as Jews reaffirm a life in Germany and for Germany."3

Hans Joachim Schoeps, a young German Jewish intellectual who organized the Deutsche Vortrupp, also wrote in the same period:

"Germany is more than merely a community of blood and race. It is also a community of fate and history. Through the acknowledgment of fate and history, we are consciously German." 4

In his memoirs written after the war, Schoeps describes his nightmarish remorse for not having advised those millions of Jews who were later murdered to flee right away - at all costs.

But if the Jews had prophecy to warn them, we as Christians have much more. This means that God has something of extreme importance He wants to say to our generation. He wants us to hear Him through on this matter - to get the facts clearly in perspective. Everyone who ponders the Prophetic Scriptures is responding to a divine appeal. Indeed, the last book of the Bible begins -

"The Revelation of Jesus Christ... the things which must shortly take place... Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed (give careful attention to) the things which are written in it; for the time is near." (Revelation 1:1, 3)

And Paul warns:

"But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day (Christ's return) should overtake you as a thief. "You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness.

"Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober." (I Thess. 5:4-6)

1. Lucy S. Dawidowics, War Against the Jews, 1933-1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975, p. 172.
2. Heinz Kellerman, "Ende der Emanzipation?" in Der Morgan, August, 1933, pp. 173-177.
3. Wolfgang Hamburger, "The Reaction of Reform Jews to the Nazi Rule" in Strauss and Grossman, Gegenwart im Ruckblick, pp. 154, 160-162.
4. Hans Joachim Schoeps, "Der Deutsche Vortrupp - der Ort geschichtlicher Baessinnung," in Wille und Weg, p. 55.

©Copyright - Antipas Ministries