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"John to the SEVEN ECCLESIAS which are in the Asia: joy to you and peace from the WHO IS, and WHO WAS, and WHO IS COMING; and from the SEVEN SPIRITS which IS before his throne: and from Jesus Anointed, the faithful witness, the Chiefborn from among the dead, and the Prince of the kings of the earth: to him having loved us and washed us from our sins in his blood, and made us kings and priests for the Deity, even our Father, to him be the glory and the supremacy during the AIONS OF THE AIONS. Amen" (Apoc. 1:4-6).

As we have seen, John, the beloved apostle, having tarried till the Lord came, and therefore witnessed the devouring of the Mosaic body politic by the Roman Eagles of the East, by the common consent of all reliable antiquity, was honored as the channel through which the wonders of the Apocalypse should be communicated to men. Having informed us in the first verse whence he derived it, from the fountain and origin of all wisdom and knowledge, from the THEOS, or Former and Disposer of all things, through the Anointed Jesus by his messenger;

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and for the Servants of the Father, he now tells us to what special communities of the faithful the invaluable gift was to be confided; that they might multiply it, and circulate it among all the Ecclesias of the Habitable, as the last communication from heaven till the time should come for the glory and power to be manifested before the eyes of all nations. He was not left at liberty to send it to what congregations his own prudence might suggest; but he tells us, in the tenth and eleventh verses, "I came to be in spirit in the Lord's day: and I heard behind me a loud voice as of a trumpet saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last: and what thou beholdest write for a scroll, and send to the Seven Ecclesias which are in Asia; to Ephesus, and to Smyrna, and to Pergamos, and to Thyatira, and to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea." Hence there was no altemative. The Apocalypse must be sent to these seven. In obedience, therefore, to this command, in writing he primarily addresses himself to "the seven ecclesias which are in the Asia."