The seven stars, as explained in the last verse of the chapter, are the angels of the seven churches. ‘And out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword.
There are those who teach that the Christian church, Christian people in their witness, should accommodate the culture. You should try to involve as much worldly culture as you can in your evangelism in order to build a bridge with your listener, so that he can understand you better. So what will you do? You will bring in the drums. You will employ a lot of beat music. You will imitate the world in many, many respects: whatever is prevalent culturally. You won’t stand aloof. You will try to win the culture of the world. That’s a rather conceited thing: to think you can win the culture of the world from the church, but this is getting quite popular these days. His eyes and his face, his countenance, is as bright as the day. There is no compromise with Christ. It’s not of Christ to take the golden lampstands, and to begin to adorn it with decorations from the world; to take the church and mix its bright lights with worldly ideas, with worldly means of communication, so that the medium becomes the message, and it’s all confused. If you try to imitate the world in order to win the world, it is utter confusion. Most serious of all, the Spirit withdraws. If our churches do that, in the mercy and kindness of God, they may still get some conversions, but they can’t be greatly blessed. You can’t bring anything shadowy or dubious into his work. This book is going to be about the spiritual battle between the church and the world. Yes, Christian people are called to good works. We are to be as helpful as we can be, and constructive wherever God has placed us. We pray for great people who arise from time to time, like the social reforming Christians of the 19th century, who got the children up out of the mines and down from the chimneys. That is good, but none of them set out to reform the world. They were just showing mercy and campaigning for mercy and kindness wherever they could, and however they could. That’s a different thing. We are to do works of kindness and improvement, and relieve need when we see it, but we don’t have a big conceited ambition to win the world socially, to reform it politically. Some people are drifting in that direction. It can’t be done. You end up with the world influencing you, and historically that’s always been the way.