16 Apr 2013
Revelation 1:20
Revelation 1:20: “The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.”
One of the rules of interpretation is that when plain sense makes sense, you should seek no other sense. When a passage clearly uses symbolic language, however, the key to understanding that symbolism is to let the Bible interpret itself. How do you understand the golden candlesticks? By looking at other verses to see what the candlesticks are symbolic of.
The Bible tends to be very consistent in its use of symbols: for example, oil is symbolic of the Holy Spirit, leaven is symbolic of sin, and so forth. Candlesticks are symbolic of churches; we know this because the Bible tells us so. Revelation becomes easy to interpret when you use this system of interpretation. If you run across a symbol and you don’t know what it means, just look it up in the Bible. The Bible provides its own interpretation of its symbols; you should never look anywhere else to understand them.
No Scripture is of any private interpretation, so you have to let the Bible interpret itself. You must never assign your own meaning to a passage. What matters is not what you think a passage means; the important thing is to know what the Bible says a passage means. Use it as your guide.