His patience is the patient waiting for the moment when He will assert His rights and come forth as King of kings and Lord of lords. In the meantime, it involves the refusal to interfere in the course of this world. If we keep the word of His patience, we shall accept the place of strangership with a rejected Christ and refuse to assert our rights in regard to this world. We shall take no voluntary part in political rule, in parochial administration, or in the social ordering of the world. Such is the attitude of the Philadelphians towards the world. They refuse to reign where Christ is rejected. The reigning time is not yet.

Thus in Philadelphia we have a return to the great spiritual features of the Church as at the beginning. In that lovely picture in the opening chapters of the Acts, we see the Church mainly composed of the poor of this world possessing little of its wealth, and using what little they had only for the Lord, holding none of the religious offices and without social or political power. They were people indeed with little strength, but very precious in the eyes of the Lord, for they kept His Word, did not deny His Name, and kept the word of His patience.

Here then we have a Philadelphian remnant that return to the Church’s right relations to Christ, and consequently to its right attitude to the world. The result that flows from this is of the very deepest importance, in getting back to the right relations of the Church to Christ.