Message to the Churches - Smyrna & Pergamos

Today we begin part two of a series of sermons that I'm going to be giving on the messages to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3. It is very important that we understand these messages because we do understand that these seven churches actually represent seven different time eras that stretch out from the first century to the return of Jesus Christ. But to truly understand the eras, or to truly understand the attitudes that would be the dominant attitudes throughout seven different time periods of the church, we first have to go back and we have to look at what were those actual congregations like. Because each one of these congregations formed differently and each one had its own set of problems and its strengths and weaknesses. They have various things that happened to them that was different. Just like throughout history, whenever you look at the church of God throughout its history and the people that were truly following, you know, had the testimony of Jesus Christ and kept the commandments, as Revelation says, those people have gone through extremely different, different kinds of experiences. When we get to Thyatira, and then we look at that in terms of, the Thyatira also represented a time period in which the church, in terms of how we know it almost didn't even exist. Almost didn't even exist because of what had happened to it during the time from, you know, the 300s or so AD up until the 1500s and 1600s. And so when we go back and we look at these congregations and we see that we are told that everybody, everybody is supposed to listen to the message to the churches.

Not just the last couple churches, but all the churches. Because we also realize that any given time, any human being can have one of these attitudes. At any given time in history, you have congregations with these kinds of attitudes. In fact, at any given time in history, you could probably go to three or four or five or six or seven different congregations of the church of God and find all seven of these churches existing in one form or another at any given time.

And so it is very important that we personally understand the message to these seven churches.

The message to the Ephesus, I think, had a lot of power for us because of what they went through. Ephesus and Laodicea, as I said before, are the two that we have the most information about internally in the scripture. And Ephesus, of course, here we have a church that has a long history. It was started by the Apostle Paul. It started with 12 men, expanded out into a city of 300,000, where it had such an impact in preaching the gospel that the whole city, in fact, this is the whole region.

In one place it says they've affected all of Asia, which would be modern Turkey. In the Roman sense, Asia was what we call Asia Minor today, Turkey in that area. And this impact they had was enormous. They also had a problem where false teachers came in, and they went through a point and time where they had to fight heresy.

And, of course, when we got to Revelation 2, we find out that 40 years later they had combated that heresy. We went through a little bit of overview of the book of Ephesians and of 1 Timothy, because Ephesians was written to the church in Ephesus by Paul, and 1 Timothy is written to Timothy to stay in Ephesus and fix the problems. So here we have two entire books of the Bible that are basically dedicated to that group of people and what they were going through.

So if you read Ephesians, read 1 Timothy, you really get an understanding of what they were going through in the 60s, the 50s and 60s AD. By the 90s AD, they had survived. They had the right doctrines, but they had lost their love. He accuses them of losing their love and says that they're about to lose their lampstand. In other words, they're about to no longer be a church of God, and yet they had the right doctrines. But they were about to lose who they were as the church of God because they lost their love.

Now the next two churches that we're going to go through today, there isn't near as much information. And to tell you the truth, we may not identify as much as we can. I identify a lot with Ephesians. I understand what happened in that church. You have this 40-year history. You have probably three and four generations of people in the congregation there. You have a much larger congregation than what would be normal. Most congregations weren't that big back then in that first century and what they experienced and what they went through.

But if we look at the next church in the list, let's go to Revelation 2. We find another church that's not very far away, not very far away from Ephesus at all, but they have a totally different experience than the Ephesian church. The Ephesian church, there's nothing that says they went through persecution. As I had shown, it was a very wealthy and multicultural place. There was lots of entertainment. There was lots of wealth. You know, Ephesus was a good place to live. We also know that, according to the bits and pieces of history we have, that that's where John ended up.

The Apostle John ended up after he got off of Patmos out of prison, and that's where he spent the last years of his life. So they were founded by the Apostle Paul, and the last pastor they had in terms of the early church was the Apostle John. Interesting church in their history. And according to the legend, John died there, was buried, actually, in Ephesus. At least that's what the second century writers all agree, that John died there, and he was buried there.

Now, the next two churches we're going to look at had no experience like that. We don't know exactly how they were founded, for the most part. We just know a little bit about what they were like then, but in doing so we get some insight into who they were, what happened to them, and why they are both, they receive, you know, in some cases, a condemnation from God, in other cases they receive, where God actually tells them they did well. Let's look at Revelation 2, verse 8.

And to the angel of the church of Smyrna, write, These things says the first and the last, who was dead and came to life.

I know your works tribulation of poverty, but you are rich, and though the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are of a synagogue of Satan, do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, that you will have tribulation ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. He was an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death.

Here's a group of people that he actually says nothing negative against them spiritually. In fact, he says you are rich. He says you are rich spiritually. This is a special group of people, one of only two churches which do not receive an order to repent because there was something seriously wrong in their spiritual state. But this group of people had a totally different experience than the people in Ephesus. These people were persecuted, and these people were in poverty. These people weren't in spiritual poverty because as you are rich, obviously he's making a, you are in poverty but you are rich, means that they are in a state of physical poverty, but in a state of spiritual richness. Smyrna is another, it was another port city like Ephesus.

