From His lips he wrote messages of counsel and warning to the angels, or
Bishops, of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor; and then came a succession
of wonderful visions, each opening with the Church in Heaven and in
earth constantly glorifying Him that sitteth on the Throne, and the
Lamb, for ever and ever; but going on to show the crimes in the world
beneath, and the judgments one after another poured out by the Angels;
the true remnant of the Church persecuted; and the world partly curbed
by, partly corrupting, the visible Church; then the destruction of the
wicked world, under the type of Babylon; the last judgment; the eternal
punishment of the sinful; the final union of Christ and His Church; and
the eternal blessedness of the faithful in the heavenly Jerusalem, with
the Tree of Life restored.
When Domitian was killed, in 86, St. John went back to Ephesus, and
there wrote his Gospel, to fill up what had been left out by the other
three Evangelists, and especially dwelling on the discourses of the Lord
of Life and Love. That same sweet sound of love rings through his three
Epistles; and yet that heart-whole love of his Master made him severe,
for he started away from a house he had entered, and would not go near
it while it contained a former believer who had blasphemed Christ.
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