The fact that Revelation was sent first to the most strategic cities of Asia Minor, trusting that its message would spread from there, invites us to think strategically in our plans to spread God’s message to our communities and the world. We should think as strategically as possible as we mobilize believers for world missions, develop strategies for serving our communities, organize target group evangelism, and so forth.
Yet our vantage point in history may also allow us to draw an additional application that would have been less clear in John’s day. When Revelation was written, Christianity flourished in western Turkey, but over the centuries each of these churches gradually succumbed to pressures until the last was virtually stamped out by Islam. The regions where the early church was strongest (Turkey, Syria, and North Africa) are now Islamic strongholds.
Yet by and large it was the church rather than Islam that destroyed the church; Muslim invaders simply mopped up after them. In North Africa, Christianity weakened itself through internal doctrinal and ethnic divisions, heresies, and the insensitivity of Byzantine and Latin Christians to local culture. Nubia remained a richly Christian African culture until its growing weakness in both missions and Christian education led to its collapse to Islam in the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries. The disunity of the church led to the demise of a glorious Eastern Orthodox culture before Islam. Regions relatively barren of the gospel two centuries ago are now flourishing with the gospel, while parts of the Western world struggle to maintain a Christian voice.
Lampstands can be moved from their place (Revelation 2:5), and this should serve as a warning to believers in various parts of the world today: We dare not take our role in God’s plan for granted. When part of the church abandons its mission, God will raise up others to fulfill it.
(Adapted from The NIV Application Commentary: Revelation, published by Zondervan. Buy the book here.)