29: World News & Prophecy – Revelation 2:8-13

[Darris McNeely] We are back at the book of Revelation. We're in chapter 2 of Revelation, and we're going through the messages to the seven churches. We're taking some time to go through these in detail, and that'll take—I don't think—time away from the other parts of the book of Revelation.

But I think it's good to get these messages down and understand them in their setting. And as I mentioned in the previous class, come to an understanding that is best for us in our time—2025. And in the future, anyone watching these, as we look back and look at the message of Revelation—particularly these seven congregational messages—what is it we need to learn today and apply to our lives? And there's a great deal for us to look at.

You know, as we're talking here this morning, we are still watching the unfolding of this great large tragedy in Southern California, in Los Angeles right now, with these wildfires that have devastated tens of thousands of homes and thousands and thousands of acres of land in one of the most desirable, beautiful parts of the United States of America.

And I used to live there, and of course the church operations used to be there at one time. We have roots there. Anyone who's been to Southern California knows the unique beauty of that place and why the millions of people have gone there. And to see it go up in smoke now is a true tragedy.

We have members of the church there scattered throughout the various areas—some of, at least two that I know, have lost their homes. Literally, they've gone up. Others have been displaced for a period of time, and I certainly hope no one else does—at least of our fellowship—but there have been many others.

And when we—as you look at that and try to figure out what does it mean and what should we draw from—but I think the best thing that can come to me is, since we are right now looking at these messages from Christ to His Church, there are specific things that Jesus wants the Church to know—His body, His spiritual body today. And that is that when it comes down to it, it is a very personal matter regarding our salvation and our relationship with Him.

And to these churches, He says, repent. He says over—He says, listen to what I'm saying. When He says, "Listen to what the Spirit says to the churches", essentially it is what Jesus Himself, the Head of the Church—which is His body, a spiritual organism—is saying to the Church. So hear what I'm saying to you. And to all of them it is to overcome. And the only ones that can overcome are living beings who are listening to the message.

So again I say, we have to take that to heart. When we look at a tragedy that is impacting people in California, and we look at what the Bible tells us to learn from any type of tragedy—time of suffering, whether it's personal or collective or even national, which the Bible has a lot to say about every one of those levels of suffering, tragedy, calamity that comes—there's something to learn.

And as we go through these messages, we will see that God's people at every age have had to face their world, their time, and overcome it, and to learn the lessons of righteousness and how to live righteously within the struggles of their particular period.

In the Roman world of the first century, where these messages were first given, it was quite dynamic and quite strong—a bit different than what we have to face today, as I've talked about with the emperor cults, the pagan lifestyle, and demands that that put upon an individual who lived in a place like Ephesus or Smyrna, as we'll see, and all seven of these locations.

This emperor worship—this cult of paganism that dominated every aspect of life—offers us lessons today in a world that may not look like that world with pagan temples all over the place, but we can see our pagan-derived institutions, holidays, customs, and anything that seeks to separate us from God and cause us to violate the commandments, the law of God, in loving God first and loving our fellow man.

That's what we have to overcome, and we have to see that in our own world and our time today. And that's where the benefit of these messages comes to us. So as we look at the message, as we look at certain specific aspects of each one, let's keep that in mind and make sure that we draw it down ultimately to: How then should we live today? What does that mean to me? And what do I need to draw from that?

So with that in mind, let's go to chapter 2. We've covered the message to the church at Ephesus. Let's now look at the second message to the second congregation, and that is the church in a place called Smyrna.

Smyrna is a location in modern Turkey today. It's right over here on the coast. I've been there many times. It is the modern city of Izmir, Turkey—I-Z-M-I-R. It's actually a very beautiful city. That's right on the Aegean. And it's a university center today, a very modern city, a very pleasant place to go and to be.

But Izmir today in Turkey is the site of ancient Smyrna. This picture that you have in front of you—or at least on the monitor, and those watching this later will be looking at—is a kind of computer-generated view of what the ancient city could have looked like, taken from the hills above the city. And you see the ocean out there. It was a large city of about 200,000 people at the time of the writing of this letter.