It is said, you know, the writers of the age explain or describe it as being a beautiful city. It was a place of culture. It was a place of music and theater. It was a very old city. And it's very interesting about Smyrna because Pergamos and Smyrna, we're going to find, they have two similar things in their culture. There's a much more openness in Ephesus, you know, sort of a multicultural place. But way back in 195 BC, okay, so that's almost 300 years before John writes this, Smyrna was already a major city, and they saw that Rome was beginning to become a rising power. And so what they did way back in 195 BC, before Rome was an empire, long before Rome was an empire, they set up a temple to worship Rome.

So when the Romans showed up, there was a Roman city waiting for them. You know, they saw where the wind was blowing generations before it happened. And so they were basically, you know, we're a Roman city. And so they were very readily brought into the Roman Empire.

And in fact, it's interesting that when you have to really understand emperor worship, and maybe someday I'll go through and show how important that was in affecting the first century church. But remember Julius Caesar was the first emperor, but he didn't last very long. After two years, some senators killed him because they realized he was actually going to destroy the Republic. They had a Republic in which they had a Senate that voted. And this Senate, then there was a certain amount of freedom because of the Senate that voted. And they kept the king, or the person who was in charge, they kept him from having total power. Julius Caesar took that power to himself, so they killed him. Well, his nephew, Octavian, who became known as Augustus, ended up, you know, that there was a civil war. We won't go into all that. There was a big civil war. Mark Anthony and him squared off. And if you've seen the movie where Cleopatra and Mark Anthony killed themselves, which actually happened, it's interesting that Cleopatra was not Egyptian. Cleopatra was Greek. The Greeks had ruled Egypt for hundreds of years. But anyways, Octavian shows up back in Rome. He's now the first emperor. And he slowly, over a course of 20 years, consolidates power. By the time he has it, the Senate can't stop him. But during that time period, he changes his name from Octavian to Augustus. Augustus means revered one, worshiped one. Now, the reason he did that was because Halley's comet, during his reign... Now, remember when Halley's comet came through a number of years ago, and you can see it in the sky every night for a number of nights? Halley's comet came through at that time period. And what he told everybody, and of course, since they were all superstitious and all believed in astrology, that was the spirit of Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar had taken his place among the gods. And since he was his nephew and heir apparent, that made him the Son of God. One of the reasons, by the way, that the Christians were persecuted so much is because there can only be one Son of God on earth. There couldn't be two. And the fact that their Son of God was greater than the Christian Son of God was they had killed him. Right? They killed the Christian Son of God. The Romans had killed him. And they, the Emperor, had the Son of God. The Emperor then, from that point on, became known as the Son of God. And all over the empire, there were temples built to the Son of God.

The Roman Emperor. He was part God, part man. He was a human being who was both human and divine. Sounds sort of similar? You're talking about creating the perfect counterfeit at the right time. Jesus was born during the reign of Augustus. The real Son of God shows up when this Emperor declares himself the Son of God. Now, Smyrna was a center, then, of Emperor worship. Absolute center of Emperor worship. Wherever you find Emperor worship as an intricate part of the culture. Now, it was part of the whole Roman culture. But, you know, you'd go to some cities and it'd be like, okay, we get a temple to the Emperor. Okay, we better go sacrifice or the Romans will get upset. You know, but in other words, it wasn't really a heartfelt religious movement. But in Smyrna and Pergamos, it was. In fact, Tiberius in 23, he was the one who succeeded Augustus, actually went and helped build a huge temple, another temple in Smyrna, dedicated to the Emperor, where you would go and you would sacrifice to him.

And so, the culture of this city is you either are part of the government, and the government is also part of a worship system. And if you're not part of that, you're really a nobody.

And so, these people live in a very difficult time, in a very difficult place. And they are told that there's three things about their church that God says is, Christ writes here and says it's, or inspires John to write, he says that is good about them. Their works, their works are good, but they have tribulation and persecution. And he even tells them, you're about to go into a worse persecution where some of you are going to go to prison. And then it says, you have poverty. It's interesting, the Greek word there means complete destitution. They are completely destitute.

So, you have a church that's in absolute physical poverty, something we can't even hardly associate with. And yet, we've seen churches of God all over the world sometimes in parts of Asia or Africa, Central and South America, that live in absolute poverty, destitution. These people live that way.

