There was once a king who ruled over a vast city. He was feared for his might and loved for his wisdom.
Now, in the heart of the city was a well whose waters were pure and crystalline from which all the inhabitants drank … except the king. He lived in a castle on top of a hill overlooking the city and as such drank from a separate well that supplied the castle.
One night, while everyone was asleep, an enemy of the king snuck into the city and poured seven drops of a strange liquid into the town’s well. As the stranger poured out the potion, he cast a spell over the well. “All who drink out of this well,” the stranger chanted, “will go mad.”
Everyone drank from the well, except for the king, who, as I pointed out, drank from a separate well. Unaware of the spell that his enemy had casted over the well in the city, the king watched with dismay and growing alarm as his subjects became strange and upset. The people began to grumble and complain. “Have you seen how strangely the king has been acting lately? We used to love and admire him but he has gone mad and lost his reason. We cannot be ruled by a mad man, so he must be de-throned.”
The king grew fearful, for his subjects were preparing to rise up against him. The king figured that the only thing that could account for the change in the townspeople was that someone had snuck in and cast a spell over the town’s drinking water. Since he couldn’t undo the spell, he ordered a golden goblet to be filled with water from the city’s well and he drank deeply of the enchanted water and the next day there was great rejoicing among the people for their beloved king had finally regained his senses.
Have we been drinking from the well? Well … let’s have a look at what happened to some of the Christians in Pergamum who drank from a polluted well, so to speak, as a warning to us to be careful not to drink in false teachings and doctrines and become corrupted ourselves.
Pergamum … or “Bergama” as it is known today … is located about 50 miles north of the Smyrnan church that we studied last week. Let’s see … we’ve gone by boat from the Island of Patmos to the seaport at Ephesus where we disembarked and started traveling north along the coast to the port city of Smyrna. Leaving Smyrna, we continued north until we arrived at the city of Pergamum. After reading Jesus’ letter to the Christians in Pergamum, we’ll change course and begin to head south to the city of Thyatira.
In John’s day, Pergamum was a lot like the city of Smyrna … except that it wasn’t … and still isn’t … a seaport. At the time that Jesus wrote and sent His letter to the city of Pergamum, it had a population of about a quarter of a million people. Like Smyrna, Pergamum was a proud city and … like Smyrna … they had good reason to be.
First of all, Pergamum was the Roman administrative center for the entire province of Asia. In fact, Pergamum had been a capital city long before the Romans made it a center for their administrative activities in Asia Minor. Before the Romans, Pergamum was the capital and administrative center of the Selucid Empire of Greece.
The second thing that added to their civic pride was the fact that Pergamum was a very beautiful city. It was built on a rocky hill about 15 miles from the coast. It was high enough that you could actually see the Mediterranean on a clear day. While Pergamum was a busy and prosperous center of trade, it was known more for its great culture. Besides its many official buildings and amphitheaters, it was the home of the second largest library in the world at that time … second only to the great library in Alexandria, Egypt. The library in Pergamum contained over 200,000 scrolls.
The reason for this is really quite fascinating. As I’m sure you recall from last week, Smyrna got its name from its major export – “smyrna” … which we know today as “myrrh.” In the same way, “Pergamum” got its name from its chief product and export … vellum … or “parchment.” For centuries the Egyptians had a monopoly on the world’s parchment supply. They made “papyrus” out of a type of bulrushes that grew along the banks of the Nile River. When the Egyptians refused to sell papyrus to the Pergamites because of some political or trade dispute, the scholars in Pergamum put their heads together and made “vellum” … which was a parchment made out of animal skins. The Latin word for “parchment” is “pergamentum.” Pergamentum turned out to be such a superior writing material that they eventually put the Egyptians out of the paper business and made the city of “Parchment” very, very rich indeed. See, I told you it was fascinating!
Like Smyrna, Pergamum was proud of its many temples. Are you beginning to see a theme here among these churches? Pergamum, like Smyrna, was a center of pagan worship. Being a center for Roman government and administration in this region, they, like Smyrna, were loyal to Rome and loved all things Roman … including their gods. They had a temple for Dionysus, the Roman god of wine and drama … they had a temple dedicated to Athena, the Roman goddess of the hunt … they had a temple where they could worship Aesculapius … the god of healing. The biggest temple, of course, was build for the chief Roman God … Zeus! Zeus’ massive temple was built on a hill overlooking the city and was referred to a “Zeus’ Throne.” Inside the temple was a massive stone throne four times the size of the “throne” that Lincoln sits on in the Lincoln Memorial … and if you’ve ever been to the Lincoln Memorial then you know that Zeus’ throne had to have been incredibly massive.