It was very, as I said, a beautiful city. It had hills around it. And it was a dynamic center again of emperor worship. As we are going to see when we go to Pergamos next, that too was a significant center. Ephesus was. A thing to understand about the first-century world—this late first-century period—is that these major cities, especially in Asia Minor, all wanted the designation to build a temple to the emperor, whether it was Augustus or Tiberius. And that was granted by the Roman Senate. If they said to Smyrna or to Pergamos, “You can build this temple in honor of the emperor,” that was a very important political, spiritual, and social designation granted by Rome to a place like this.

Smyrna was one of those centers. They had a temple to Augustus and other gods as well. But that was very important. That was a very important part of the civic mindset within Smyrna at that time. And so that created problems for a church member, because you had to go down and annually pay an offering—make an offering, which we could call a tax today—to the emperor.

And if you didn’t do that, then you could face certain penalties. And in time, as we’ll see in Pergamum, where we have an individual mentioned who actually was a martyr (that is, he was killed for his faith), you could lose your life if you didn’t do it. That’s how important it was. Now, there’s a lot of—you know, we may not have to forfeit our life in the same way today by that—at least not now. Time may come when that would be upon the church in a way unique to our period.

But in this time setting here, once a year, a citizen had to burn incense on an altar to the god Caesar and say, “Caesar is Lord” (Revelation 2:8). That’s essentially what he had to say. And so if he didn’t do it, then the possibility could be death. And so when we look at this message, keep that in the background.

Let’s go ahead and jump into the message here, chapter 2 and verse 8. It says: “To the angel of the church in Smyrna…” (Revelation 2:8). We mentioned that this word angelos can mean a literal divine being or, let’s say, a pastor or a personal human representative there. I lean toward the personal aspect of it, even though I know the role of God’s angelic beings in the care to the people of God.

“These things says the First and the Last…” Keep in mind, this is Jesus saying this. “These things says the First and the Last, who was dead and came to life” (Revelation 2:8). So He refers to His crucifixion and His resurrection. “I was dead and I came to life.” So He’s reminding the church, “I suffered. I died. You might as well. But there is the hope and the promise of eternal life.” And that is very central to the message here of not being afraid. The First and the Last—“I’m the living one.”

That’s a central part of this message: that Christ died and rose. He is the High Priest. And it lays out, in a sense, this is what I am, and this is what we’re all about. The path of a disciple is a very great adventure in life. God calls us to receive a crown of life—salvation—and a crown of victory. We’ve talked about that already as part of what the promises to the church are. But in the process, there are challenges. There’s overcoming that has to be done to achieve the blessings and the rewards of the calling to the life that God has given to us. And that’s a large takeaway here.

In verse 9, He says: “I know your works, tribulation, and poverty (but you are rich)” (Revelation 2:9). And so He says, “I know your works.” Good works. God’s aware of everything that goes on in the life of His church and the members of the church. Nothing escapes His attention. He’s vigilant. He’s diligent. The Bible shows us that in a very, very direct way. Our prayers are answered. He knows our needs. He knows our heart. And because of that, God is very patient. Christ is very patient and merciful—not judging harshly.

He promises us what we need. He says, “I know your works, your trials, and your poverty (but you’re rich)” (Revelation 2:9). One of the things to remember is that we don’t always get what we deserve in life and in our calling—but we do get what we need. And in our relationship with God, what we might deserve would be death because of sin. But God forgives us that sin because of His mercy through the sacrifice of Christ. And in that relationship with Him, we get what we need.

Understand that as we are in His hands. We need what we need to stay faithful—to be on the road to eternal life. We get what we need to keep our eyes on that crown of life as well. And we get mercy, grace—we get forgiveness. And sometimes we need that by the truckload. But we don’t get what we deserve—we get what we do need. And we need all of these things that I’ve mentioned. And for that, we have to be thankful, and we need to remember that.

