03 Pergamum: The Odd Ones Out!

Copyright © 2019 by Michael A. Brown

Staying True Through Thick and Through Thin

To the angel of the church in Pergamum write:

“These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword.  I know where you live – where Satan has his throne.  Yet you remain true to my name.  You did not renounce your faith in me, even in the days of Antipas my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city – where Satan lives.

Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: You have people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality.  Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans.  Repent therefore!  Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna.  I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it.” (Rev. 2:12-17)

      CHRISTIANS (and I mean genuine ones) have always been the odd ones out.  It’s not because they believe in God.  Many other people do that.  And neither is it because they worship or pray to this God of theirs.  Other religious people pray to their gods as well, don’t they? It’s this: real Christians don’t conform.  They live differently.  They are the ones who won’t compromise their beliefs and values.  The ones who won’t deny this Jesus that they love.

      The Lord knows where we live (2:13).  He knows the immediate, daily context around us in which we endeavour to express and live out our Christian faith.  Pergamum (the modern city of Bergama in Turkey) was not an easy place to live as a Christian in the first century AD.  It was the capital of the Roman province of Asia and therefore a seat of the imperial government.  The first temple for state-sponsored emperor worship was built here in Pergamum.  The Roman authorities, of course, would have expected conformity with their edicts and laws, so believers here would have the felt the full force of any edicts against the ‘superstition’ of Christianity.

      Pergamum boasted a great library of literary works, so philosophical thinking, humanism and rationalism would have presented an intellectual challenge that Christians would have had to contend with.  The city also hosted the great temple of Zeus/Jupiter, the greatest of the gods.  The altar to Zeus/Jupiter in this temple is what is here referred to as Satan’s seat or throne (2:13).  Among the worship of many other Greek-Roman gods, the cult of Aesculapius, the god of healing, was strong in this city.

      Pergamum had also been the centre of the ancient Babylonian mystery cults.  When Babylon was defeated by Persia several centuries before, many of the practitioners of these local mystery cults had fled westwards and founded their new centre here in Pergamum, until this centre later moved on to Rome itself.

      So the pressure on these believers and this fledgling faith to conform or compromise would have been constantly present in some form or other, and the spiritual warfare going on around these believers, because of their profession of faith in Christ as Lord, would have been fierce.  This city was Satan’s own backyard (2:13)!

      It is the particular pressures and characteristic sins of the context in which we live that determine the parameters of the challenge of what it means to be and to represent Christ in daily life where we are.  Our faith and our kingdom values always have to be lived out in the particular context where we live: in our town, our home and our work-place, with the people we know, in the prevailing culture, and so on.

From persecution to enticement

      We respect and honour the martyrs of Christian history who did not renounce their faith in Christ.  They stayed true to their colours through thick and through thin.  They swam against the tide and would not compromise, even if it meant paying the ultimate price for their faith.  We look up to them and honour them, and secretly in our hearts many of us want to be like them.  Although we would not want to suffer as they did – nobody in their right mind would! – yet we want to have their kind of faith, the kind of deep grace and power that worked in their lives.  Something inside us wants what they had; we want to be heroes of the faith too!  We want to believe that if we were to go through some kind of suffering for our faith, then we too would be strong and stand for Christ, whatever the cost.  But… do we really want to be the odd ones out?  Are we prepared to stand and be counted, and to stand on our own if it comes to that?  To be known openly and publicly as a Christian when the chips are really down?

      As we saw in chapter 2, Satan tried to stamp out early Christianity by venting his hatred on believers and persecuting them openly and violently.  So localised persecutions broke out.  Many of us will have read the stories...  Antipas was a believer in Pergamum whom the local Roman authorities chose and tried to make an example of, evidently to warn others what might happen to them if they continued on in their Christian faith.  No doubt a few other local believers also suffered around the same time.  He was martyred by being cruelly roasted alive in public inside a bronze bull statue (2:13).  It is said that he died praying.

      Yet this strategy of open persecution didn’t work.  To their credit, even in the face of what happened to Antipas, the local believers wouldn’t deny that Jesus was Lord.  Through the deep grace of God, they stood for Christ when the real test came.  They remained true to his name, and they did not renounce their faith in him (2:13).  Those who truly love Jesus can accept to suffer for the sake of his name, but they can never deny that they love him, because they are one in spirit with him (1 Cor. 6:17).

