The Seven Churches of Revelation - A Key to Church History?

https://taylormarshall.com/2024/01/1053-6th-age-antichrist-according-17th-century-mystic-holzhauser-podcast.html

Trumpite (and thus non-Traditionalist) Roman Catholic Taylor Marshall published this little promo video the other day. Though others have pointed this out, few Dispensationalists realize that the Seven Epochs of Church History schema (based on the Seven Churches of Asia Minor) finds its origin in Counter-Reformation Roman Catholicism. The same is actually true of the larger Dispensational scheme.

This is not to say that JN Darby derived his Dispensational system from figures like Holzhauser – to be honest I don't know. Those who argue that its antecedents are found with groups like the Joachimites are mistaken. His model is not the same at all. A similar 'Dispensational' scheme appeared among some later Pietists such as Pierre Poiret and even later with Edward Irving, but the earliest example (post-antiquity) or proto-type of its futurist eschatology is located in the Counter-Reformation.

And to be fair it should be noted the Holzhauser schema being promoted by Taylor Marshall does not include the sine qua non of Darby-Scofield Dispensationalism – the primacy of the Jews and Judaism and their absolute separation from the Church. In fact as the Holzhauser example makes clear, one need not be a Dispensationalist to embrace the Church History view of the Seven Letters, though typically it is only Dispensationalists who embrace this (ironically) allegorical view.

It should be noted that the Holzhauser scheme (which is by no means embraced by all or even a majority of Roman Catholics) is totally arbitrary. One could just as easily argue for this or that date marking the epochal shifts. This is a fundamental problem with all historicist schemas. Holzhauser also assumes a great many things that I would argue on the basis of the New Testament can and must be rejected. Contrary to the assumptions found in his scheme, Constantine and Charlemagne are not heroes of the faith but representatives of False Christianity. Holzhauser is thus a false prophet.

The still popular Dispensationalist model is likewise arbitrary. Most today will argue that we're in the so-called 'Laodicean Church Age' and yet I remember my late Fundamentalist grandparents arguing that we were in the Philadelphian epoch. They were seemingly convinced that the Church of their day was zealous and faithful. Locating the present in the so-called Laodicean Age panders to the notions that we must be in the 'end times' – proximate to the Rapture. Sadly, this school of thought has greatly misunderstood even this notion of 'end times'. In the New Testament the label of 'last days' applies to what we could call the Church Age, the entire period between the First and Second Advents of Christ. So technically they're right – we are in the 'end times' or more properly 'Last Days'. But so were Paul, Origen, Augustine, Joachim, Luther, Wesley, and so forth.

At least (it could be argued) the Roman-Holzhauser model relies on a prophet (of sorts) and therefore has a kind of authority that the Dispensationalist model does not and cannot possess. I am of course being facetious, but if the assumption is valid, then Roman Catholics who embrace the schema could at least rest on that foundation as opposed to the mere conjecture found in modern Dispensationalism.

There's no way you can assign the ages on any kind of objective basis. For example we could still be in the very first or second age. There's no way to know.

The whole approach is wrong and when it's wedded to other forms of bad theology the end result is not a happy one.

One could argue that as Revelation represents a repeat and recapitulation of Church history (the Last Days), the Seven Churches of Asia might in fact represent something we should expect to find at all times – more or less. Rather than view them in chronologically successive terms, instead we should see them as a pattern that repeats and rearranges itself over and over again. We see these 'types' of churches all throughout Church history – and it is noteworthy that in most cases, the report is not a good one. In keeping with what the rest of the New Testament suggests, the period is marked by unfaithfulness, error, and warnings in the face of potential apostasy – and yet with glimmers of hope and a recurring faithful remnant.