So He’s saying this to this church, this congregation in Smyrna, who—through the message—we get an understanding that they’re having a… they have some unique challenges. He says in verse 9: “I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan” (Revelation 2:9). Now, that’s an interesting phrase. We’ll see that again in another message. He says, “the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews”… We take that literally—those that are ethnically Jewish. Remember, the church in the first century starts in and among the Jews—or Judaism. And as we are studying in the book of Acts, we see how that builds and develops. We see the problems that they had—the persecution from the Sanhedrin, the leaders in Jerusalem initially, John and Peter being brought before the magistrates, the Jewish magistrates there—being beaten on one occasion, imprisoned. We’ll see that with Paul as well—among them from the Jews.

That continued. There was an animosity even as church members came out of synagogues—Jewish places of worship—and came into the church. We have to realize that that didn’t just completely separate them from the synagogue. It’s not like today—my mother left the Methodist Church years and years ago to come to God’s Church. She stopped keeping Sunday, moved to Sabbath. She didn’t go back to the Methodist Church.

What you have to realize is in the first century, this wall of separation wasn't quite like what we might imagine it today. If you had been a part of a synagogue and you started listening to what Paul was teaching and you came into the church meeting with him in a separate location, you might still go back to the synagogue. I mean, we will see in Acts where Paul actually goes back into the temple and does a sacrifice later in his life. He didn't just completely remove himself from the temple, even though he came into the church—as we say—and had that road to Damascus experience. That wall of separation initially wasn't that well-defined. Paul could go into a synagogue and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and after a few weeks get kicked out.

But a member might go back occasionally. They had a good potluck. Or, you know, there was family still there. You know, these things happen. You know, it's a small town. And that did go on for a period of time. And they looked—I mean, they were keeping a Sabbath. It's not like they were going to church on Sunday. You just have to understand that this is part of the mixture of this first century.

But now we're at about 95 AD. We're many years into, several decades after the death of Christ. And Jesus says, “the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan” (Revelation 2:9). Now that's a Jewish terminology. That's pretty strong language. This is Christ—who was a Jew—saying it. So we can't and should not say that, well, this is anti-Semitic language. It's not. Christ is just saying exactly what is. And we always need to be careful that we don't adopt an anti-Semitic view today as we look at Judaism or Jews.

We understand their role within the plan of God. We also understand the church and our calling, which is different. But He says they are of a synagogue of Satan. They were Jews—but are not. What is taking place here—and this is what is being said—at this point in time, there's a separation occurring between the Jewish community and the Church of God. Scholars call this the parting of the ways. I have a whole book written about this—The Parting of the Ways—the parting between Judaism in this late first-century context and those of the Church of God. In other words, they were not meeting together, and there was beginning to be a wall built up there.

And we know that Jews began to betray Christians, and Christians began to take a bit more hard line toward the Jews. A lot of reasons for that. The fire at Rome back in the 50s during the time of the Emperor Nero had a part to play in that. Christians were killed at that time. Nero blamed the Christians. Well, 30, 40 years later now at this time, some of the Christians are blaming the Jews because at the time of Nero, the Jews kind of slipped out from any suspicion while church members suffered.

Now another generation of church members says, “Hey, wait a minute. We died for that. You guys got away with it,” or whatever. And so this also was part of what was creating some animosity. There are a lot of other factors there too. And so Christ is saying—making a statement here—in regard to what is taking place. There’s a story we’ll get to that takes place in the middle of the second century AD with a man named Polycarp that we’ll come to here to add another dimension to this.

Let’s go on to verse 10. Christ says, “Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer” (Revelation 2:10). So He’s saying, “You’re about to suffer.” There’s going to come some intensity of persecution. And indeed that did happen. And I’ll talk about that. He said, “Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10).

And so He’s saying here to the church that they are about to suffer. Satan is going to throw some of them into prison, and they will be tested and have a period of tribulation for ten days. What does this ten days mean? What is it referring to? There have been a lot of ideas about this.

