Initial principles of the seven letters:
Letter I, Pagan Rome
Remember that I correlate the seven letters to the scenes of the dragon. Let's look at it in the big picture first in the first dragon scene.
Pagan Rome , the first letter.
In this first scene of the dragon post Ascension, the devil is fighting to prevent the gospel from triumphing over pagan Rome. He accuses the Christians by vile lies They are insurrectionists, traitors, cannibals, arsonists etc.
But they overcame him by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto death. The martyrs were the seed of Christians and foiled the plans of the devil.
Hence the first great age of the church ends with the dragon?s downfall. Pagan Rome is defeated and Christian freedom triumphs through Constantine. The devil is cast from heaven to earth. The victory speech and cry here by the Angels, strikingly resembles the victory speeches of Daniel 2 and Daniel 7, both of which describe the victory of the Catholic church and the saints over the tyranny of Rome.
When we associate this with the first letter, Jesus indeed praises the Christian's overall for their patience and endurance. This is exactly how the Christians dealt with the persecutions. They persevered in love and charity towards their enemies.
Here now , Christ has but two critiques. Firstly, he says that they have lost their first love. Secondly, he speaks of a mysterious nicholations that he hates present there.
Let us deal with the first situation, losing their first love. Well, behold, the first and greatest Love is Charity of what Saint Paul speaks. Here , in 1st Corinthians, he says that if someone has all knowledge and charisms, but has no charity ,he is nothing.
Two, we must remember that the Pharisees were cruel and hard-hearted , unable to forgive and looking down upon those that had sinned.
Incidentally there were two primary movements in the early church that fit these types of errors that arose during pagan rome. Firstly there were the Melitians. They fit both the phariseal and charismatic critiques. Firstly, they had the charisms that they claimed that they felt made them better than other Christians. For example, prophecies concerning the second coming and the power to raise the Dead etc. Secondly, in order to arrogantly set themselves apart from the true church they practiced hyperacetitism and in a pharisaical manner so as to show that they were holier than the others in the church. The true Catholic Church ultimately condemned them.
Now, the second set of movements were the phariseaical ones that lacked Mercy in serious ways. ones that truly condemned others that seriously sinned in certain senses.
A couple examples were valentianism, novatianism, and donatism. One of these had a harsh view of serious sin claiming that once one committed ine , there was no mercy beyond this. And especially applied to apostasy under pressure persecution.
Another would not readmit priests to confect the sacraments if they had apostatized or sinned seriously. The church argued that the efficacy of the sacraments confected by the priest depends on his office and not on his moral character. In conclusion for this first section, we see that the early church does have reflections of the phariseaical elements that Christ speaks of.
The nicolations are more speculative; the Wikipedia suggests that the nicolations were an early movement of the church that was based upon a deacon named Nicolae , who encouraged a hedonistic interpretation of the Gospel, much like The errors of the Corinthians who misunderstood Grace.
This therefore was a radical favoring of the flesh to the detriment of the spirit.
Yet, if we consider it to mystically also embody it's counterpart, which is hyperemphasis on the spirit to the detriment of the flesh, then immediately it assumes into it the far more prevalent movement in the early church which was the dualistic heresies.
Here, in these types of heresies, rather than indulging the flesh because one is quote unquote saved by grace, the spirit, the dualistic heresies more or less hyperemphasized the spirit to the detriment of the flesh. This tended to mean that they considered the flesh or the earthly material to be essentially evil or bad and that only the spirit is good more or less.
In this view then, like the miletians, they tended to be hyperacetic because they felt the flesh was bad.
Also in the sense of dualism, they envision a dichotomy within God, between a a good god of the spirit of the New Testament and the bad god of the physical or the Old Testament as in marcianism.
Once again flesh or the material order is largely rejected in favor of nearly the purity of the spirit.
These heresies included :
gnosticism: matter is bad and the spirit alone is good. Special knowledge is what makes one good.
Docetism: mixture of gnosticism with an incarnational dimension
Marcionism: duality in the divine. The god of the Old Testament is a cruel God of matter and evil. The god of the New Testament is compassionate and purely spiritual the god of the spiritual.
Manichaism: a duality in God once again Spirit good flesh bad.
This can be the mystical meaning when Christ says : and thou has some there called the nicolations which thing I hate.
.... Letter II and the pursuit of the woman by the dragon coming soon