COVER STORY
The
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Connect By Bishop Titus B. Stewart
Q
“Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works...” - Revelation 2:5
uestion? Have you ever sensed the Holy Spirit pleading with you to return to the “on-fire” love you had for Him when you first received your salvation?
What we see here is Jesus did with the church of Ephesus when He diagnosed their spiritual condition and told them that they had left their first love. (See Revelation 2:4) He also showed them the steps they needed to take in order to reverse their course and rectify the situation. This is seen in Revelation 2:5, where Jesus told the Ephesians believers how to return to the white-hot passion they’d possessed in the early years of salvation. He said, “Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works…” Notice that Jesus urged the congregation in Ephesus to do three things to correct their deteriorated spiritual condition:
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THE CHRISTIAN OUTLOOK
1) remember, 2) repent, and 3) do the first works. I want to focus on the word remember… The Ephesian believers had lost their “first love”—the simplicity and passion that marked their early love for Jesus Christ. This tells us how far they had unintentionally drifted from the spiritual zeal that once characterized them. For this reason, Jesus urged them to stop everything they were doing in order to “remember” the precious fellowship they used to enjoy with Him before they became so spiritually sophisticated. Now, let’s look at the word “remember,” which is a translation of the Greek word mneia. In ancient literature, the word denoted a written record used to memorialize a person’s actions, a sepulcher, a stature, a monument, or a tombstone. The fact that the word mneia can denote a sepulcher is very significant in
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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021