      So Satan switched tactics and used enticement instead.  If the pressure of violent persecution didn’t work, then perhaps the subtlety of enticement might.  And tempting believers into sexual immorality is one of his oldest tricks.  If Satan cannot defeat the church from the outside, then he will try to deceive it and destroy it from within. Open persecution cannot ultimately destroy the faith.  It simply forces it to go underground where, because it cannot be seen and controlled, it survives and thrives.  Whereas the subtlety of seduction and moral compromise corrupts the church from within and, if this is not dealt with, renders its testimony hypocritical in the eyes of the world.  The willingness to compromise morally has defeated many a believer and wrecked many a church…

      When Balaam found that he could not curse the ancient Israelites, because they were under the blessing of God, he changed tactics.  He advised Balak to invite them to the worship of his god, Baal.  Free sexual practices were part of this worship, and it was this that ensnared the Israelites.  Some of them fell for it and it brought compromise into the camp of God’s people, until God dealt with it (Num. chs.22-25).

      This is similar to the tactic that Satan used in Pergamum (2:14). Syncretism, the mixing of one’s beliefs with those of another faith, is an easy way to overcome the uncomfortable feeling that being different brings.  It helps us to get along with other people and to feel accepted.  So some believers in Pergamum worshipped and sacrificed to the local Greek-Roman gods as well as worshipping God.  For some, this may have been a choice that was difficult not to make, as membership in their trade guild would have demanded worship of its patron deity.  However, the festivities connected with these gods had an openly sexual nature.  If enticement doesn’t work, then manipulation for the sake of earning a living certainly might…

      Whatever, the teaching of syncretism and the sexual immorality that came with it, was brought by some believers into the church, so compromising the purity and spiritual freedom of its inward life (2:14).  Notice also that what are described in the letter to the church in Ephesus as practices among the Nicolaitans (but which, happily, were kept out of the church there; cf. 2:6) are described here as being held to by some within the church in Pergamum (2:15).  So the practice of free sexual liaisons (including wife-swopping) was being advocated by some people within this church, and, because it was being advocated from within the church community rather than simply from outside, it would have been harder to counter and withstand.

Compromise: dancing to the world’s tune

      The more drowned in sexual immorality the society around us becomes, the more the church comes under pressure to change what it says it believes and to change its teachings on sex and sexuality, simply in order to conform and be ‘up-to-date,’ and not to stand out like a sore thumb in ‘irrelevance.’  A permissive, so-called ‘tolerant’ society is intolerant of the values of the true church and eventually persecutes it.  In its intolerance, it demands conformity with itself.

      And then, of course, if the church submits to this pressure, the surrounding society’s conscience is assuaged and any uncomfortable inward feelings of guilt and wrong-doing are weakened.  “Everybody does it and thinks it’s okay, even the Christians now, so it must be okay, mustn’t it?”  Society is affirmed in its wrong beliefs that people can do almost anything they want and that there is no need for moral boundaries.  And the church simply becomes a reflection of society with self-professed believers (and even leaders!) beginning to live and act like non-believers.  In fact, the church follows and imitates society, incorporating its changing cultural trends regardless of their effects on spiritual life.

      We make the mistake of thinking that, in order to be relevant to society, we have to go along with it and affirm (or even do) what it does.  Like people, like priests, bewailed the prophet (Hosea 4:9). The fact that we are all rushing headlong towards the precipice doesn’t seem to matter to anybody.  Because there’s safety and comfort in numbers, right?  So no-one raises the alarm.  If we are all tacitly agreed together that it’s ok, then we’ll be alright, won’t we?!  And after all God’s law is love, isn’t it?!

      So the church dances to the world’s tune and gets emasculated.  It loses its distinct identity, its cutting edge and its prophetic voice. There is no longer any sound of the trumpet.  The church is rendered powerless, shorn of its locks by Delilah and blinded by the Philistines.  And, of course, society then simply carries on spiralling downward into destruction and moral oblivion, thinking things have never been better.

