Fr. Mike Schmitz

And basically, get up, you know?

And that's so good because here's Jesus who loves us.

Yes, our response, our proper response would be, I'm dead.

and his response is i love you so both responses are can be equally true at the same time but here's these messages to the churches in ephesus or in church the seven churches in asia first one ephesus we have the lampstands and the angels um sometimes for the spirits is none of the translation

sometimes like, wait, what are the seven spirits?

What are the seven angels?

And there are some who have said that the seven angels are the bishops of those churches in those cities, which sure, a person could make that argument.

But the interesting thing is for the rest of the book of Revelation, when it uses the term angel, it means angel.

And so like, okay, well, that's kind of problematic.

You don't want to just twist it to make it mean what you think it means or what it might mean in this case.

Another could be angels, like actual, there's angels assigned to those churches.

Another could be the Holy Spirit, that here is the seven, number of covenant.

Here is this Holy Spirit that is given in different ways to these seven different churches.

That could be a thing.

And then, of course, the gold lampstands are the seven churches, as Jesus himself says at the end of chapter one.

All of these churches have things that they need to be corrected on.

And I already mentioned Laodicea, that they're lukewarm, right?

They're neither hot nor cold.

But I just want to highlight one, and that's the church of Ephesus, the very first church.

Because Jesus says, he says, I know your works.