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NASB | Revelation 2:6 'Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Revelation 2:6 'Yet you have this [to your credit], that you hate the works and corrupt teachings of the Nicolaitans [that mislead and delude the people], which I also hate. |
Subject: Who are the nicholitan |
Bible Note: Dear EdB, Like your professor(s), John Gill makes the association with the Nicolas from Acts 6:5: http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/gills-exposition-of-the-bible/acts-6-5.html He goes into a little bit more detail here: http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/gills-exposition-of-the-bible/revelation-2-6.html So I poked around a bit more: Eusebius in his Church History connects Nicolas of Acts 6:5 with the heresy, which he says was libertinism. I also checked Clement, who says the heresy had to do with some kind of self inflicted abuse of the body. On the other hand, Irenaeus seems to think it was an early form of Gnosticism. Tertullian wrote of them as promulgating Christian-Pagan syncretism. Not a whole lot of help there. Robert Jamieson wrote, "The name, like other names, Egypt, Babylon, Sodom, is symbolic. Compare Revelation 2:14, 2:15, which shows the true sense of Nicolaitanes; they are not a sect, but professing Christians who, like Balaam of old. tried to introduce into the Church a false freedom, that is, licentiousness; this was a reaction in the opposite direction from Judaism, the first danger to the Church combated in the council of Jerusalem, and by Paul in the Epistle to Galatians. These symbolical Nicolaitanes, or followers of Balaam, abused Paul's doctrine of the grace of God into a plea for lasciviousness (2 Peter 2:15, 16, 19; Jude 1:4, 11, who both describe the same sort of seducers as followers of Balaam). The difficulty that they should appropriate a name branded with infamy in Scripture is met by Trench: The Antinomian Gnostics were so opposed to John as a Judaizing apostle that they would assume as a name of chiefest honor one which John branded with dishonor." Maybe what I remember is from something in all of that. It would be interesting if you could recall on what basis your professor(s) gave for the teaching itself. In Him, Doc |