The Local Churches in the Book of Revelation

The Spirit’s Speaking to the Churches Being in the Local Churches

The speaking of the Spirit to one local church individually is also His speaking to all of the local churches collectively. Witness Lee says:

We need to look at the seven epistles to the seven local churches in Revelation 2 and 3. The word of the Lord to one church is the word spoken by the Spirit to all the churches (Rev. 2:1, 7). At the beginning of each epistle, it is the Lord speaking to a specific church (2:1, 8, 12, 18; 3:1, 7, 14), but at the end of all the epistles, the Word says, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22). What was said by the Lord to the church in Ephesus was the word that all the churches should hear. Every epistle was a particular word to a certain church, yet this particular word was to be heard and taken by all the churches.

(Witness Lee, Leadership, 36)

Watchman Nee, in the following discussion of the local churches’ relationship to one another, corroborates this truth:

This does not imply that the different local churches have nothing to do with one another, and that each can simply do as it pleases without considering the rest, for the ground of a church is the ground of the Body….On the one hand, each church is directly under the authority of the Lord and responsible to Him alone; on the other hand, each must listen not only to His direct speaking, but to His speaking through the others. “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” is our Lord’s injunction to all (Rev. 2 and 3). In the introduction of His letters to the seven churches we find our Lord addressing the angel of each church, but at their close we find that His message to one particular church was also a message to all the churches. From this it is clear that what one church ought to do, all the churches ought to do. The responsibility of the churches is individual, but their actions should be uniform. This balance of truth ought to be carefully preserved.

(Watchman Nee, Collected Works, Set 2, Vol. 30, 62-63)

In the preceding passages, as both Watchman Nee and Witness Lee indicate, the Spirit's speaking to one local church in Revelation chapters 2 and 3 is also His message to the other local churches. All the local churches are being led by the one Spirit to express the one Body universally.

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Seven Lampstands

Spirit’s Speaking

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