But the one thing they really stood up against was the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, or are of a synagogue of Satan. Now, there's two ways to look at this, or a number of ways to look at it, probably the thing that makes the most sense, is there was within Smyrna a group of people who claimed to be Christian but weren't. It would make sense because the whole Gnostic movement was beginning to really take movement at this point. And so what you have is in Smyrna, unlike Ephesus, where you have one church that's always dealing with problems of heresy but overcomes that and becomes strong but loses their love, in Smyrna, in the city itself, you have two churches. One, a poverty-stricken group of people trying to obey God, and another that claims to be Christian but is not. It's one of the few places in the New Testament where we find two churches in the same city, and they're struggling. Now, once again, this is a whole different experience than what we're used to in terms of what Smyrna went through, and yet we need to know about these people because there's a message for us today. Romans chapter 2. Let's go to Romans chapter 2. Paul talks about Romans 2.25. He talks about how in the church, you know, there are physical Jews, physical Israelites, but he says there's also what we would call spiritual Jews, spiritual Israelites, the ones who are the called out of God, and their actual nationality or ethnic background means nothing. He says in verse 25, for circumcision is deified profitable if you keep the law, but if you are a breaker of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. Therefore, if uncircumcision man keeps the righteous requirements of the law, well, not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision. So you have a Gentile who's not circumcised keeping the righteous requirements of the law. They're doing what the moral law requires, but they're not keeping this specific ritual. He says as far as God's concerned, circumcision doesn't mean anything. And well, not to physically uncircumcise if he fulfills the law, judge you who even with your written code or the letter of the law. That can be translated with the letter of the law and circumcision or a transgressor of the law. For he is not a Jew who has won outwardly, nor with circumcision that was his outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who has won inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart and the spirit and not of the letter whose praise is not from men but from God. So here Paul was dealing with a situation in the Roman church where he was telling them, look, we have to understand we had stopped looking at this in this way and the part of you know there's there's Jew and there's Gentile. We have to realize that God is creating a new people of people of those who keep the righteous requirements of the law and therefore they're circumcised in the heart. And physical circumcision no longer means anything. So if we go back then to, of course, revelation that we can see that the what they're dealing with is somehow a church that claims to be Jews. They claim to be and maybe they were claimed to be physical Jews. I don't know. But somehow they were claiming to be Christians. But they were actually the synagogue of Satan.

So Smyrna, the people there, had a very difficult time in their history and that they had gone under a situation, gone through a situation where this other church was there and basically persecuting them and claiming that they were the true Christians.

You're going to find, though, interesting in history, of course, there were Christians or people who claimed to be Christians who killed and tortured people who were actually the true Christians. So we get into the the the prophetic part of this. This happened all throughout history. Now there's a lot of reasons, and I've mentioned these before, but I'll just go ahead and mention them again. There's a lot of reasons that first century Christians were were persecuted.

And some of them were bizarre. And you have to realize persecution isn't always because, oh, you go to church on Saturday, you're a bad person. Most persecution comes on people, violent persecution is based on a lie. I mean, the average person really doesn't care if you go to church on Saturday, right? But what if you were a cannibal? That's right. You get together once a year and you eat your Messiah and you drink his blood. And they thought that. The Roman there were people in the Roman society who thought that they were cannibals. Well, of course you would persecute cannibals. They destroyed families. Now, it's interesting. Even Tacitus, one of the Roman historians, brings this out. He says they're the most despicable, despicable people, these Christians, because the one thing they do is destroy families and they destroy patriotism. Because once they become a Christian, they're no longer loyal to the Roman Empire. And if their families stay pagan, they won't go to the pagan temples with them. So they break off family relationships. And they were really accused of being unpatriotic because they no longer had a loyalty to the Roman Empire. And they were accused of destroying families. What good church would destroy families? No, emperor worship didn't destroy families. Worshiping of Aphrodite or Apollo or worshiping Zeus didn't destroy families. How come these Christians have to destroy families? They won't keep Christmas with them anymore, to put in a modern tense. They're the destroyers of families. That was one of the accusations brought against them. Of course, atheism, I mean, they denied all the gods. Well, if you deny all the gods, you're an atheist. They were always accused of political rebellion because they believed in another son of God. And what was this son of God going to do? Come to the earth and set up God's kingdom on this earth? Well, there was only one kingdom. That was the Roman Empire. Everybody else was wrong. And so they were seen very much as political threats to the empire. They were also called pyromaniacs, right? Because they believed that the earth would be destroyed by fire. So they were also accused of being pyromaniacs. Let's go back to Revelation chapter 2.

So even though in some ways we may not be able to relate as much to this group of people as to some of the others, we find a group of people, our brothers and sisters that lived 2,000 years ago, and what they were going through. Poverty, persecution, and he doesn't say, I will bring you out of the poverty or I will not ever let you be persecuted. They went through that.

Now you have to put yourself sometimes in maybe in Pergamos or in Smyrta, this beautiful city, and then you go into the slums of this beautiful city, and that's where you find the Christians meeting in someone's house. And they're bringing each other food because, you know, half up or out of work, and they have their children, and they're all upset because one of their church members was arrested for being a Christian and thrown in prison that week, and they may never get out.

And Roman prison was a place where you just went to die.

That's what these people went through, and yet they were spiritually rich.

Spiritually rich. He says these are special people. These people haven't lost anything that God had given to them. So verse 11, he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches, what the Spirit says to the churches. We're going to listen and read and study all of these. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death. He who overcomes, he who endures, he who lets God work in him or her, and they endure, and they overcome the world. They overcome Satan through God, through God's Spirit, and obedience and faith. Then we come to the next church, the church of Pergamos. Sometimes you'll see it the name of the city is Pergamum on some atlases. Verse 12, to the angel of the church in Pergamos write, these things says he has the sharp two-edged sword. I know your works and where you dwell where Satan's throne is, and you hold fast to my name 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. But I have a few things against you because you have there who hold the doctrine of Balaam who taught Baloch to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual immorality. Thus you have those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which things I hate. Repent, or else I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. He who has an ear let him hear what the church says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat, and I will give him a white stone and on that stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it. It's interesting that Jesus says he's coming back to this church. This has led some to when you look through this to believe, wow, in a reality all seven of these churches exist. Now, there are types of people who are like all these types when Christ returns, even though there may be a dominant attitude in the churches. He comes to all of them with his sword. You read later in Revelation, that's how he describes Jesus Christ coming back at the end time.

