Thyatira
Akhisar
(Ottoman Turkish: آق حصار) is a town and a district in Manisa Province; in the Aegean Region of western Turkey. Akhisar is also the ancient city of Thyatira (also known as Thyateira).
With archaeological findings that are proving settlements going back to 3000 BC, Akhisar has been a busy trade center with its strategic location at the intersection of important roads during ancient and medieval ages. Akhisar also hosted one of the Seven churches of Asia: Thyateira, which is mentioned in the Bible. Akhisar maintained its importance as a regional trade center during the Ottoman period.
Today's Akhisar is still the trade and business center in its region. Akhisar's name is internationally associated with tobacco. The fertile Akhisar Plain produces about 10% of total Turkish tobacco production. Akhisar's high-quality olives and olive oil are also globally known. Olive, walnut and almond cultivation is among the important agricultural activities of Akhisar.[3]
To the Church in Thyatira
18 “To the angel of the church in Thyatira write:
These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. 19 I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.
20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. 21 I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. 22 So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. 23 I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.
24 Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets, ‘I will not impose any other burden on you, 25 except to hold on to what you have until I come.’
26 To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations— 27 that one ‘will rule them with an iron scepter and will dash them to pieces like pottery’[b]—just as I have received authority from my Father. 28 I will also give that one the morning star. 29 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
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The Church in Thyatira: Era Spanning the Middle Ages (A.D. 590–1517)
4. THYATIRA – means ‘perpetual sacrifice’ or ‘a continual offering’. (ie. Transubstantiation/Rome)
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Catholicism teaches that believers are purified in the fire of Purgatory before reaching heaven
This was the subject of the 95 Theses, and it was the disagreement that started it all.
As Oxford professor Diarmaid MacCulloch writes in A History Of Christianity: "An argument about a side alley of medieval soteriology [the study of salvation] escalated into the division of Europe."
If you don't know what indulgences are, the Catholic Church's definition is a good place to start:
"An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven."
Joel Hodge, from ACU's School of Theology, says the belief is that indulgences can reduce believers' need for purification from the effects of sin in Purgatory before they can enter heaven.
To this day they've been given out by the Church for acts of charity or the recital of prayers, as examples. You can use them for yourself or loved ones who have died.
Luther had a problem with the fact the Catholic Church of his day was essentially selling indulgences — indeed, according to Professor MacCulloch, they helped pay for the rebuilding of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Later, Luther appears to have dropped his belief in Purgatory altogether. Certainly, he denied that a person's actions had any role to play in salvation, saying faith alone was what counted.
The sale of indulgences was abolished by the Pope in 1567.
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1 Timothy 4
New International Version
4 The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 2 Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. 3 They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. 4 For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.
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****The following argument is the opinion of it's author and not necessarily my opinion.
The Church in Thyatira Prefigures the Roman Catholic Church, the Apostate Church
This
week in our prayerful study of how to return to the orthodoxy of the
church we come to the Lord’s word to the church in Thyatira, which is a
sign prefiguring the Roman Catholic Church which was formed as the
apostate church.
Even though we are not here to make an exposition of Revelation 2-3 or to interpret prophecies, we need to take heed to the Lord’s word and apply it to ourselves individually and to the church corporately, so that we may return to the orthodoxy of the church.
In the beginning of each of the seven epistles, after unveiling what He is and who He is according to the situation in that church, He spoke to the messengers of the churches, and at the end He said, He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit speaks to the churches.
We need to aspire to be the messengers in the churches, those who have the Lord’s fresh message and instant speaking, having an ear to hear what He speaks today. Then, as we hear the Lord’s speaking, we need to convey it to the saints and bring the living word of God to the church of the living God.
The church in Thyatira is the church in its lowest and worst degradation; it is a continuation of the degradation in Pergamos and it is its consummation. The church in Pergamos had the teaching of Balaam (teaching false doctrines for gain) and the teaching of the Nicolaitans (the clergy-laity system); Thyatira is the consummation of the fall of the church that began with the apostolic churches.
The Roman Catholic Church continues the teachings from Pergamos and has all kinds of heretical and idolatrous things, with fornication and hierarchy, consummating the degradation of the church in the worst possible way.
Pergamos was the church united with the world; she was like a wife who had a husband – the Lord Himself – and she committed adultery with the world, thus being unfaithful and losing her chastity. Pergamos was the church committing adultery with the world, the things in the world, sin, and religion; she was unfaithful to the Lord and joined herself to another husband.
Thyatira is not a case of typical adultery: she is a woman who no longer had a husband but rejected Him completely; she is a whore, a prostitute,a harlot, a wholesale descent into fornication for gain and profit – this is the Roman Catholic Church.
The church in Thyatira is the apostate church, deviating completely from the fundamental truth or belief; though the Roman Catholic Church talks about the Bible, it is an utter mixture of the divine and pagan things.
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