{"id":1374,"date":"2009-09-05T11:04:43","date_gmt":"2009-09-05T11:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomgilliam.wordpress.com\/?p=573"},"modified":"2023-09-01T00:29:01","modified_gmt":"2023-09-01T00:29:01","slug":"characteristics-of-a-true-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/?p=1374","title":{"rendered":"Characteristics Of A True Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Let us muse from Revelation 2:1 today. It is here that our Lord addresses His thoughts to the church at Ephesus and we find <em>characteristics of a true church<\/em>. The thoughts are addressed to the <em>angel of the church<\/em>. The word angel is our word messenger. It is addressed to the pastor. A true church will receive from God, truth, and it will be channeled through a pastor, the man of God. In verse 1 He refers to <em>seven stars<\/em>, which in Revelation 1:20 we find are the pastors or messengers of these seven churches. To be put in the category of a star is a high pedestal to place God&#8217;s man on. If we have a man of God who preaches the Word of God and conforms to the image of God we should consider him the star of our church. Christ says &#8216;He <em>holdeth<\/em> these men in His hand,&#8217; The word &#8216;holdeth&#8217; means to seize for the purpose of giving strength to. He mentions the <em>seven golden candlesticks<\/em> which we learn from Revelation 1:20 are the seven churches. The church is His light for this world. What a great responsibility is laid upon us. We need not, fear for He says, He walks <em>in the midst<\/em> of the golden candlesticks. The phrase &#8216;in the midst&#8217; implies the one who is in authority and control of all. What a blessing if a church knows they have God&#8217;s man and Christ is in the midst. They can surely be used to light up an area. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let us muse from Revelation 2:1 today. It is here that our Lord addresses His thoughts to the church at Ephesus and we find characteristics of a true church. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-musings-from-the-motel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6369,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374\/revisions\/6369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}