Pergamos is an interesting city. It was not a great commercial city like Ephesus or Smyrna. What it was, and he says he talks here about the seat of Satan, Satan's throne where Satan's throne is, why would he say Satan's throne is in Pergamos? Well, Pergamos was the capital, the Roman capital of Asia. It's where the Roman government was for that whole area. Therefore, it was a seat of emperor worship as much as Smyrna was.

And so you have the same problem. You either worship the state, you either worship the state, or you would be persecuted by the state. Now, you and I haven't experienced that, because sometimes you worry that that's going to happen in this country in the future. I do.

That could happen in this country at some point.

You know, communism didn't have a particular god, but you basically had to worship the state. It was, in reality, a religion.

These people lived in a place where the state was a religion, a literal religion. And you went and you worshiped and you sacrificed every day to the emperor, because he was the son of God. And then he could bless you. And this is where the Roman government, the seat of the Roman government was for the whole area of Asia Minor.

And there was persecution. He even mentioned someone who was killed there. He mentions them by name, where one of the Christians were killed and others were persecuted. So this this group of people goes through limited persecution. Not the same as in Smyrna, but they go through limited persecution. They were famous for a number of things in Pergamos. One was their library. Their library, they wanted to make it rival the great library in Alexandria, Egypt. So they brought in books and scrolls from all over the world. They also had a temple to the great god of medicine. And so they were famous for their medicine. They were famous for their medical profession there. And of course, the Roman government was there. They had suffered persecution. But they also have people there who promote the doctrine of Balaam. Now that's very important, because now we have a specific doctrine we can deal with. The doctrine of Balaam. What is that? In fact, what's interesting is that we find in the 60s. Now remember, this is in the mid-90s. In the 60s A.D., we have two writers warning the church about the doctrine of Balaam. So the doctrine of Balaam had entered into the church in the 60s. Thirty-some years later, John's writing to this church and he says, you know what? That doctrine is now part of your church. So three decades it kept working in the church. Remember, the Ephesians rejected those false teachings. Smyrna rejected the false teachings. They never seemed to have any problem. There's no mention that Smyrna had ever had any problem with false teaching or heresy. It just didn't. But this church didn't resist them like the Ephesians did. And a number of false doctors were taught there, including the doctrine of Balaam. What is the doctrine of Balaam? We said specifically that Balaam taught the people, ancient Israel, and we'll have to go back to look at that, to eat things, sacrifice to idols, and commit sexual immorality. So we have two problems. One is the eating things offered to idols. Now, what this means is they took pagan practices and they mingled them with their Christian practices. They took pagan practices and they mingled them with their Christian practices. This is why we so vehemently stand against things like, you know, Valentine's Day is coming up, all Valentine's Day is a mixture of pagan practices brought under a quote-unquote Christian veneer. This is why we make such a big issue out of not keeping Easter. This is why we make such a big issue out of not keeping Christmas. Because we want to stand against that very type of false teaching. The people in this church did not. And so they were mixing these things together. And so in Pergamos, you would have gone into Pergamos and probably found, you know, the Passover being kept, but something else being kept also. You may have found that it's very interesting. At this time period, you have certain customs that are being absorbed into some of the Christian churches. And they would have been absorbing them in and very, very excited about it. But in mingling in those customs, something changed in their morality. And what happened in the Church of Pergamos was sexual immorality. Now, this doesn't mean that the elders or the pastor there was teaching sexual immorality. It just means that it was just sort of common. That adultery took place, you know, between members. And it was common. Now, they were told not to do it anymore, but, you know, it didn't stop. It meant that fornication was common. Sexual immorality was just a common thing that took place.

In the world around them, and Pergamos was like that. In the Roman world, sexual freedom was, you know, it was quite free. So it was quite... they were just like society around them. Divorce would have been quite common in their Church.

Where in other Churches, you know, it's an event that takes place when someone stumbles in sins, like in Corinth, but in this case, it was just common.

And it wasn't seen as all that bad. You know, it's just one of those things. Because, you know, there's a half dozen cases of that kind of stuff going on anytime, and they were quite sort of proud and complacent about that. So you have two problems. Mixing of paganism into their worship of God, which we know in 1 Corinthians, Paul says is the worship of demons. Remember, he said idolatry is the worship of demons. So they're mixing in the worship of demons into the worship of God, which means that for business purposes, maybe some of them decided to go ahead and sacrifice to the emperor because, you know, he was just a man anyways. He's really not a god, so it doesn't matter if I go sacrifice to the emperor. You see how you can start thinking how people would think if you put yourself in their shoes. Where in Smyrna, they wouldn't do it. And in Smyrna, they were persecuted for it. In Smyrna, they lived in poverty. You know, in Pergamos, sacrificing to the emperor. You know, if you do it once a year, then it's okay.

