The greeting in Revelation 1:4 includes a reference to the seven Spirits who are before the Father's throne. Commentators divide over four possible interpretations of this phrase: angelic, symbolic, mystical, and Trinitarian. The Trinitarian view, favored by most Catholics and Protestants, holds that the seven Spirits identify the Third Person of the Trinity, chiefly because the phrase stands between greetings from God the Father and God the Son; proponents link it to the sevenfold description of the Spirit of the Lord in Isaiah 11:2. Revelation itself equates the seven Spirits with the Lamb's seven eyes sent out into all the earth, an image that alludes to Zechariah 3:9 and 4:10, where the eyes rest upon the stone that symbolizes the Messiah and are identified as the eyes of the Lord that scan to and fro throughout the whole earth. Additional passages reinforce the identification: Revelation 3:1 states that Christ possesses the seven Spirits of God, and Revelation 4:5 describes them as seven lamps of fire burning before the throne. The material presents this not as a Person divided into seven parts but as a seven-branched conduit through which God's communication reaches the seven churches. John therefore names the seven Spirits as one source of the prophecy in order to indicate the precise means by which the message is imparted to those churches, paralleling the way the apostle Paul describes the communion of the Holy Spirit as the means by which believers maintain relationship with God.