Many scholars think that Zeus’ throne maybe what Jesus was referring to in verse 13 when He called Pergamum “Satan’s throne.” That could be … but here’s another possibility. I think Jesus called Pergamum “Satan’s throne” because it was another “seat” or center of emperor worship in that part of the world. Hedonism, idolatry, and paganism radiated out from Pergamum to most of Asian Minor … including Smyrna, as we talked about last Sunday. From a Christian standpoint, Pergamum was one of the darkest and most dangerous of all the cities in Asia Minor.
Let me stop and ask you this: Does it feel like Satan is running wild and loose in the world these days? I mean, it doesn’t seem like you can listen to the news without hearing bad news … well, the “news” has pretty much always been “bad news” … but lately it seems like bad news on top of bad news on top of more bad news, amen? Maybe it looks like hell and feels like hell because it is hell. Satan is alive and well on planet earth because earth is Satan’s throne … for now! The devil is not in hell … not yet. He has not been locked up in the bottomless pit. That fate still awaits him. Until then, he still crouches at the door (Genesis 4:7) and he still roams the earth looking for someone … anyone … to devour (1st Peter 5:8-9). For now, Satan is the prince of this earth and holds the title or deed to this fallen world. He is the lord and ruler of this temporary age as he walks up and down, to and fro on this planet trying to destroy the people’s faith in Jesus in any way that he can. While he may have reign over this broken and corrupt world, he is already defeated. His reign ended when Jesus walked out of the tomb. His time is limited and he knows it, so he’s amped up his efforts to muddle and destroy as many hearts and souls as he possibly can before he is thrown in to the bottomless pit for good. Like a mortally wounded lion or bear, it’s best to steer clear of him. Satan may have been defeated but he is still very dangerous … and still very clever … as we shall see.
Why would Jesus plant churches in places like Ephesus or Smyrna or Pergamum? Cities devoted to worshipping pagan gods? Why bother with a city like Pergamum that is full of people too proud to think that they need Jesus? Why not build churches somewhere else? Surely there were other places, other cities that would be more open to the Gospel than these cities, amen?
I’ll tell you why. Because God loves and cares for ALL His people … especially the ones who are the most lost or in the greatest danger of losing their eternal souls. Cities like Ephesus and Smyrna and Pergamum were filled with people who were worshipping idols fashioned by the mind and hands of mortal human beings … rather than worshipping the One True Living God. Loving and worshiping a statue in a temple provided a hollow, false sense of safety and security and it broke God’s heart to see His children put their hope and their faith in a thing rather than in Him, who alone has the power to provide the safety and security that all humans seek. He longed for them to know Him and so He planted churches in the midst of the most difficult, dangerous cities and then called on the Christians in those cities to reach out to the lost souls in Ephesus and Smyrna and Pergamum. He expected these Christians to share His love in Roman cities, Roman administrative centers full of proud, emperor-worshipping, Christian-persecuting, lost souls.
Guess what? God still does that kind of thing today, amen? He still puts us where He needs us. He gives us gifts and talents so that we can share His love in specific places. Let that sink in for a moment. God has placed you where He needs you … next to family members and friends who need to see you live your faith. He has placed you next to neighbors and co-workers who need to hear of the good news of the Gospel. The next time you start to complain about where God has placed you in life, stop and think … look around … pray … and thank God that He has placed you there because He has some work for you to do and He knows that you are uniquely qualified to be His representative. That should change your perspective, don’t you think? At least I would hope so!
And that not only applies to you and me … it applies to our churches as well. I know it may not seem like it, but Canton First and Beaverdam are right where God wants us to be. Our churches are part of the front line of God’s Kingdom. It may seem tough right now but this is where God has placed us and where God has placed our churches. This is where God has equipped us and our churches to minister. He has given … and will continue to give … both us and our churches all that we will need to accomplish His mission and His purpose here in the mountains of Western North Carolina. How many of you believe that? I do. I believe with all my heart and with all my being that He will give us … and He will give our two churches … the insight, the strength, and the resources that we will need to keep sharing the Good News of His love right here in eastern Haywood county in the middle of a pandemic while our country seems to be coming apart at the seams, amen?
The church at Pergamum was full of brave believers who would not give up their faith in Jesus … even though it meant enduring severe persecution and death. “I know where you are living … yet you are holding fast to my name,” says Jesus, “and you did not deny your faith in me in the days of Antipas my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan lives” (Revelation 2:13).