The Sabbath would have been compromised. Who knows? They may have lost the holy days. It's hard to tell. Churches lost the holy days into the second century. In fact, by 135, the majority of churches who called themselves Christians didn't even keep the Sabbath anymore. Within 40 years after this, the majority of the churches all around the world didn't even keep the Sabbath anymore because of things that were happening. And Pergamos was just headed down that route.

Now, not everybody in that church was that way. He says that. But many of them were. There were still a few faithful, still trying to hold on to God. They were still living their lives right. But the group was not going that direction.

Now, what was the doctrine of Balaam? That's back in Numbers 22 through 24. Let's go to Numbers 22.

Let's look at the doctrine of Balaam because this is very important, understanding the attitude of Balaam.

Balaam himself is not well, let's put it this way. Balaam is the typical pagan who believes in God, but also believes in other gods. Balaam is a new-ager, to put it in modern terms.

He worshiped God. He worshiped other gods. All paths lead to salvation. Balaam is the type of person Balaam is.

We find in Pergibus, in this doctrine of Balaam, something that's very common in our society today. So there is a message here for us. Balaam was a sorcerer, a prophet, and a worshiper of, you know, I'm okay, you're okay, everybody's okay. And he was looked upon and highly esteemed in society. He was highly esteemed in society because of his open ideas, his ability to worship everybody, worship everything.

And he seemed to have some supernatural powers from time to time. He was tapped into the spirit world. So he was highly looked up to. Numbers 22, verse 1.

Then the children of Israel moved and camped on the plains of Moab, and on the side of the Jordan across from Jericho. Now Baloch, the son of Zippor, and all Israel had done to the Amorites, or they'd seen all that Israel had done to the Amorites. And Moab was exceedingly afraid of the people because they were many, and Moab was sick with dread because of the children of Israel. So Moab said to the elders of Midian, Now this company will lick up everything around us as an ox, except the grass or the field. And Baloch, the son of Zippor, was king of the Moabites at that time. And he sent messengers to Balon, the son of Beor, at Pethor, that is near the river, in the land of the sons of his people, to call him saying, Look, a people has come from Egypt. See, they cover the face of the earth, and they are settling next to me. Therefore, please come at once. Curse these people for me, for they are too mighty for me. Perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them out of the land, for I know that he who blesses is blessed, and whom you curse is cursed. So this man had a reputation of bringing down curses, and they actually happened. Of bringing down blessings, and they actually happened. He was tapped into the spirit world. And Baloch says, I need that man here to curse these people, because there's no way my army is going to defeat that many people. And I'm going to stop that horde from just running over my land.

So the elders of Moab, verse 7, and the elders of Midian departed with the diviner's fee in their hand, and they came to Balem and spoke to him the words of Baloch. And he said to them, lodge here tonight, and I will bring back word to you as the Lord speaks to me. So the princes of Moab stayed with Balem. He said, well, let me go speak to the God of Israel and see what I'm supposed to do here. But keep your money right there. Stay overnight, have some food, and tomorrow we'll make a deal. Then God came to Balem and said, who are these men with you? Well, you know, when God asks you a question, it's rhetorical, but he answered anyways. And he says, look, a people has come out from Egypt, and they want me to curse them. Verse 12, and God said to Balem, you shall not go with them, you shall not curse the people, for they are blessed. So Balem rose in the morning and said, the princes of Baloch, go back to your land, for the Lord has refused to give me permission to go with you. The word Lord there is Yahweh. You know, he says, Yahweh, the God of Israel says, I can't do it. Sorry, can't do it. He won't let me. He talked to me. I want you to understand, God talked to Balem. He said, no, no, because he went and prayed. He said, I got to ask the Lord, Yahweh, I got to ask the God of Israel if he'll let me do this. You know, you don't want to get one of the gods mad at you. And the God of Israel comes to him and says, no, you can't do that. These are my people. You leave them alone.

Balem goes back and says, no, God of Israel won't let me do it. Can't do it.

So they go home. Verse 15, the Baloch again sent princes, more numerous, some more honorable than they. They came to Balem and said, please, you've got to curse these people.

And he says, no, I can't do it. He keeps going back to God and he keeps trying to find a way to do what he wants to do so he can make a prophet.

The doctrine of Balem is to compromise with God's way so you can get what you want.

The doctrine of Balem is to always find an attitude in which you will always find to get what you want and the will of God is not really a consideration in your life.

And so your will is what drives you.

And in doing so, there's two things that happen. One, you mix paganism in with your belief.

And two, sexual immorality becomes the norm. That's what happens to a person who goes down this route.

Well, you know the story. Balem figures out a way to sort of get around it. And he's riding along and his donkey starts talking to him.

He starts beating his donkey, you know. And the donkey says, don't you understand? There's an angel there that's going to kill you.

I don't know. I never trust a man that talks to his donkey anyways. But anyways. And there's an angel there. And then God lets him see the angel and he says, Balem, I told you not to do this. And it's like, but they're offering me a lot of money here.