There’s one idea that, for those that look a bit further beyond the time of the first century, Christians as a whole went through a very intense period of persecution in roughly a ten-year period between 303 AD and 313 AD. And that’s ten years. But this jumps forward more than 200 years. This is during the time of the emperor Diocletian. You might want to remember that name: Diocletian. This is different from Domitian, who is the emperor at the time of the writing of Revelation. A later emperor named Diocletian, in a kind of last gasp effort by Rome to squash Christianity, instituted a very severe persecution for about a ten-year period from 303 to 313. And it was empire-wide. It wasn’t just on the group in Smyrna. It’s well documented from history. It’s quite interesting. I was reading about it the other day. And what happens is, when he dies—313 and beyond—the next emperor is the great Constantine.

And Constantine is a Christian emperor. And that’s what leads to the Council of Nicaea, 325 AD, and that important event and date—which actually this year, 2025, is the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. You might want to hoist a flag. No, don’t hoist a flag on that one. That’s not worth doing. The Council of Nicaea was not good to us. But 1700 years ago—actually the tour group I work with on my tours—they are putting on a symposium in Turkey to commemorate the Nicene Council of 325 AD. And I’m going to write an article about that for the Beyond Today magazine. But anyway, that’s what happens afterward. So that’s one possibility, at least, to look at.

Another possibility is that it’s an intense time of persecution that came on the church at the time of the writing. That’s another possibility as well. If you look for a ten-day, there’s another ten-day period in the Bible, and I think it goes back to Daniel 1. Somebody correct me if I’m wrong on that, in terms of their fasting and their period of time there. But it’s a vague reference, and depending on your point of view, we might say something about that. But I think if we take a step back from it and look at it today, there can be bursts and spurts of persecution that occur upon God’s people at any point in time. And the ultimate injunction or command is: Be faithful until death. All right? What does that mean for you and me? Well, it means be faithful to death.

I hope those of you that have been baptized, and those of you that will eventually be baptized, have read the scripture from Luke about counting the cost to finish. Because at your young age—when I was your age when I got baptized—I said I wanted to live this way of life for the rest of my life. But when I was 19 or 20 years old, I didn’t know how long I was going to live.

Well, I’m a few years down the road now. I’m still faithful. I’ve been through a lot. As we say, a lot of water has gone under the bridge. None of us know, when we make that initial commitment to God, how long we’re going to have to live up to our commitment to be faithful until death.

I’ve lived a long life. I pray that all of you will live a long life as well. But if you’re going to be faithful, we commit to an entire life of that—regardless of how long it is or what happens. Things can happen in your life—a life that you didn’t plan on. Sickness. A child with a problem. First child is born—it’s a problem. What do you do? How do you deal with that? Death of a child. Death of a friend. Death of a parent—death prematurely.

I’ve been a pastor for a long time. I’ve worked with a lot of people. I’ve seen some people die after long lives. I’ve seen some people die at a very young age. I’ve seen some never even get their start. You know, we won’t go there on that one. Use your imagination. I’ve seen some who didn’t even get their start—and I buried those infants.

I had a member that I knew in my congregation before I ever went to Ambassador College. He came into the church, got baptized, zealous, good man, really nice guy—older man. Within a few weeks—almost after being baptized—he got a diagnosis of cancer and died within a year. I’ve thought about that man all my life, I think. You know, I used to really wonder about him. Why would God call him, and then he dies? Why didn’t He heal him?

Every one of our lives are in God’s hands. He knows when we are ready—and our faith—and we have to trust that God does do that. God’s timing is perfect in your life and in someone else’s. That’s the reality we have to come to. It’s a very key lesson, I think, out of this message to the church in Smyrna—that God knows us individually. The calling to salvation is exact, is precise, and He will finish the work that He’s begun. And what we have to go through, we have to go through. And we have to be faithful unto death. And He promises to give us a crown of life.

It’s a pretty straightforward message to the church at Smyrna. And of course, it then ends with a common theme: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death” (Revelation 2:11). In Revelation 20, we will have a study of that. I think we’ve already done that with the Doctrine on the Resurrections. But the book of Revelation talks about a second death—of those incorrigibly wicked who rise and experience the lake of fire, a final judgment. And that’s not where you want to be.