We don’t know much about “Antipas” except what’s written here. His name … “Antipas” … means “Against All.” Antipas was apparently a representative of the kind of Christians that made up this new congregation. Church and historical tradition holds that Antipas was seared … or cooked … to death inside of a huge, hallow brass bull because he refused to renounce his faith in Jesus or bow down and worship the emperor.
When Jesus says that these Christians did not “deny” or “renounce” their faith in Him, the Greek word that He used referred to someone holding on to their faith with something akin to a “death grip.” The Christians held onto their faith in Jesus so tightly that no one or nothing could wrestle or wrench that faith from out of their grasp. Against all assaults and opposition, they held firmly to their faith in Jesus and the truth of His teaching. They refused to let go of their belief that Jesus was the Son of God … the Savior of the world … the way, the truth, the life. They were willing to die before they would bow down or give in to the societal pressure to burn incense and worship the Roman emperor or their gods. They were willing to face difficult days living in the Christian-hating, Christian-persecuting, Christian-killing city of Pergamum because they had experienced the Presence of the Living Jesus in their day-to-day lives … a Presence through which He had given them the courage and the strength to stand fast. They were willing to face death because they each had experienced a personal relationship with the Living God … the only One … with a capital “O” … who defeated death and was therefore qualified to promise them eternal life.
What about you, my friend? Do you have a death grip on your faith? Like the believers in Pergamum, mature Christians are unafraid. We find 22courage in our faith in Jesus and we get our strength from Him so that we can, in fact, face anything … so that we can cling to our faith in Jesus with a grip that will never let go. What a wonderful asset to have a church full of believers who are fearless and bold in the face of whatever life throws our way, amen?
Ah … “but!” “But,” says Jesus, while these bold believers were doing a great job of standing firm and withstanding the attacks that came from the outside, they were weak when it came to the threats and attacks that came from the inside … from within the church itself. You see … Satan wasn’t able to burst in through the front door so he snuck in through the back door. He wasn’t able to attack the church like a roaring lion, so he slithered in among them like a snake.
“But I have a few things against you,” says Jesus, “you have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the people of Israel, so that they would eat food sacrificed to idols and practice fornication. So you also have some who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans” (Revelation 2:14-15).
We had run into the Nicolaitans at the Ephesian church, remember? What is their connection to Balaam? Well, we read about Balaam and the Moabite King, Balak, back in chapters 22 through 25 of the Book of Numbers. When Balak heard about the victories of the Hebrew people as they journeyed from Egypt on their way to the Promised Land, King Balak hired Balaam … a well-know prophet … to curse them. Balaam accepted the offer … hopped on the back of his donkey … and was on his way to do what Balak asked when he was met by an angel of the Lord. Now … think about the depth of Balaam’s deception and sin. Prophets are revered because they speak the words of God. Balaam was going to use his position or past history as a prophet to speak lies and deceive the people of God who would believe that the lies that Balaam was telling were, in fact, the words of God … and he was doing it for money.
When he is confronted by an angel, Balaam confesses his sin and offers to literally turn around and ride back to where he came from instead of going to see King Balak and do his bidding. The angel stops him, saying that God has other plans for Balaam. Since Balaam is a prophet of God, Balaam is to speak only the words of God. When Balak demands that Balaam curse the Israelites, Balaam blesses them. Every time that the Moabite King demands that Balaam curse the Hebrews, the prophet of God could only bless them.
When Balak threatens not to pay Balaam, Balaam comes up with a twisted plan to deceive the Hebrew men and thus destroy the newly forming nation of Israel. “Rather than curse them,” he suggests, “entice them. Get the men of Israel to intermarry with your Moabite women,” Balaam explains to the king. “These adulterous women will seduce them and take part of their Moabite religion and marry it to their Jewish husbands’ religious practices and beliefs and cause them to commit fornication and offer idolatrous sacrifices to the Moabite gods” Because of Balaam’s deception, God sent a plague that killed 24,000 Israelites.
