Wednesday Bible Study: The Seven Letters Part Three

 

Rev 2:12  "And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: 'The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword. 

Rev 2:13  "'I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is. Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas my faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells. 

Rev 2:14  But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. 

Rev 2:15  So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. 

Rev 2:16  Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. 

Rev 2:17  He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.' 

Today we go to the third church, Pergamum.  And for me, the first thing we need to understand is what the faithful part of the church was dealing with- the parts about "Satan's Throne" and "where Satan dwells."  No other place is given credit for this amount of evil, but if you read the secular history, you don't see where it is that much different than anywhere else- certainly not as bad as, say, Corinth.  So here is a lesson of the evil of what we let creep into our lives from the world around us, which we will get to in a bit.  

When I researched "Satan's throne" here, the commentators and other such authorities came up with three possibilities.  But I think all three were at work.  Satan is a great copier of all that God does- later in Revelation, we'll see his latter-day unholy trinity of "Father" (Satan himself), "Son" (the antichrist) and "Spirit"( the false prophet).  But here we also have the beginnings of this.  There was a great temple to Zeus, the chief Greek god, at the city's acropolis, sometimes considered one of the wonders of the world.  Thing about mythical gods, though, is that they are man's conceptions of what a god SHOULD be- with all the failings, lusts and jealousies of man, but with "super-powers".  And Zeus was surely that- taking the precedence over his brothers, being disloyal to his wife, acting with a lust that bordered on bestiality.

With Zeus occupying the aspect of 'father' in this twisted tale, the 'son' was the Emperor of Rome.  Pergamum was a city- and a kingdom- that its last ruler bequeathed to Rome in his will.  And it became a seat of emperor-worship early on, and in fact was a rival of Ephesus for the number of Neocorates, or temples to the Emperor, it had bestowed on it.  It was considered a badge of honor.   Just as the Son acted in the physical world, the Emperor became a physical manifestation of the gods.  The spirit was symbolized by Pergamum's famous temple to Aesculapius, the god of healing and medicine.  From him we get the staff with snakes twined on it to symbolize medicine; part of the healing ritual was to lie in the temple overnight and let the snakes they kept there crawl over you.  A completely satanic ritual that completed this perverted false trinity.

That was the world this church was dealing with.  Completely politically and socially acceptable satanic worship.  Sound familiar?  So, how was this church dealing with it?  Not completely, apparently.  This time the aspect of Christ sending the warning was   'The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword.'  If you remember this phrase from Hebrews:

Heb 4:12  For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 

Then you can see, this is a church being judged on its thoughts and motivations.  It was keeping the evil of the rest of society in the corner of one eye.  And Christ was letting them know that none of their motivations were hidden from Him.  Still, they held on to their faith, even through persecution.  Antipas is mentioned here, and almost nowhere else.  Legend has it he was martyred in a "brazen bull": a hollow bronze bull, into which a victim was inserted and them roasted in a fire. 

 But they had a fault, and it one again brings up Balaam and the Nicolaitans.  But instead of the problem being the lust of Balaam- the lust over money- this time it was specifically the things which Balaam TAUGHT Balak to do.  Balaam taught Balak that, to defeat the Hebrews,  send in the women- they would lead gullible men into worshiping pagan gods.  So the people in Pergamum were both being seduced by lust, and by the false worship of Zeus et al.

The warning that Christ then gives has a curious twist: where the sins of Ephesus would make Christ "come against you". those here have Him "come against THEM".  He was about to purge the cancer from His church.  Our lesson is this:  Being "in" a church is not a place of safety.  "I belong to such and such church, and we believe"... what you believe doesn't matter if it doesn't match the Word of God.  If what you believe is a convenient cover for excusing the sin you choose, if your motivation is in justifying yourself, if your faith is just a "Sunday thing" and on Monday you put on your secular clothes, it is not enough, and God's own Word will cut you off.

Mat 7:21  "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 

Mat 7:22  On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' 

Mat 7:23  And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.' 

Finally, I want to consider the rewards promised.  Are they specific to each church?  It does say, " to the one who conquers", not "to the one who conquers THIS THING"; On the other hand, they seem to grow in detail; Is this an indication that the challenges faced by these churches are progressive?  First thing, remember the Great Commission; second, stay strong in persecution; third, don't be corrupted by the world?  I don't really know, perhaps we'll figure it out as we go along.  For now, though, we see this church being rewarded- if they stay free from corruption- two things.  First is the 'hidden manna';  Manna is food, food is the Word, so this hidden manna must be a deeper understanding of the things of God.  The second is a name known only to yourself;  Christ Himself has one of those, as we see in Rev 19:12,  and I think this means a deeper relationship with Christ Himself.  So as the struggles ascend, so too the rewards, from 'merely' eternal life and salvation from the Second Death, to intimacy with God.

If these things are progressive, then we need to consider a sobering thought.  We all find it difficult to share our faith with others.  For most, it probably seems the hardest part of the Christian life.  Persecution is no cakewalk, either.  But if not falling to the world's corruption is worse yet, we have some thinking to do about what that means- and IF we are resisting it.