A “PIT” STOP IN PERGAMOS ~ FROM PERGAMOS TO ROME? ~ EXPOSING HYPOCRISY ~ Part 29

Before leaving Chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation, I wanted to touch on one other thing. Pergamos or Pergamum was host to “satan’s throne” and “dwelling place” (2:13); Smyrna and Philadelphia housed a “synagogue of satan” (2:9, 3:9) and those in Thyatira went after the “deep things of satan” (2:24).

There are only two realms in this world. There is God’s realm and Satan’s realm. Every person either belongs to the Kingdom of God or the kingdom of Satan. There are two mysteries: the mystery of God in Christ and the mystery of lawlessness or iniquity. 2 Thessalonians 2:7—For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is removed. In the Bible, Satan is spoken of as “the prince of this world,” “the prince of the power of the air,” “the deceiver of the world,” and “the god of this world”. His work in this world is to deceive, to lie, to accuse, and to tempt. Existing side by side, both realms are working simultaneously for two opposite purposes.

 

The ‘mystery of God in Christ’ is that God in Christ provided for all who would believe in and receive His Son. To these He gives victory over Satan, deliverance from sin, and a glorious eternity with Him.

 

Notice Christ’s warnings to the churches that referenced areas in which Satan had dominion or had gained a stronghold. They are associated with false teaching. Regarding the two realms—the realm of truth leads to eternal life; the realm of lies through false teaching leads to eternal death. False teaching is not a minuscule and trivial issue with which the church can choose whether or not to deal. False teaching must be exposed for what it is and dealt with. It is literally a matter of life and death. The next time you are tempted to belittle or shrug off another Christian who is trying to warn you against false teaching, please remember it is only a love that God gives that would cause another to do so. When these warnings are given in a spirit of love for the truth and for God’s glory, we can know a beloved brother or sister in Christ is faithfully exercising a Spirit-given gift.

 

Pergamos or Pergamum as “satan’s throne”, “the dwelling place of Satan” was a center for the worship of Dionysus, Zeus, and other pagan gods. Although Satan is working all over the world to accomplish his evil purposes, he had his throne in Pergamos. That is significant for Christ to make specific reference to it. How many people in the world believe Satan lives in hell? He doesn’t. That is his prison where he will be incarcerated for all eternity at the end of time as we know it. Hell was created for Satan and his minions for this purpose. For now, his work is in the world where he continually tries to gain a foothold inside the true church. In Smyrna there was ‘a synagogue of Satan’ which was a perverted Judaism. But the ‘throne of Satan’ is where he had chosen to set up his permanent residence, a Gentile base of false religions.

 

Revelation 2:12-17

Christ identifies Himself to this church at Pergamos as the One who has the sharp two-edged sword. Why? Christ comes with a sharp two-edged sword (the Word of God by which all must be judged) because this church is facing judgment. Doctrinal errors of the Balaamites and the Nicolaitans were being promoted by some in the church. Interestingly, the Roman proconsul possessed ius gladii, the right of the sword, having the power of life and death; on their word a man could be executed on the spot. Here, the Lord shows Himself to be the ultimate authority over life and death. Swords in general represent civil authority, national judgment and personal judgment (by the Word).

 

The church in Pergamos was engaged in compromise. The ‘Pergamos church’ is any church that is beginning to engage with the world to a point that it cannot be separated from the world, a church that courts the world or marries paganism in any form.

 

Rome had a close relationship with Pergamos when King Attalus III was ruling. In 133 BC this king made the Roman Republic heir to his kingdom which made Pergamum a Roman province of Asia. This eventually led to Pergamum becoming the site of the first temple of the Caesar cult, dedicated to the goddess Roma and the emperor Augustus in 29 BC. From that point on, Pergamum was active in the promotion of the imperial religion and became the provincial center of the Roman state religion.