      We can buy the acceptance of others simply by being quiet about our faith and being willing to conform to their expectations, whether these are spoken or unspoken.  It’s easy.  Really.  Just fit in and be like everyone else.  Simply do what they do, believe what they believe, and live like they live. Then we’ll all be at peace together.  Compromise really is a very convenient thing to do.  Until we realise, of course, that what we have submitted ourselves to, to tolerate and compromise with, does itself then begin to dominate and eventually control us.  We end up being enslaved by it.  Compromise is the death-knell of the church.

      We can either compromise by allowing the pressures of our daily life context to mould us and disciple us into accepting and living by any given particular beliefs and values that the surrounding society holds to, and therefore conform, or we can resolve within ourselves to overcome these and be discipled by the specific teaching of the word of God on those same points, and therefore live differently.  That is the essence of the apostle Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 regarding sexual immorality.

      And this is why Jesus speaks strongly to these believers (2:14-16).  He speaks in grace, but is expressing the burden of his heart to save this local church and keep it alive and strong.  Otherwise, he knows that ultimately it has no future…  He does not want his church defeated and powerless.  He wants it alive, pure, free and strong.

      So he presents himself to them as the Messiah ministering among the Gentile nations with a mouth like a sharpened sword (cf. Isa. 49:1-6).  However, his sword is not like the military sword of the Roman Empire that brought persecution and death.  It is the sharp double-edged sword of the word of God which penetrates deeply within us, dividing soul from spirit.  It discerns the thoughts and intents of our hearts, putting its finger on sin and bringing conviction of truth deep within (Heb. 4:12).  Jesus will have us recognise and deal with sin in our midst, bringing about repentance (2:16).  Although we should always act with grace, wisdom and sensitivity, yet we should not compromise or dilly-dally with sexual immorality of any form.  It destroys people’s lives.  We need to get rid of its yeast, lest it work its way through the whole batch of dough (cf. 1 Cor. ch.5).

Why we need to be willing to be different

      It is only when the church is pure and free that it is truly relevant and able to minister the power of God’s kingdom to the people around it living in spiritual darkness.  Only then can God show himself strong in and through it, and defeat Satan in his own backyard.  To truly maintain our relevance to society, we have to consciously make sure that we keep our distinct identity.  It is in doing this that we overcome.

      To be the salt and light that society needs, we have to be willing to be different.  Our call is not to imitate society and be the same; it is to be different precisely in order that we can then set captives free from the kingdom of darkness.  If we conform, then we simply become captives ourselves (in whatever way) and we cannot then set anyone free.  But in maintaining our identity, we avoid being enslaved by what others have submitted themselves to, and we remain free.  A pure church is a free church and a powerful church.  When we overcome the influences and pressures of our context, we can be strong in faith, declaring Jesus Christ truly and uniquely as Lord, and we win the race and receive the prize (2:17). We fight the good fight, we finish our course and ultimately we keep the faith strong (cf. 2 Tim. 4:7).

      Remember Daniel and his three friends?  When they were taken to Babylon we are told that they had their names changed by the chief official in charge of them.  Their Hebrew names each had a reference to their God Yahweh-El in them, but this was removed by the Babylonians by giving them local names in an attempt to wipe out any knowledge of the God of Israel in the imperial courts.

      Outwardly, it was an overt attempt to make them conform by changing their identity.  It was a pressure placed upon them and their faith by the authorities of this new place in which they lived.  The Babylonians evidently hoped and expected that this would be enough to get them to compromise their Jewish faith and live like all the other local people, the thing which seems to have happened with many of the other young men in their group.  These others sank into anonymity and their lives were forgotten.  Inwardly, of course, we know that these four young men remained faithful, as the narrative later demonstrates.

      It was their determination to be faithful to Yahweh in a spiritually hostile context and their refusal to compromise their allegiance to him which made them stand out and made them what they were in God.  They weren’t afraid to be the odd ones out in the crowd.  They swam against the tide.  When the real test of their faith came, they nailed their colours to the mast, paid the price and kept the faith strong (see Daniel 1:3-7, chs.3,6).  And that is why we honour them and look up to them as heroes of the faith.  God’s heroes are not the plastic, well-groomed, irresistible super-heroes of comic book fame.  No, they are the ordinary but courageous men and women living in obscure places who have fought the good fight and kept the faith alive against what were sometimes the most incredible odds.

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