So Caesar Augustus has a will with 7 seals on it. Now what I would do as a wealthy man is I would make out my trust or my will and I’d roll it up in front of the judge and then I would call my 7 closest friends who lived around me and I would say I want you to help me seal this. And so they would tie it with leather. He’d have a ring with wax, he’d have a ring with wax. Seven. Now here’s the catch. When I died, when I died it was a normal thing to have to call, now if you guys had died your son had your ring, you had to call and match your seal and the ring by the person who sealed it.
Meaning first seal had to match this brother, the second one, so then they would unlock it that way, they would unravel it or cut the, the leather and then be able to read the contents. Now this explains perhaps why Jesus addresses only 7 churches. You’ll get this in a minute. There’s a lot more than 7 churches in the early church. Okay? As a matter of fact some of these churches Paul started and after Paul’s death historians will tell you they turned the whole church over to John.
John, after everybody died for 20 some years was the bishop of the whole Christian church, okay? This was before it was in Rome because at that time Rome was killing everybody. Heh. You didn’t put the headquarters in Rome where they’re cutting everybody’s head off, you know? But he, he, he lived with Mary in Ephesus for a long time according to historians before he was taken to the Isle of Patmos. In fact he lived in freedom in a house up on the hill in Ephesus and had total freedom until the persecution started against Christians.
