Main news for 1 January 2023

Jesus says directly that the Christians of the Philadelphian church will have to acknowledge their own defeat. Yet He promises to protect them from the trials that will come in their time, when that time arrives. At first glance, such a promise looks somewhat strange: during His earthly ministry Jesus had already warned His disciples and followers that persecutions and harassment are inevitable, that they are connected with the very essence of the Kingdom, which inevitably comes into conflict with the untransfigured world that does not accept it and is hostile to it. And yet, as can be seen, the situation is not so unambiguous: persecutions differ from persecutions, and the measure of damage they cause can vary.

It is possible that in this case the point is that during persecutions, when many other churches disappear, the Philadelphian church will be preserved. And the issue here is not some privileges received for special merits. The issue is the spiritual state of the community, which determines its fate. It is entirely obvious that God can preserve any of His churches if only this is His will. But it is just as obvious that preserving a community makes sense only if its very existence is a testimony, that testimony to the life of the Kingdom which the existence of the Church as a whole and of each particular church community should be. But unfortunately, for that historical church to which the Savior addresses Himself through His apostle, such existence turns out to be a difficult-to-reach ideal, and far from every church corresponds to it. The goal and meaning of a church community's existence cannot be survival, spiritual or physical, but testimony, and only testimony. Then God will give His faithful the possibility of being witnesses of the Kingdom that the Messiah sent by Him brought into the world.