The “Doctrine of Balaam” goes like this: “If you can’t curse them … corrupt them.” Got it? If you can’t curse them, corrupt them. The great English pastor, Alexander MacLauren described the “Doctrine of Balaam” as the attempt to mate the best of both worlds together … the earthly world and the spiritual world. “It’s like trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds” – which is an old English idiom that describes a person who fights for one side while giving secret help to the other side (https://proverbhunter.com). Theologian and pastor Donald Gray Barnhouse once wrote: “The very word ‘pergamum’ has in it the same root from which we get our English word for ‘bigamy’ and ‘polygamy.’ It is the word for ‘marriage.’ Pergamum signifies a mixed marriage in the most objectionable sense of the word. It is the marriage of the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ with the world” (https://www.inspiringquotes.us) … which leads us back to our old nemesis, the Nicolaitans.
We only touched on the Nicolaitans two weeks ago. Like the Apostle Paul, the Apostle Peter warned against the infiltration of damaging doctrines and teaching. In 2nd Peter 2, he warned the emerging church in Jerusalem to be on the alert for false prophets and false teachers. “Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping” (2nd Peter 2:2-3).
As you may recall, the Nicolaitans were a group who promoted the practice of eating meat sacrificed to idols and condoned the practice of sexual license engaged in by the surrounding culture but they also believed in establishing a hierarchy within the church. The name, or title, “Nicolaitan” is a compound word that means “conquer the laity.” Nicolaitanism is the practice of building hierarchies. Hierarchies are, by nature, a process of establishing power relationship. The people above make the rules for those below them or enjoy certain rights or privileges that those below them do not.
Remember the "Acts Church"? They held all things in common. Those, like Barnabas, would take from their wealth and use it to help people in need. No one in the church was higher or lower than any other. People like Lydia and Aquilla and Priscilla would open their homes for worship. Over time, however, those who had more or contributed more began demanding special favor, special recognition ... like the front pews or deference when it came to decisions in the church that impacted them. They began to develop an "us" (up here) and "them" (below us) mentality.
Bear with me here a moment. It might seem like I’m taking a little side trip here but, trust me, it will all come together in a moment. While these seven letters were sent to seven actual churches, some scholars believe that these churches represent seven different ages of time … or periods of time … in church history. The church at Ephesus represents the first church … what we call the “Acts Church” because the Ephesus church resembled the early church that we read about in the Book of Acts.
The church in Smyrna represents the persecuted church … a period of about 250 years when the Church faced great persecution under 10 different Roman emperors … starting with Nero and ending with Diocletian, who literally tried to eliminate any trace of the Christian Church off the face of the earth. When Diocletian passed away, two men claimed his throne … Constantine in the west and Maxentius in the East.
Tradition has it that on the night before the decisive battle at Mulvian Bridge, Constantine saw a vision in the sky in the shape of a cross bearing the inscription: “En Hoc Signo Esse” … which means “By this sign you must conquer.” Constantine joined the church that night and declared himself a “Christian” … and Christianity became the religion of the state. Christian leaders were invited to witness the mass baptism of whole regiments of Roman soldiers … most of whom were baptized because they were ordered to do so and not because they had a change of heart or were interested in becoming Christians.
The result of all this was an unholy alliance … or marriage … between the Church and the state or government. Christianity was forced on unwilling subjects at the point of a sword. At one of the first church councils, Constantine had himself carried in on a golden throne (arcdigital.media) and declared himself “Pontifex Maximus” … the first pope of the Holy Roman Church. There is no evidence to suggest that Constantine was ever born again during his whole lifetime.
The “Pergamum” era of the church began at this time. The true believers who were being persecuted now found themselves being lauded and held in high esteem by powerful political leaders and civil authorities. Their rags were traded for plush garments and their hideouts in the catacombs became imperial palaces and homes. Heathenism was gradually Christianized. Pagan temples were either destroyed or became Christian churches and pagan festivals were converted into Christian ones.
During this so-called “pergamum” period, the Church was married to the world and Nicolaitanism was in full bloom. The people were subjugated by a powerful hierarchy that allowed some … such as bishops, archbishops, and the Pope … to exercise a tremendous amount of power and control over those beneath them.
Under the leadership and control of the Roman Emperor Constantine, Roman culture and the Christian Church became one and the same for many years … centuries, actually … and Rome used the Church to rule over kings and countries. Historian Walter Scott observed that Constantine offered his gold and his patronage to the church “and the church eagerly swallowed the bait, sacrificing its conscious and its allegiance to the Lord … and the church and the world, which hitherto had walked apart were soon locked in each other’s arms … a fatal union” (romanchristendom.blogspot.com). When the Apostle Paul said good-bye to the leaders of the Ephesian church, he warned them to watch out for “there will be those who will rise up from among you who will carry you away from the truth” (Acts 20:31).