 

What happened in Pergamum was not unlike what happened from the period of AD 300 to 600 during the Roman Empire under Constantine’s rule when the church married the world. Constantine made Christianity the state religion. Heathen priests became Christian priests. Heathen temples were converted to Christian churches. All babies were to be christened under order of the state religion, etc. At that time there was a concerted effort to ‘Christianize’ everything associated with pagan religion in order to bring everyone together in (false) unity. There is only ever one way to do that, and that is to discard sound doctrine based upon God’s Word alone. You could say there was a militant drive attempting to bring about the utopian goal of all ecumenical movements.

 

The Roman church had also compromised by bringing into the church the separation of clergy and laity. Destroying the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, the pride of lording it over the people eventually plunged the church into the dark ages. Further compromise is still evident today by the syncretism of allowing pagan idolatry to influence much of the worship inside the Roman Catholic system.

 

This is one plausible explanation for Pergamos bearing the label of “satan’s seat”. If the state supports the church, the emperor becomes its benefactor. When the Roman Empire crumbled and the throne was vacant, the worldly authority was taken over by the papacy. The bishop of Rome was Pontifex Maximus with all the pretension and false authority over the church that the old imperial office held.

 

Jesus says in Matthew 23:2 that the scribes and Pharisees had seated themselves in the chair of Moses (they ‘settled’ into the seat of authority). They had seated themselves meaning they were not appointed by God but had taken on the authority themselves. The apostate form of Judaism represented by the Scribes and the Pharisees is also seen in the Roman Catholic Church in the hierarchical structure there. The ‘chair’ or ‘bench’ in Matthew 23 is the word kathedra. It referred to a place or seat of ecclesiastical authority. In Moses’ case, it was the seat of the great judge and lawgiver. This is why it is said today that what the Pope speaks ex cathedra, (from the chair) is infallible dogma. Successive generations of the Roman church show this mixture of pagan influence and the gospel of Christ attempting to exist side by side. Sadly, the gospel of the Roman Catholic Church is not the gospel of Christ, it only masquerades as such.

 

 

 

Pergamos was an important religious center for pagan cults like Athena, Asklepios, Dionysius (Bacchus—the god of drunkenness and debauchery), and Zeus. Like I have already noted, along with all these gods and goddesses, Roman Emperor worship became prominent there as well—which is why it was the first city in Asia Minor to build a temple to Caesar around 29 A.D. That date is important because it was also the time of Christ’s ministry. While God was walking upon the earth manifesting His deity and interacting with His creation, the emperor was seen by the creation not only as a political and military leader, but as a god.

 

Pergamos, where Christ said the throne of Satan was located, was also the capital of Caesar worship. As long as one worshipped Caesar, he or she was free to add whatever god or goddess of their choosing to their worship repertoire. Christians, of course, could never worship any god but the one true God. Consequently, intense persecution arose because of their refusal to say, “Caesar is Lord.”

 

Was ‘satan’s throne’ mentioned because of the central location of Caesar worship that flowed throughout the whole Roman Empire? (It is never far from my mind that there will be a revived Roman Empire in the last days over which the antichrist will rule for a short time.) Was it because there was a magnificent 40-foot-high altar shaped like a throne to Zeus (later reconstructed in East Berlin), the supposed supreme god and head of the Pantheon, situated there atop the Acropolis? Or was it because of the famous medical school represented by its emblem—the snake (Asklepios) from which was adopted the modern-day medical symbol of the snake wrapped around a pole? (Also, cf. Numbers 21:8-9.) Asklepios (from where we get our word ‘scalpel’) was the god of healing. There was a temple there where a multitude of snakes slithered around all over the floor. In order for one to be healed, it was thought that he or she would need to lie down on the floor and sleep while allowing the snakes to infuse their healing powers as they crawled all over the ailing body.

 

Or was it that Satan’s throne represented the activities of the secret mystery religions at Pergamum? “Alexander Hislop, in his famous book The Two Babylons, gave much documentation to show that Pergamos had inherited the religious mantle of ancient Babylon when Babylon fell in the days of Belshazzar. The priests, who had kept the secrets of the ancient mystery religions centered at Babylon ever since the days of Nimrod, were forced to migrate at that time, transferring what amounted to the headquarters of Satan’s religious system away from Babylon north and west to Pergamos.” Morris, The Revelation Record, 57.

