Quote:
Sound teachers have promoted the idea that the seven Churches in Revelation, while being literal, have also applied to seven portions of Church history. This seems to be fairly commonly held, because various people will refer to the present age as "Laodicean". This is probably one of the few areas where both full futurists and many historicists agree in their interpretations on the book of Revelation.


As an Historicist, I must point out your gross error here. The "7 Church Ages" garbage originated with Darby and Dispensationalism. Historicists prior to Darby never taught such a [false] doctrine. Not even the Jesuits teach it in their Annotations to the Rheims' NT, nor in the Futurist Revelation Commentary by the Jesuit Ribera.......works that some of the Reformers (Fulke, Cartwright, Perkins, Pareus, etc.) confute point by point.


19th century expositor, E. B. Elliott, who wrote his massive and unparalleled 4-volume masterpiece, Horae Apocalypticae, fervently refutes such a false teaching.

Historicists today who erroneously teach such twaddle are sorely ignorant of Historicist teaching.