Can't we just do it like a little curse? Just a little curse. You know, maybe they all get the flu or something. Can't we just at least do that? He had to find a way to go around what God wanted him to do so he could get what he wanted. That's the doctrine of Balem. It's a compromising spirit because you really don't care what God wants. You only care what you want and you're driven by that. And so he is inspired. They finally get him to give a prophecy. And Balem gets up, reads the story, it's fascinating, and he blesses Israel. He actually gives a prophecy about the Messiah. If you read through it, he talks about, there's a part in there where he's actually talking about the coming of Christ. See, here you have this new-ager standing up there talking about how Christ is going to come, and these are God's blessed people. Of course, about this point, Baloch's thinking, maybe I should just kill this guy. I bring him out here, and of course they won't give him any money.

And so they give up.

And you think, well, that's the end of the story, but it's not. Let's go to Numbers 25. Now Numbers 22, 23, and 24, three entire chapters are about Balem trying to figure out a way to sidestep God's commands, trying to find a way to get around what God wants so he could get what he wanted. So he could make a profit out of this. And it doesn't matter whether it's money. It's what we want. What will we do sometimes to get what we want instead of doing what God wants? Verse 1 of chapter 25. Because verse 25, at the end of chapter 24, is Balem finally just leaving, Baloch saying, God, get out of here. No matter what I offer you, no matter what I do, you come and keep blessing these people. I'm sorry, God, that's all you'll let me do.

Now Israel remained in Acacia Grove, and the people began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab. They invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods. The people ate and bowed down to their gods. And so Israel was joined to Baal, a peor, and the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel. So what happened to the Israelites? Same thing that happened to the church in Pergamos.

You have two events here, two things that happened, similarity. It's similar. You have people in Pergamos who decide, I want it my way. God has too many restrictions. I can't get ahead in this world, or I can't have what I want. I can't marry a pagan. I can't have this government office. I just can't make this business deal. Whatever it is. And so this doctrine of Balaam becomes, just throughout the church, this attitude, everybody's compromising with God's way so they can get what they want. And what is the result? The same thing had just happened here.

The doctrine of Balaam leads to compromising with paganism and sexual immorality.

And so the church of Pergamos is reliving numbers. They're reliving what Israel did. And that's what their church is becoming. Not everybody in it, but it's what the majority had become. Now what's interesting is how in the world did this come about? Israel's there camped before Moab, and after all this attempt to curse them, which never happens, never happens, never happens, and suddenly you find the Israelites just having mass orgies with the Moabites and worshiping their gods. How does that come about? I mean, you can't even imagine how that would happen. And of course, God brings a curse upon them, and many of them die.

And it's a terrible curse on what happened to Israel. But how it came about is very interesting. Let's go to Numbers 31. Numbers 31.

Numbers 31, verse 15.

Because now they go to war with Moab, and they decide, well, you know, we can kill the men, but we can't kill the women. And Moses says to them in verse 15, have you kept all the women alive? Well, yeah. You know, we sort of like them coming over to the camp.

Look, these women caused the children of Israel through the council of Balaam to trespass against the Lord in the incident of Pior, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord.

And you see, Balaam finally had to do what God told him to do. He had to bless them. And then he sat down with Baloch and the kings and princes of Midian and Moab, and he said, hey, I figured it out. You're going to... don't go fight them. Let's just send in caravans of wine and food and, you know, just take every beautiful woman in the country and let's go in and let's say we're here to have a party. Let's not fight. Let's have a party. And you can imagine if you're the Israelites and you're seeing these caravans approaching and these people come up and the men jump off the camels, they say, oh, my brothers, it's, you know, we want to live in peace with you. Praise Yahweh. Praise Yahweh. Here, you know, here's... we brought dates. We brought food. We brought some lambs to kill. We brought wine. And there's tens of thousands of Moabites coming in, and everybody's drinking and having a good time, and this party's going on for days, and then all the women are just saying, let's go into your tent. How did that happen? It happened. Balaam found a way to make his money. That's how it happened.

You think if God himself told you not to do something, you wouldn't do it. Of course, I don't know. God himself in this book tells us not to do lots of things. We still do it.

The doctrine of Balaam is a powerful force because it's the core of corrupt human nature, where we will try desperately to do what we want instead of seeking what you want, God.

You tell me what you want because I know what I want.

Pergamos, everybody did what they wanted.

Now, this is not the only place the doctrine of Balaam is mentioned. If we go back 30 years, the doctrine of Balaam was being spread throughout the churches all over the world. There was a spiritual decay happening in the churches all over the world, and it had to do with the Roman Empire was so wealthy. They lived in such a time of entertainment where you could have anything, you could own anything, you could make money. And this is why this does apply to us today. The people, the Christians, began to compromise and compromise and compromise and compromise, and the doctrine of Balaam was something that was spreading throughout the churches. Let's go to Jude. Jude is written in the mid-60s AD, the mid-60s AD.