We want to listen so that we overcome and are not hurt by the reality of that second death. So that’s the important thing. That’s going to double back when we get to Revelation 20 and see that there.

I want to reference an actual historical matter a few years after Christ gives this message to John on Patmos. And it’s a historical account set in Smyrna that we know from history. It’s an inspiring story of a man named Polycarp who died for his faith. So we fast forward to about 156—little more than 50 years, maybe 60 years—from the time of the writing of Revelation. A different Roman emperor, Antoninus Pius, is there. There’s still persecution, but the church is growing and growing along. And in the city of Smyrna, we have a minister by the name of Polycarp.

So the spelling is up there on the screen—Polycarp—and he has a disciple. Polycarp, by the writings we have, was a disciple of the apostle John. He was around John in the late first century as a young man. That’s the traditional story, and there’s no reason to deny that. So Polycarp was a disciple of John.

Now we look at him—and again, you can look him up on the internet. There’s a lot written about him. And in terms of our view, we would look at him as a minister of the true Church of God. I would be very comfortable sitting in a congregation with Polycarp as my pastor. He kept the Sabbath. He kept the Holy Days.

The story that revolves around him—and this is the larger story that’s developing within the church in the 150s AD—is that the church at Rome has already left the Sabbath and they are now beginning to keep Easter. That’s the church way over here in Rome. But these churches back here in Asia Minor are still keeping the Holy Days and the Sabbath and a teaching that we are quite well aware of.

Asia Minor—these churches—they’re holding to the faith. Over in Rome, they’ve abandoned the Sabbath and now they’re bringing in Easter. Polycarp is over here; he’s kind of the leading pastor of these churches in Asia Minor. Polycarp goes to Rome at this period of time and he discusses the issue with the bishop of Rome, who is a man named Victor.

Victor. They agree to disagree. Victor wants to take the church toward Easter and shed all these Jewish ideas. That’s a common theme in church history at this time—and frankly, it came up again in the mid-1990s with the great apostasy of the Worldwide Church of God, when they, too, wanted to shed Jewishness: Jewish ideas like the Sabbath and the Holy Days—anything Old Testament. That shift led to the beginning of the United Church of God.

So these arguments—“Well, we’re not Jews,” or, “We don’t want to look like Jews”—are very, very old arguments. We’ve lived through it. I did. And this is what’s going on in the mid-second century with this man named Polycarp. Polycarp and Victor agree to disagree. So Polycarp comes back. I’m sure he had kind of a sad message to give to his church, but his congregations are holding on.

Meanwhile, there’s this time of persecution from the civil government, and Polycarp ends up being arrested. A mob in Smyrna rises up. They want to arrest these Christians—Polycarp is their leader. The story is quite dramatic. They hound him. He leaves town. They eventually find him hiding in the countryside in another house. They bring him back into the city, and Polycarp is brought before the Roman council.

He’s led into a very large stadium. Thousands of Smyrnians are there that day. The whole city is in an uproar, calling for the blood of these Christians. They’re seen as a pestilence, the source of all problems—get rid of them! Polycarp, as their leader, is brought before the council. They’re starting to excavate in Smyrna today to locate that stadium. Very interesting—I may see a little more of it on this particular trip.

Before the Roman council, they say, essentially, “Look, deny your faith. Curse Christ.” And Polycarp responds: “How can I do that? I have served Him for more than 50, 60 years. He has never denied me. He has never done me wrong. How can I deny the One who has saved me?”

And so—they kill him.

The story says they tried to burn him, but the fire didn’t take. So they ran a sword through him. Sometimes stories of martyrs can get a little fantastic, but the ultimate fact remains: he did die. And it’s a well-known, well-documented story.

This particular controversy is called the Quartodeciman Controversy in church history. Quartodeciman is a Latin term—it refers to the controversy over the 14th-day Passover. Polycarp was holding to the 14th day, while the Church of Rome and others wanted to abandon it and replace it with Easter. That’s a whole story in itself—the calculation of Easter and how it diverged from the biblical calendar. But in history, this is known as the Quartodeciman Controversy, or the 14th-day controversy. That’s what the name literally means.