‘Pergamos’ literally means “parchment”. A large university and library consisting of 200,000 volumes was there. This is quite impressive considering that these documents were all hand-written at that time. A rare treasure, this library would later be sent to Egypt as a gift from Antony to Cleopatra. It is interesting to note how Pergamos came to be associated with parchment. Apparently, back in the day, a symbol of power was a great library. (As a lover of books, I can totally see that. My children once told me if we ever needed to build a house, we could use all my books in place of bricks!!!) Pergamum’s King Eumenes was forced to develop parchment when he decided to build up his library to rival that of the great library of King Ptolemy in Alexandria. When Eumenes attempted to poach Ptolemy’s librarian for his own endeavors, Ptolemy cut off all shipments of papyrus to Pergamum. Pergamum’s scholars were then forced to find an alternative writing material and invented parchment. Why does this matter? Because parchment was much better than papyrus, this invention was instrumental in preserving the Bible for us.

Another thing that was important to Christ (“the God who sees”) to mention regarding Pergamos is that His servant, Antipas, was killed there. According to tradition, he was burned to death in a bronze bull. Most commentators believe that he died for refusing to worship the emperor, because only the imperial cultus had the power of capital punishment. The Lord testifies to his faithfulness unto death.

There seems to be a tie between the teaching of Balaam and the Nicolaitans. The teaching of Balaam encouraged intermarriage that resulted in fornication and idolatry. Intermarriage in the pagan city of Pergamum was undoubtedly a real problem. Why? The intertwining of civil and religious life can have a disastrous effect on the church. Today, with the widespread acceptance of the Social Justice Movement by those inside the church, it is clear to see just how easy compromise with the world could come about. The world and the true church have main priorities that are antithetical to one another. The lines are beginning to be blurred between the political arena and the church in our own country. ‘Conservatism’ does not equal Christianity. When the state succeeds in grabbing the reins of authority over the church, intermarriage with the world is soon to follow and with it, persecution of all true believers. A church married to the world must change its gospel message. Compromise that adulterates the pure gospel renders it useless to save—for it is no real gospel at all.

One instance of a stumbling block in Pergamos was this issue of eating things sacrificed to idols. “[Christians] were expected to pay their “dues” to trade guilds by attending annual dinners held in honor of the guilds’ patron deities. Homage to the emperor as divine was included along with the worship of such local deities.” Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text, 30.

Little is known about the Nicolaitans with any degree of real certainty. However, the names ‘Nicolaitans’ and ‘Balaam’ have very similar meanings in their respective languages. ‘Balaam’ comes from bala (‘he swallows’) and am (‘people’). Both groups of people who were stumbling blocks to the church were ‘swallowers of the people’, the Nicolaitans being ‘conquerors of the people’. “According to the best etymology, Balaam signifies ‘Destroyer of the People’ and Nikolaos is no more than a Grecizing of this name. If this is the case, the Nicolaitans are the Balaamites, those who in the New Dispensation repeated the sin of Balaam in the Old and sought to overcome or destroy the people of God by the same temptations whereby Balaam had sought to overcome them before.” Richard Chenevix Trench, Commentary on the Epistles on the Seven Churches in Asia (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1861), 82-83.

Another view to be considered is that the Greek meaning of Nicolaitans is “rulers of the people.” This meaning would imply that there was an attempt to divide and make unnatural distinctions between the clergy and laity, creating a division in which the clergy exercised rulership over the laity. This authority went much further than ‘elder rule’ which was established by God Himself. The authority stressed in this view no doubt extended to the personal lives of the people. If this is the way the Nicolaitan error is to be viewed, it is easy to see how the top-heavy ecclesiastical structures which characterize much of Christendom throughout history is the sour fruit of such teaching. This is why the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer is important to every saint in every age.

There are a lot of things in the book of Revelation that point to Rome in a way that was hidden to the average reader in John’s day which was intentional. That is why I interrupted the flow of thought regarding the four women of the Apocalypse, but it is a great segue into the next female we see in Revelation 12.