Jude is one of the most scathing letters in the New Testament, and it's written to the churches at large. It's not written just to a specific church. Verse 1 says, Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, the brother of James, to whom you are called sanctified by God, or to those who are called sanctified by God and preserved in Jesus Christ. Mercy, peace, and lobby multiplied to you. Beloved, I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation. I found it necessary to write to you, exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago, who were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turned the grace of our God into lewdness and denied the only Lord God in our Lord Jesus Christ. Ludeness or licentiousness, lawlessness. So even in the 60s, they were beginning to have a problem in the church where people were being lawless. Actually, you go back in the 50s, Paul was dealing with that in writing to Rome. This lawlessness that was taking place. And he said, just because you think I teach grace, there's a point in Romans, he says, you think I'm teaching that you should sin? God forbid! Certainly not! He says, that's not what I'm saying!

But it was just a growing movement in the church. And when Jude writes, it's a huge problem where people just live their lives outside the rule of God's law. And they just compromise with everything. Honesty. They compromise with lying. They compromise with coveting. They compromise with adultery and sexual problems. They compromise with honoring their mother and father. They don't have a need to honor their mother and father anymore.

That's a compromise with the law of God. And it will destroy a person and destroy a family just as much as it's compromising with any of the laws of God. Hatred, which is the spirit of murder, they just kept compromising. Now, if you would have walked into Pergamos, you have to understand, if you would have walked into Pergamos, it wouldn't have felt a whole lot different than Ephesus. It would have felt different than Smyrna because it would have been a lot more wealthy.

But it really wouldn't have felt a whole lot different. Their services would have been basically the same. Many of their doctrines would have been the same.

And yet this compromising was taking place, and you would see it in ways that would make you very uncomfortable. Verse 5 says, I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. He compares what happened with Israel in verse 7, what happened with Sodom and Gomorrah, with the church. He says, I want you to think about what you're doing in the church. What were some of the problems that Jude's talking about? And I only bring this up because Jude here talks about the doctrine of Balaam. So what's happening that Jude's talking about, we can now move ahead and say, okay, this was part of the problem of Pergamos. This is part of what was happening there. I mean, it's not specific because he's talking to it in a general sense, but they both mention the same doctrine. So that means some of the same results would be happening in Pergamos.

Verse 8, likewise, also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries. Yet Michael, the archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, the Lord rebuke you. But they speak evil of whatever they do not know, and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they corrupt themselves. He had gotten to the place where people were just slandering and just uncontrolled. Woe to them, for they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the era of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Cora. So these particular people had three specific problems. Now, I don't know if all these problems applied to Pergamos, because he doesn't mention Cain or the rebellion of Cora. So I don't think you can extrapolate that out. But you can say, oh wow, the problem of the doctrine of the teaching of Balaam had already started here, and 30 years later there's a congregation that it's just the way they are. It's how they think. It's how they act. That's who they are.

And he says some very... if you go through the whole book of Jude, he says some very scathing things.

But it says they run greedily in the era of Balaam for profit. The doctrine of Balaam is basically a health and wealth gospel that really appeals to greed.

God wants you to be happy, therefore God doesn't expect you to actually do this.

God wants you to be happy, so he actually doesn't expect you to obey this.

And so that's what it is. It's a health and wealth gospel that literally does away with obedience to God's law. And it's driven by greed.

Interesting enough, here we have in the 60s in 2 Peter 2. 2 Peter chapter 2.

In verse 15. In... Peter's writing to churches at large.

So this problem is extent through many of churches at the time.

He's talking about problems in the church and issues that are going on in the churches at large at that time. And he says in verse 15, they are forsaken the right way and gone astray, following the way of Balaam, the son of Peor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness.

So once again, they're battling this in the 60s throughout the churches. Profit means more than Christianity. Having what I want in life means more than Christianity. And as they do, they begin to compromise with their worship. They begin to compromise with paganism. They begin to compromise and make a profit no matter what. And in that attitude, sexual immorality becomes rampant. It just becomes rampant.

So I find it fascinating that you have this church that's accused of this specific doctrine.

And yet, here we have 30 years earlier, the churches were being warned against this doctrine. They had a heresy, a false teaching. Now we're going to find in some of the other churches, you have different false teachings than this. But we can pinpoint what was the major false teaching in Pergamos. Remember, a heresy isn't just a misunderstanding. There isn't anybody in this room. I do not understand everything in the scripture. I don't understand everything God teaches. It's a constant learning process. A heresy is a choosing. It is a choice that is made to choose a self-willed opinion. That's what the word means. It means you choose a self-willed opinion. And what you have is a heresy in Pergamos as people choose to compromise with the law of God in order to make money or to get what they want.

And the sexual immorality is the result. Pergamos, it said, had accepted the heresy of the Nicolae Iatans, or the doctrine of the Nicolae Iatans, which I hate. Now remember, the Ephesians rejected that. Now it's very interesting, the study of the Nicolae Iatans. We don't know much about them. There's sort of this legend, and I can only tell you the legend. The legend is that there was a Nicolae which in the book of Acts is ordained a deacon, and that this man had gone out and started his own church, and that he taught everybody this radical grace in which basically the law is done away with.

