When the Church becomes Loveless: A Nigerian reading of Revelation 2:1-7
Résumé
Most previous works on Revelation 2:1-7 reiterate that the message of the letter to the church of Ephesus is the leaving of her first love and the attendant warning to the church to return to the first love if she did not want her candlestick to be removed from its place. In this article, Revelation 2:1-7 was read using the typical or representative reading. This is one of the methods of reading the letters to the seven churches to examine the letter's message to the church from a Nigerian perspective. The article holds that the context of the church of Ephesus and the contemporary Nigerian church are indeed similar and that the message to the Ephesian church can be applied to the contemporary Nigerian church. In the reading, apart from the major message of the loss of love that most exegetes have brought out, this paper has brought out other messages that are of great importance to the continual existence of the church. The article supports the notion that, contrary to the calls for retaliation and or self defence in the face of persecution, the church should persevere without ‘getting weary’. In these days when immorality reigns in the world and thus in some churches, even among church leaders, the church has to uphold discipline as the Ephesian church demonstrated and also reject the heresy of the ‘prosperity’ theology that has weakened the message of the church and promoted love of materialism the so called "prosperity gospel" or "prosperity theology" often equates faith with financial blessings and physical well-being, and can drastically distort the key message of the gospel.
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