Twenty years later, Polycarp’s successor—a man named Polycrates (or Polycrates, depending on your movie knowledge or pronunciation preferences)—had to contend with a different bishop of Rome. Polycrates was also a disciple of John and continued to hold fast to the original faith. We have a statement from him, which I won’t take the time to read here, but it’s a beautiful and powerful defense of the truth. The churches in Asia Minor held on to much of the truth for a long period of time—even while others were shedding it.

This is what’s causing the persecution at this time. And this story of Polycarp is set within the same generation as the message Christ gave to the church in Smyrna. It’s one of those fascinating historical connections.

So we’ll leave that there—that’s the message to the church at Smyrna.

Now we’ll go ahead and move into the next message, to the church at Pergamos. This will take a little more time as well, and we’ll probably divide this over this class and into the next, because there’s a lot to say here about Pergamos and its setting.

If you’re looking at the pictures, you’ll see that. And for those watching this later, it’ll be on the screen and hopefully left up for a bit. This is the city of Pergamos as it looks today. You’ll see the ruins of temples and a large amphitheater—that wide structure to the right. That amphitheater is quite dramatic, carved into the hillside where the civic and religious center of Pergamos stood at the time this message was written. I’ve been there a couple of times. We’ll be taking a group back there in April.

It's a fascinating place, and I'll tell you why as we get into the message and the story here of Pergamos. And I warn you, we're going to kind of get back into the Seleucid period of the book of Daniel and that Greek Empire period, because this was part of the Greek Empire that came after the time of Alexander the Great. It was a significant city at that point. And what Jesus says to this church has echoes into our time in a very dramatic way.

So let's go to it here in verse 12: “To the angel of the church in Pergamos write, ‘These things says He who has the sharp two-edged sword’” (Revelation 2:12).

Wow—a sharp two-edged sword. Now we're getting serious here. We have to turn back to Revelation 1, where Christ is presented as He “who has the sharp two-edged sword” (Revelation 1:16).

This tells us something about the relationship of Jesus with the Roman Emperor. Now again, keep in mind what Pergamos was—just like Smyrna and Ephesus, it too had a temple to Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire, and to other Roman Emperors. These temples were littered across the hillside. And they had one particular altar that was even more dramatic—we’ll talk about that. But the sign of the Roman Emperor was a sword.

A Roman short sword is well known from history. And when Jesus says He has a sharp two-edged sword, He's not talking about a Roman sword. He’s referring to a different kind of sword—one with a two-foot handle and a three-foot blade. Quite different. It has a curved blade and is longer than the traditional Roman sword. A Roman emperor’s sword was shorter, and the infantry also used short swords to thrust from behind a large shield that covered most of their body.

The difference between the Roman sword and the sword Christ references here—based on the Greek term—is that Christ’s sword is bigger. It’s big enough that, when properly used with two hands, it could cut through a Roman shield—leaving the soldier, or in this metaphor, the emperor, defenseless.

All right. This is a Chicago sword. Okay? This is a Chicago sword.

You have to know the particular movie quote to understand that one. But, as Sean Connery said in The Untouchables, “You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.” Christ is not bringing a penknife. He’s not bringing just any knife. He’s bringing a bigger sword than the emperor’s sword. That’s the point of the imagery here.

If you were sitting in the church in Pergamos and hearing this letter read to you—wow! Christ has a bigger, different sword than what the emperor is portrayed as having. That would have been incredibly impactful.

And it goes on: just like He said to the church at Smyrna, “I know your works, and where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is” (Revelation 2:13). Satan’s throne. That’s an important distinction right there. The throne of Satan.

What’s He talking about? What would you think about if you were hearing this? That’s the position you want to put yourself in. "You hold fast to My name, the only name under heaven by which we are saved, the name of Jesus Christ, the name of God and the family of God, [and] did not deny My faith even in the days in which Antipas was My faithful martyr, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells” (Revelation 2:13).

