Pergamum: The Church at Satan’s Throne

As we continue our sermon series looking at the seven sermons to the churches of Revelation, Jesus’ word to the church at Pergamum stands out as one in which there’s a lot of information packed into a few verses. Understanding some of the context will be helpful as you prepare for this week’s message.

Pergamum, like many Roman-era cities in Asia Minor, was a city centered around a steep hill that was visible from miles away. That hill or “acropolis” (literally a “high city”) was the center of pagan worship and Pergamum, as the capitol of the Roman province, boasted some impressive temples and shrines to the Roman gods Athena, Zeus, Dionysius, Asclepius, Hera, Demeter, and Persephone. But it was also the first place in Asia Minor where the cult of the Emperor was also celebrated religiously, with Augustus authorizing the first temple to be built there in 29 BC to honor his deified great-uncle and adoptive father Julius Caesar. Worship of the gods and the Emperor was thus conjoined in Pergamum, and since it was the center of the province’s civil and religious life, Jesus refers to it in Revelation 2:13 as the place “where Satan’s throne is.”

To put it another way, Pergamum represented the worst possible place for Christians to live and yet they were holding fast to the faith despite persecution. Jesus singles out a particular martyr named Antipas who was “killed among you where Satan lives.” Like Polycarp in Smyrna a few decades later, Antipas’ end would have been well-known in the region and tradition says that his execution was carried out by the hideous torture of the “brazen bull.” A life-sized bronze model of a bull was cast with a hollow interior, just large enough to fit a man inside. Once the victim was confined inside the bull, a fire was lit under it that cooked the victim alive while his screams emanated through a series of tubes through the bull’s mouth, making it sound like the bull itself was bellowing. It’s hard to imagine that kind of imaginative and sadistic cruelty, but it was no doubt a product of living under the shadow of Satan’s throne.

You can imagine, then, that it was tempting for the Christians in Pergamum to give in a little after having seen their brother in Christ roasted to death in the arena. Indeed, some in the church were calling for a kind of compromise which Jesus sees as a more subtle move of Satan himself–the compromise of eating food sacrificed to idols and giving in on sexual immorality (those two things are always conflated together in the New Testament). If torture and martyrdom wouldn’t get these Christians to recant and get with the program, Satan had other more insidious means.

Jesus identifies this Satanic approach by bringing up the Old Testament story of Balaam, which you can read about in Numbers 22-24. I encourage you to read that story before coming to worship this week. It’s essential to understanding what Jesus is saying to the church at Pergamum. Suffice it say, Jesus recognizes that the enemy is changing tactics in Pergamum, and the church needs to be ready. Otherwise, Jesus will bring judgment with the sword that comes from his mouth.

There’s a lot to unpack in this sermon and we’ll take some time to walk through it on Sunday. What strikes me most as I prepare to preach, however, is that the Christians in Pergamum, like their brothers and sisters in Smyrna, were living in dangerous times and in a city where the pagan worldview was everywhere and diametrically opposed to all the church believed. The cultural pressure must have been immense. You could argue that we experience the same kind of pressure today–everywhere the gods of this age and even the worship of politics and power have enabled Satan to gain a foothold in the church in subtle, culturally-acceptable ways. Jesus’ call to “repent” is a call to literally change our minds and galvanize them to recognize and resist the devil’s schemes.

We’ll talk more this Sunday about how we can recognize the enemy’s lies and live faithfully even under the shadow of Satan’s throne. I encourage you to bring your Bible and be prepared to jot down some notes on this important text. See you then!

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