upon the pure heavenly manna in this life’s wilderness, in preference to the idolatrous food and pleasures of Egypt (the world), is immortal life within the inner circle of Jesus’ love. Such is the significance attached to the hidden manna and the secret name “which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.” 

Message to Thyatira (A.D. 1157–1367) 

Verse 18: 

And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write; . . . 

Thyatira means “sweet perfume of sacrifice,” which is suggestive of relatively slow-burning incense and implies a long period of suffering. (Thya)teiro denotes “to rub hard,” especially in regard to the effects of pain and sorrow on body and mind, “to wear away, wear out, distress.” Thus those Christians in the Thyatira era who were submissive to the Lord’s leadings and the crushing experiences became, as a result of their obedience, like a sweet powdered incense or fragrance in the nostrils of their God.³³ 

An additional etymological significance to the name (Thya)tira is “tiara,” a coronet or diadem of regality.³⁴ When given an unfavorable connotation, the tiara alludes to the reign of the false Church. 

During the Thyatira period, which extended from A.D. 1157 to 1367, the virgin Church was enduring the hardships of the wilderness under papal persecution, while the apostate Church sat on the throne of her royal paramour. The literal city of Thyatira was known for purple dye (described in the Western World as a “turkey” or “cardinal red”) and for scarlet cloth and dyed linens, which won wide recognition (Acts 16:14). The purple and scarlet cloth fittingly corresponds to the regal robes worn by the worldly Church during her reign with the kings of the earth—when she was a “woman . . . arrayed in purple and scarlet colour” (Rev. 17:4). 

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the unskilled victims for this sordid sport were taken from the midst of undesired criminals (often Christians and Jews) and pitted against more experienced warriors to further develop the skills of the latter. The hapless victims were often herded like cattle and treated as unwanted brute beasts, having neither name nor rank; and their unfortunate selection for destruction was sadistically determined by lot with the extraction by their own hand of a black, instead of a white, stone from a common coffer. The Lord’s promise to his faithful spiritual warriors is that they will be chosen to life and to honor not by random lot but by him as individuals, and they will be named for permanent favor not upon perishable parchment but upon engraved, enduring stone. They are to be given a white stone and a new name—not a mere ballot stone but a signet stone, one half possessed by the Master, the other half in the custody of the individual so honored.

33. Exodus 30:34,35 amplifies this thought: “And the Lord said unto Moses, Take unto thee sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum; . . . with pure frankincense: . . . and thou shalt make it a perfume, a confection [in powder, not liquid, form] after the art of the apothecary [or pharmacist of old, who would place the ingredients in a durable crucible and firmly grasp a hard-nosed pestle to press, crumble, and pulverize the whole—see verse 36—until it became], tempered [blended] together, [and was made] pure and holy.” The incense was finely crushed to eliminate all lumps so that it would flow evenly.

34. The headdress that adorned the statue of the goddess Diana of Ephesus was fashioned in a most conspicuous manner into the likeness of a single high masonry double-turreted tower, suggestive of a corner of a fortified wall and resembling somewhat a piece used in the game of chess called a “castle.” (See Kitto’s Illustrated Commentary, Vol. 5, p. 203.)