How firm a foundation,

Ye saints of the Lord is laid for your faith in his excellent work.

Do you have a keepsake, a gift from someone close to you?

Maybe it's a ring or a watch or something that's a remembrance of them.

I'm your host Steve Schwetz.

In this study on Through the Bible, we're going to learn about a gift that Jesus will someday give each of us in heaven.

As Dr. J. Vernon McGee leads us through the early verses of the book of Revelation.

He explains accustomed the first readers of the book would understand.

They would give their close friends a tesser, a cube of stone or ivory with words engraved on it.

We're going to hear about that same kind of gift from Jesus and a secret name inscribed on it.

I'm intrigued to know more, aren't you?

Well, if you got your Bible open, turn it to Revelation 2, verse 16.

And while you do that, here's a quick introduction from Dr. McGee.

Now, we'll be coming to the church in Thyatira and also the church in Sardis. Fiatire represents the rise of Romanism, or as we know it today,

the Roman Catholic Church. And it's that dark period that's known as the Dark Ages. Then we come in

the Church in Sardis to the Protestant Reformation. Now, there is always a danger of us

Protestants, you know, of pointing our finger at Romanism and say it's all wrong and we're all right.

Well, if you do that, you need to read what the Lord Jesus says to both

of these churches. Neither one of them present such a pretty picture on the page of Scripture,

and we hope to give a fair appraisal of each one of them as we come to them in this study that we are going

to have today.

And so I trust that you will listen with patience and with sympathy to what we have to say

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