<p>2:7 <em>He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches- </em>The Lord is &quot;the Lord the Spirit&quot; (2 Cor. 3:18). The comforter, the gift of the Spirit, was effectively the Lord personally. His physical absence was made good by the presence of the Spirit. The Comforter was to teach them (see on Jn. 14:18). So the idea behind &quot;He that has an ear, let him hear... the Spirit&quot; may be an appeal to those who had received the Comforter to actually listen to what it was teaching them. The primary speaker of the letters to the churches was the Angel representing the Lord- the Angel Gabriel? But they were actually from the Lord Jesus Christ, &quot;The Lord the Spirit&quot; (2 Cor. 3:17 RV). The one special Angel in the midst of the Cherubim in the Old Testament visions of Ezekiel 1 would then represent the Son of Man (&quot;The Lord the Spirit&quot;) in the midst of the lightstands (Rev. 1:13) and the lamb on the throne surrounded by Angels in the four living creatures of Rev. 4 and 5. The Lord Jesus didn&rsquo;t personally pre-exist, but the idea of Him was perhaps represented in Old Testament times by an Angel.</p><p><em>To him that overcomes, I will permit him to eat from the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God</em>- We see here how the Lord Jesus functions as His Father, without being God in a Trinitarian sense. For now <em>He</em> has the authority to permit man back into the garden. There is much language of both judgment and blessing used in the letters; and nearly all of it can have a present as well as a future application. For in John, the Lord so often insisted that eternal life was given by Him now, in the sense of the gift of the Spirit of His life into the hearts of believers; and thereby they could live now the life which they shall eternally live. And in John 6 He predicated that eternal life upon eating Him. &quot;The tree&quot; is the same word used of His cross. And it can be argued that He was effectively crucified in a garden, for again it is John who notes that He was buried in a garden &quot;in the place where he was crucified&quot; (Jn. 19:41). The association of that garden with the &quot;Paradise&quot; of Eden restored was clearly in the Lord's mind on the cross, when He assured the repentant thief that he would indeed be with Him &quot;in paradise&quot; (Lk. 23:43). He saw that miserable crucifixion field as part of the future &quot;paradise&quot; He was effectively assuring the thief 'You and I will be here in this very place again- in My Kingdom, when Eden is restored, and this garden where we are dying is part of the Kingdom restored on earth'. So the Lord saw in that thief the representative of all who shall &quot;overcome&quot; overcome their doubt about the Lord's grace and fear that their sins are too great a barrier between Him and themselves.</p>