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I want to point out that these things that John is seeing are churches right they're churches he doesn't say they're church ages he doesn't say these are periods of time that the world is going to go through in the future he says these are churches because that's what they are because when he's writing these things down he's literally writing them down and sending off a letter to be delivered to the church that exists at Ephesus and then there's a church that's in Smyrna and they're gonna get a letter and there's a church in Philadelphia and they get a letter and all of the churches that are listed here in chapters 2 & 3 receive a letter this isn't like back to the future and Marty's writing a letter to the Dr. Brown in the in the future that he's going to get from the 1800s or something right this is that's not what this is talking about okay John's not writing these letters off to the church age in Laodicea and now someone finally hey we just got this letter today that's not what's going on here I know I'm kind of making light of this but the doctrine I'm talking about is this dispensationalist doctrine that tries to teach that these are church ages and they spend so much time focused on that they did they miss I think all of the importance of these letters just focused on that as being some age it's like no no no there's actually a lot to learn here when you actually apply it to church when you apply it to a specific real church how about I started applying it to your church and looking at what God is saying here as good things and bad things within church let's focus on that instead of worry about being you know describing some age or something because then what happens if you're looking at it as ages what are you going to care about you're gonna care about the age you're in right and you're gonna forget about all the other ages in the past because oh well if these are describing ages well what age are we know it's a lukewarm age it's an age where people don't really care about much oh yeah I see that going on and then what you miss you miss so much and anyways I'm not just saying that that the the doctrine is wrong because I don't like the the end result of it it's the doctrine is wrong because it's wrong just incorrect is that it's not what's going on here because we get the definition and the explanation of what he's seeing here he's seeing seven churches and he sees the seven star this is how the angels of the seven churches now that word angels there again this you can you can get this context from scripture but in general the word angel itself means messenger that's what the word literally means and you're gonna see as if you do a word study on angels throughout scripture that that word can be applied to human beings as well as supernatural beings right the word angels we commonly think of angels as being you know like these creatures with wings and and things like that with that the people you know maybe creatures at the Bible refers to morals like seraphim or terrapim and things like that cherubs that's what people commonly will think of as angels but angels can be applied you know Jesus Christ is referred to as an angel and what the angels of the seven churches are here are the pastors or the elders and it makes sense if you're getting a letter if you're gonna send a letter to someone who has anything to do with the operation and what's going on in church who you gonna send that letter to who's the one responsible for the administration and for how the church is being run within a church it's going to be the elder it's going to be the pastor it's going to be the bishop of that church who's going to receive this information and say okay we're doing this good we're not we need to make some changes here because he's got the authority to make those changes and that makes the most sense it's gonna be sent to those angels I mean it it wouldn't make sense if this was talking about supernatural beings even let's say behind the scenes like we've got these supernatural beings angels being sent well you're not gonna send them a piece of paper you know they're gonna have to get the message some other way I don't know exactly how they get their messages but you know you're not gonna how you're gonna deliver it to a supernatural being like where's their mailbox right how are they gonna receive that this is something that's that's literally happening so we don't need to get hung up on well it says the angels of the seven churches yeah because they're the messengers they're the ones they're the ones who are in that position of authority within the church to make sure things are going well so again not not anything to be too confused over it just makes a lot of common sense that that's what it's talking about here