Now here’s a bit more information. This is the only reference in Revelation to a martyr by name—Antipas. Who was he? We don’t know. How did he die? We don’t know. There’s a wonderful book I would recommend if you want to get into the background of this. It’s one of these fictional novels based on the factual story—Letters from Pergamum. Letters from Pergamum. I have a copy of it on my Kindle. It builds a story around Antipas—who he might have been, and how and why—certainly how he might have died, but the why is pretty certain: he likely would not bend the knee to the emperor.

Some of the stories have him being put into an iron-type calf—a large iron calf, stuffed into the stomach cavity of this iron monster—and a fire built under it until the iron heated, and he roasted alive inside the iron calf. That’s one of the legendary stories. We don’t know—we’re not told that—but it’s one from tradition. But he was faithful, and he was killed where Satan dwells.

All right, so we have two references to Satan’s throne and where Satan lives. Pergamum! Boy, wouldn’t that be great if you’re having that letter read to you on the Sabbath? “You live where Satan lives.” You live—Christ is saying—Satan’s your neighbor. What’s He saying? What would they take away from that? That’s a great part of the story here.

Now again, Pergamos was—I've shown you the picture—sitting on this big mountain, with many, many temples. There was a huge library there. It rivaled the library at Alexandria that I’ve talked about. In Pergamos, they developed a writing material called vellum, which is basically calf skin that is treated, stretched, and becomes like paper. This is different from parchment. Down in Egypt, they had developed parchment from reeds—taken, dried, beaten together, and worked into a sheet of paper on which you would write.

What happened was, because of the rivalry between the two libraries—the one at Pergamum and the one at Alexandria—the Egyptians either put too high a tariff on their parchment or they just wouldn’t ship any more to Pergamum. And so they had to come up with something else. Pergamum developed vellum. Just a little bit of a side note to the other parts of history here. But it was a center of a powerful state.

I’ll tell you this, and we’ll end with it because it’ll help set up what we’re going to talk about. Pergamum’s right here. Now, we know from our studies of Daniel that this was all part of the Greek Empire after the death of Alexander. And of course, we studied the Seleucid part of that—over here, Antioch, Antiochus Epiphanes, and the story of Daniel 11. We went through all of that in detail.

As kind of an attachment to that—even though not always part of the Seleucid Empire—they were still all Greek, and they were still all pagan. There was a lot going on here. And what happens in Pergamum is a very interesting story. I’ve kind of been fascinated by it for all these reasons.

In Pergamum, very early in the first century BC, its last king dies—a guy named Attalus. Attalus dies and leaves his empire—his kingdom—to the Romans. Not to his children. Not to his nephews. He wills his empire to Rome.

This is early first century BC. Rome’s not quite an empire yet, but they’re like Pac-Man, gobbling up everything coming west to east. And when this is given to them—man, this is opening up the casino. This is pulling the right slot machine and the coins just pouring out.

Because this is a very, very rich, wealthy area. Now the Romans have control of it. And it sets off a bonanza—an explosion of capitalism and exploitation. Rome moves in—which is like inviting the wolf into the chicken coop. It gives them a toehold over here.

This, in essence, is how Rome—that Roman Empire—comes over here, takes over the area of the king of the North, and becomes the king of the North, as we’ve told that story in the book of Daniel. And then it just continues to move eastward, taking over here. So Rome is given Pergamum.

Now keep that in mind—because what are we studying in Daniel and Revelation? We’re studying what begins at Babylon. And this beast—this power the Bible calls a beast—goes from Babylon to Persia, to Greece, to Rome. We talk about the revivals of the Roman Empire down through time.

And now, as we’re looking historically, we see this beast power—huh—given the city of Pergamum.

And Christ says, “That’s where Satan lives. That’s where Satan has a throne” (Revelation 2:13).

Next class, we’ll talk a little bit more about what that is—was and is—and what it means to the story of Pergamum when we pick it up. So we’ll do that next time.