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Look, God is very capable of telling us exactly what He wants. If He wanted there to be only one church per city, He would have told us this in the Word. Look at the detail He gave about the Temple! He spelled out exactly what He wanted. If one church per city was the Way to go, surely He would have said so! Our God knows that we are prone to failing and to mistakes. If He wanted us to do this so badly, He would have said it where no mistake could be made and no guessing would be necessary. Something like this: "Thou shalt have only ONE church in each city."

At the time Revelation and other parts of the New Testament were written, they were not yet large (in today's terms) in number. So, the Lord addresses THE church in each city because, more than likely, it was the only one due to size. Also, people lived in very close proximity to one another and cities were much more compact. This, plus the smaller numbers, ensured one church per city--for a time. Again, if God wanted there to be only one church per city, He could/would have said so. There would be no guessing--no straining to make an example into a doctrine.

Regarding the idea of a MOTA: if this were really true, again--why is it not clearly spelled out in the Word? But again, we only have ideas and thoughts about what we see in scripture as the basis for this. Since Paul wrote so much of the NT, then HE must be the MOTA of that age, they say. But does Paul dare to claim this? No. Does Peter--who walked with the Lord? No. John? No. Is it not ridiculous that all of this time later there should be a person with the audacity to claim this? Where is humility? It is gone. There is no MOTA--there are MANY ministers in each age.