Yet he was very aesthetic, fasted all the time, was very rigid in the way he lived, and yet told everybody else around him was just living in total licentiousness in his group. I don't know if that's true. That's what the second century historians say. Because by the second century you actually have a Gnostic group called the Nicolae Iatans. Now we're trying to say, okay, are these people? We don't know because these appeared decades later. But if they are, we do know what they taught. What they taught basically was paganism mixed with Christianity and total sexual immorality. So it seems to be the same group of people. But what you have here, that means in Revelation, what you have here is a movement with their own name. You have a competing church with the Church of God. You have a competing church who are people who are compromising with paganism and live sexually in a moral lifestyle. And saying, grace means you don't have to keep the law. It sounds a little familiar to you.

That's where this seems to have started, with this movement of the Nicolae Iatans. In Ephesus they saw it, rejected them, kicked them out, they were gone. In Pergamos, they accepted him in.

And the result was they followed the doctrine of Balaam. I've often wondered, what was it in Ephesus that caused them to reject this doctrine, or set of doctrines, and in Pergamos they didn't? Now some did, but not all. Why? Why did the majority not? It's hard to understand. I don't know. I wonder if it's because Paul and John had such an influence in Ephesus that they kept it from happening. I mean, when John writes this, he's the pastor, probably. Well, not when he wrote it, because he wrote it in Patmos, but when he got out, he went to Ephesus and he was the pastor.

And maybe it's because of the influence of those two men that it didn't happen there, but they didn't stop it. And so we go back to Revelation 2. Revelation 2 in verse 16. And he says to the church at Pergamos, Repent. He tells him, you must repent. You know, I believe that this doctrine, we truly need to go back and study repentance. Repentance isn't a one-time experience of life. Repentance is a way of life. It is a way of life.

And we need to go back, because these churches, which every message is for us today, over and over again, he says, Repent! You are the people of God, but you've gone someplace you should not go. You've developed in a way you should not develop.

I look at where we are today as a church, and I say, all the churches of God, just add them all up together, put them all together. And there are certain doctrines we have not developed.

And until we do, we're in trouble. We have never developed the doctrine of agape, have we? Not the way we're supposed to. I'll tell you one thing we've never studied in depth to really understand is the ministry of reconciliation. Paul says, I am an ambassador for the ministry of reconciliation, as if God is crying out through us for you to be reconciled to God and then to each other. There's a lot of doctrines we don't have to even scratch the surface. We know the resurrections. We know the millennium. We know baptism. We know that there is no trinity.

There's a wealth of knowledge we have, probably like no other Christians in history.

But there are entire subjects in the Bible we do not know.

We don't know them, and we need to learn them. We need to repent and continue to change. We don't have the problem of the Pergamos. Well, we do. We have to fight that doctrine of Balaam all the time because you and I live in such a wealthy society. The doctrine of Balaam, this message of the Pergamos, you and I really have to learn. You know, there are people that live in some parts of the world that never have to worry about that. They don't have enough to worry about the doctrine of Balaam. We do. We do.

So we have to fight this so that we don't become Pergamos.

Repent, or else I will come to you quickly.

They won't even be prepared when Christ returns. I will come to you quickly and we'll fight against them with the sword of my mouth. That's a frightening thing, isn't it?

Jesus Christ says to a church of His, "...repent, or I come quickly, and I will fight against you with the sword of my mouth." You go to the end of Revelation, and when all those armies gather against Christ, what's it say? He fights against Him with the sword of His mouth. He makes that same threat to a church of God.

Now we have to say, okay, well, that's them. Or, okay, prophetically, I understand that was a church error. But it's more than that. We have to ask, am I, do I have the attitude of the people of Pergamos? That's what we have to ask. Do I have that? Just like I said last time, we have to ask, am I like an Ephesian? I've stood up against the Heresies. I've lived my life right, but I have lost my love. It's just not there. My love to God, my love to neighbor is just... Are we like these people? He who has an ear, verse 17, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna to eat, and I will give him a white stone and on that stone a new name written when no one knows except him who receives. A relationship with God in his family.

Repent, he says, and I will give that to you.

Not everybody in Pergamos had fallen into those sins, but a majority had.

And therefore, God gives them a very, very strong warning. So we've gone through three messages now. A message to the Ephesians, the group who hated the doctrine of cheap grace and licentiousness, who stayed with the right doctrines and the right lifestyle and lost their love. And they were told to repent and do. We've looked at Smyrna, the church that had good works but had nothing but tribulation and poverty. The community suffered, but God said, you're rich.

And Pergamos, the church that endured persecution, severe persecution, it said, including the death of a member of their congregation. And then afterwards, compromise with paganism and with idolatry, with sexual immorality, and eventually, slid into letting grace be a license to sin. Each of these messages cry out across the centuries to every person, every person who has an ear to hear. And so, next week, I will be in Waco. But the following week, I will be here to continue through, as we go through Thyatira and Sardis. So please continue to remember to pray about the conference that God's going to do. Bless it that God will pour out His correction, pour out His love on what we need to be doing. And also pray that He will guide what happens. And then, of course, remember that at 2 o'clock, we will have the memorial service for Solvang right here in this facility.