You see, Satan doesn’t really care how he ruins your life or mine. He doesn’t care how he corrupts the church. All that matters to him is that he is successful. He’ll try anything and everything … even Balaamism and Nicolaitanism. The most effective thing he has done so far has been to Christianize the Roman Empire and Romanize the Christian Church. The Protestant Reformation was our effort to get the Church out of its unhealthy and unholy relationship with government and politics.
Were we successful? Well … look around you. There are churches today who tend toward this same kind of compromise with the world. Yes … the Church must be IN the world … that is our mission field … but we must always be on guard lest we become too much like the world. It’s one thing for the boat to be in the water but it’s another thing altogether when the water gets into the boat, amen?
There is so much of the world in the church today that you almost can’t tell the difference anymore. Tons of statistics have been complied which show that Christian don’t live a whole lot better or a whole lot more different from the rest of the world. If you think about it, we’ve become so fixated on becoming relevant that we’ve almost become irrelevant. As I’ve said many times before, if there is no difference in what we believe or how we live from what the world believes and how the world lives then why waste a perfectly good Sunday morning hanging out in the church, amen? If we take our mantra from the media and our marching orders from the marketplace instead of from the Word of God, then we have nothing to say to the world that’s any different from what the world can get just about anywhere else, amen? When we are no longer the church in the world, why on earth would we ever expect the world to come to us and ask us what we think about anything?
Following Jesus means living differently from those who don’t follow Him. Being a follower of Jesus should make us stand out. Being a Christian should make us a peculiar people … a distinct people … a separate people … a holy people. We are called to be “blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation [shining] like stars in the universe as [we] hold firmly to the Word of Life” (Philippines 2:15-16).
“Repent then,” says Jesus. “If not, I will come to you soon and make war against them with the sword of my mouth” (Revelation 2:16). The sword of His mouth is His words! Jesus uses the aorist imperative when He commands us to “repent” in verse 16. An “imperative” is an order. When it is in the “aorist” tense it means “NOW!” “Repent … NOW! Right now! Repent this very instant! Don’t wait. Don’t hesitate. Don’t sit around thinking about it. Do it! Right now! Change your mind and your actions and your attitude … when? Yeah! Right now! If you don’t change your mind … if you don’t change your actions … if you don’t change your attitude right now, then I will come to Pergamum … you who are so proud of your library with all its scrolls and words … and I will condemn you with the double-edged words of my truth!”
“If you heed my command and repent, however … if you continue to cling to my words and my truth,” says Jesus, “then you will do more than survive … you will be conquerors … and I will give you some hidden manna … and I will give you a new name written on a white stone … a name that no one but you and me will ever know.”
When Jesus promises to give us manna, He is obviously referring to something more than physical food. The manna in the wilderness sustained God’s people physically, but Jesus is the “Bread of Life” who came down from Heaven to sustain us spiritually. He came to satisfy our soul’s hunger, our soul’s need for Him. He promises the church in Pergamum that He can and will sustain their spirits even in a place like Pergamum … and He is making that same promise to us today. He can and will sustain our spirits in times like the one we’re going through now.
Jesus not only promises us manna for our souls, He also promises to give us a new name carved into a white stone … meaning that it will never fade away or disappear like it can on papyrus or pergamentum. His special name is a pet name … a personal name … an intimate name that only He and you know … just as husbands and wives or parents and children have special pet names for each other that no one else knows. Jesus had two special names for Antipas, for example: “my witness” and “my faithful one” (Revelation 2:13).
The lesson of Pergamum is this: If Satan or the world can’t beat us down, then Satan and the world will try to corrupt us. It was true for the church at Pergamum and it is as true for us, for our families, for our communities, and for our churches today. We are walking into a time that is pretty similar to the situation that our brothers and sisters faced in Pergamum when Jesus wrote that letter … and if we are not careful, we are going to lose our sense of who we are … and our church …and the Church with a capital “C” … will become a forgotten by-word unless we pray and ask the Lord to keep us vigilant … unless we pray and ask the Lord to give us courage … unless we pray and ask the Lord to help us understand that we are not Satan’s church … we are not the world’s church … but that we are His people and His Church alone, amen?
Are we clinging to our faith in Jesus and His word as firmly and as stubbornly as the Christians in Pergamum did or are we guilty of trying to live a compromised life with one foot in the world and one foot in the church? Do you know His pet name for you? Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit … with a capital “S” … is saying to us and to our churches, amen? (Revelation 2:17).
Let us pray:
