MESSAGE TO THE CHURCHES IN REVELATION
PERGAMUM
DR. JIM DIXON
MARCH 28, 1989
The people there were heathens. They had to burn infants on the altar. They had to pronounce the emperor as god. They had to say, “Caesar is Lord.” They were given a certificate to show that they had satisfied their yearly obligation of Caesar worship. No Christian could ever see that certificate. No Christian could ever say that the emperor is God. No Christian could ever say Caesar is Lord and so the Christians were persecuted. Antipas was one of those Christians persecuted in Pergamum. Our Lord Jesus mentioned Antipas in His letter. We don’t know much about him but Tortillon, one of the other church followers, tells us that Antipas was killed in Pergamum under the reign of the emperor Goneshia. He was slowly roasted to death inside a braising bull.
You see, the Romans not only liked to execute Christians, but they did it in a sadistic and perverted way. Nero would actually wrap Christians in flesh, the flesh of animals, and he would unleash dogs and he would watch Christians eaten alive. He also would roll Christians in tar, and he would light them on fire, and he would watch them burn like torches at night, and he took great pleasure in it.
You and I have a great deal to be thankful for that we live in this time and this place, and we’re free to worship Jesus Christ. The Christians of Pergamum were persecuted and yet they held fast to the name of Jesus Christ, and for that, they deserve praise.
But Christ had a second message for them, and it was a warning. Christ said “I have a few things against you, for you have some there who hold to the teachings of Balaam, who taught Balak, to place a stumbling block before the Sons of Israel that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice immorality. So, too, you have some who hold to the teaching of Nicolaitans. Repent or I will come and war against them with the sword of My mouth.”
Here, then, is a warning against moral and doctrinal compromise. Jesus takes the teaching of the Old Testament and book of Numbers and the example of Balaam. Many Christians are not familiar with the story of Balaam. Balaam was actually a heathen diviner prophet, and when Balak, King of the Moabites, heard that the Israelites were coming through his land, he was very much afraid, so he asked Balaam to place a curse upon the children of Israel, but God restricted Balaam. Nevertheless, Balaam went ahead, and he influenced the Moabites and he influenced Balak to seduce the Sons of Israel into fornication, immorality, and idolatry. And so it was that the daughters of the Moabites and the daughters of the Midianites gave themselves sexually to the Sons of Israel, bringing them into fornication and ultimately into the worship of Baal. Now similar things were happening in the church at Pergamum. There was a group within the church called the Nicolaitans and they were influencing the Christians towards fornication, immorality, and idolatry.
It was very hard for us to imagine the immorality of the Greek and Roman world. It was Demosthenes who said, “We have prostitutes for the sake of pleasure. We have concubines for the sake of daily cohabitation. We have wives for the sake of bearing children legitimately.” He was counting his blessings, or so he thought, because, you see, the Greeks and Romans had absolutely no concept of sexual fidelity. They were sexually permissive, and they regarded sex as purely recreational.
When the Greeks and Romans took their animal sacrifices into their heathen temples, part of the animal was burned on the altar. Part of the animal was given to the temple priest for the purpose of his livelihood and his sustenance and then part of the animal was returned to the worshipper, and he would use his portion of the animal to throw a temple feast and he would invite all of his friends. He would send out invitations saying, “You are invited to dine with me at the temple of our Lord Zeus” or “You are invited to dine with me at the temple of our Lord Apollos.” Now those temple feasts were times of incomprehensible immorality. They were times of fornication and adultery. They were times of drunkenness and gluttony. And, yet Christians would oftentimes receive invitations to those temple feasts from friends they had once known. They knew they shouldn’t go, but the Nicolaitans were those within the church who were saying “Go ahead. God wants you to have fun. What’s wrong with a little pleasure.” The Nicolaitans were undoubtedly taking the biblical doctrines of grace and freedom in Christ, and they were perverting them into licentiousness and the freedom to sin.
We have a similar thing happening in the church of Christ today. There are many women who take the name of Christ and still join themselves to immorality. There are Christians who are involved with sexual promiscuity; Christians who are involved with dishonesty of worth; Christians who are under the grip of alcoholism and drugs; Christians who go to movies they know they should never see; Christians who subscribe to magazines they know they should never look at.
And a similar thing is happening doctrinally. There are Christians who are beginning to compromise doctrinally; Christians who have become soft on the virgin birth; soft on the infallibility of scripture; soft on the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ gives this warning: “Moral and doctrinal compromise leads to destruction,” and He wants us to know that.
I heard a story recently of a grandmother and grandfather who live in Scotland. They wanted to come to New York to visit their grandchildren. They had never been on an airplane before and they didn’t know anything about airplanes, but they got on a Lockheed Tristar, which is a three-engine jet. They were halfway over the Atlantic when the pilot came over the intercom. He said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that we’ve lost power in one of our engines. However, there is no cause for alarm because the Lockheed Tristar is perfectly capable of getting us to New York City safely. However, our air speed will be slower and so we will arrive a half-hour late.” Well, the Scottish grandmother didn’t understand any of that and she was very upset because she was in a hurry to see her grandchildren. It was only a half-hour later and the pilot came back over the intercom again. He spoke in that calm, cool voice that only airline pilots seem to be able to muster and he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that we have lost power in a second of our engines. However, there is no cause for alarm. The Lockheed Tristar is perfectly capable of bringing us into New York safely. However, our airspeed will be considerably slow, and we will arrive at JFK three hours late. Well, at that, the grandmother was incensed, and she turned to the grandfather, and she said, “Can you believe that?” She said, “We’d better not lose power of that other engine or we’re going to be up here all night!”
Now you and I both know that if they lose power in that other engine, we’re sunk. You can only give up so much and still fly. It’s like that in the Christian life too. You can only give up so much and still fly. With every moral value you give up, with every doctrinal truth you let go, you lose power. Ultimately, it can reach the point where you are as though you were spiritually dead.
I had a roommate in seminary. I had two roommates. One of them took a job for a drug rehabilitation center that was connected with the YMCA. He came back to the apartment one day and he told us that he was being tempted. He said that some of the girls that came into the drug rehabilitation center were promiscuous and he thought some of them were attractive and he was being tempted. It was about two months later when he came to the apartment, and he just looked devastated. He told us that he had gone to bed with one of the girls at the rehabilitation center. He was repentant. He asked the Lord to forgive him and I’m sure that our Lord did. He began to spend more time in the word and more time in prayer. But a month or two months passed by, and he began to be tempted again and he fell again. The second time was a little easier. Then he fell a third time and a fourth time, and a fifth time and it became a lifestyle for him. I don’t know where he is today. I don’t judge him. His judgement is in Christ’s hands.
I honestly believe that a person who is truly born again, and I think the scriptures teach us this that a person who is truly born again can never lose his or her salvation because Christ has us in His hand and He will never let us go. I don’t know whether this man was truly a Christian or not, but the message is clear. Moral and doctrinal compromise leads to destruction. It leads to a condition of spiritual death.
On April 14, 1912, the Titanic was making its maiden voyage to New York City. It was the quiet of the ocean. More than 2,000 people felt safe and secure inside of their plush cabins and accommodations. The phone rang in the control room. The officer didn’t answer it. He was busy with other things. The phone rang again, and he ignored it again. It rang again, and again, and again. After three minutes, he finally picked up the phone. He heard a voice from the crow’s nest. It said, “Iceberg dead ahead!” He panicked. He commanded a reversal of the engines, but it was too late, and the great pride of the sea went down into the ocean. According to an article in the WASHINGTON POST, because of that officer’s failure to respond to the warning from the crow’s nest, more than 1,600 people lost their lives.
Jesus Christ is giving a warning to this church today, a warning which tells us that moral and doctrinal compromise leads to destruction. As Christians, we are called to be holy. The Greek word is “hagios” and it means “set apart for God.” The Jewish temple was called holy because it was different than other buildings. It was set apart for God’s service. The angels of God are called holy because they’re different than the angels who fell. The holy angels of God are set apart for God’s service. As Christians, we’re called holy because we are different than the world. We have been set apart for God’s service and He’s called us to be faithful.
John the Apostle says, “Do not love the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life — is not of the Father but is of the world. The world passes away and the desires of it but he who does the will of God abides forever.” And so, this warning was given to the Christian church at Pergamum. “Do not involve yourselves in moral and doctrinal compromise.”
Finally, our Lord Jesus sent a message of promise to the church at Pergamum. He actually gave them two promises. He said, “To him who conquers, I will grant him to eat of the hidden manna.” The Israelites ate the bread of the angels as they journeyed from Egypt to the promised land. Bread fell from heaven to sustain them in the wilderness, and they made that bread into loaves and into cakes, and it had the sweetness of honey. When they came into the land of Canaan, they no longer needed the manna because the land of Canaan was fertile, and they had the fruit of the earth to sustain them. But the Jews took some of the manna and they hid it in a golden pot. They placed it in the Ark of the Covenant, in the Holy of Holies, in the tabernacle. All of that is recorded in the sixteenth chapter of the book of Exodus. The Jewish tradition tells us that that pot of manna was ultimately placed in the holy of holies in the Jerusalem temple. When the temple was destroyed in the sixth century, Jewish tradition says that Jeremiah, the prophet, took the pot of manna and he hid it in a cave at Mt. Sinai. And a prophecy was given that that manna, that hidden manna, would never be rediscovered until the day when the Messiah came and came in glory and set up his messianic kingdom.
Christians in the first and second centuries regarded this promise of partaking in the hidden manna as a promise that they would partake in the messianic kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. They regarded it as an invitation to the marriage supper of the lamb, an invitation to the heavenly banquet. But there is even a greater truth here because the hidden manna is spiritual food and there is a sense in which it is Jesus Christ Himself. We begin to partake of the hidden manna even now as we read His word, as we pray, as we fellowship with other Christians, as we receive of His spirit. We partake of this hidden manna. Jesus Christ said “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died. I am the living bread come down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.” So here is a promise, a very precious promise, of His eternal sustenance, his eternal provision, His eternal feeding of the saints.
Finally, there was the promise of a “white stone with a new name written upon it which no one knows but him who receives it.” Now most of us are not particularly familiar with the giving of white stones. I bet you can’t even remember the last time you received a white stone, but back in the ancient world, white stones and the giving of white stones was very common.
White stones were given or used in the courtroom for the pronouncement of acquittal. When a person was pronounced innocent, a white stone was turned over. White stones were used as invitations to banquets and festive occasions. The guests would all receive a white stone with the name of the host on the backside. White stones were used as charms and amulets. They hung around the necks of the Greeks and Romans, and they were in their pockets. On the back of the stones, the Greeks and Romans would have the name of a Greek or Roman god. They believed that by having that god’s name on the back of their stone, they had the power of that god available in their life. They believed that if nobody else knew the name of the god that they had written on the back of their stone, that that power would increase.
White stones were also used as tokens of citizenship with the name of the country on the backside. They were even given to gladiators when they retired. Of course, not many gladiators reached the point of retirement, but if they ever did, they were given a white stone and on the back of the stone it said, “Tested and true.”
So, you see, this concept of a white stone would have brought many beautiful images to the minds of the Christians. It would have been an image of acquittal, a promise of acquittal and purification. It would have been a promise of invitation to the heavenly banquet, the marriage supper of the lamb. It would have been a promise that they would receive a stone with the name of Jesus Christ Himself upon it, having His power available for their lives. It would have been a promise of citizenship in the heavenly kingdom, and it would have been a promise that they, like gladiators, would one day hear those words “Tried and true.” “Well done my good and faithful servant.”
You know the scriptures are full of the promises from God. He loves us. He longs to bless us in this life and in the life to come. But we have to know that moral and doctrinal compromise results in the loss of blessing. There are eternal consequences when a Christian blatantly walks contrary to the will of God. We are saved by faith, but He has called us to faithfulness. And it’s for this reason that Peter wrote to the Christians in Asia (and with this we’ll conclude) and he said, “God’s divine power is given to us, all things that pertain to life and godliness. To the knowledge of Him who has called us to His own glory and excellence by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises that through these, we should escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passions and become partakers of the divine nature. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love, that these things are yours and abound. They will keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Whoever has lost these things is blind and is shortsighted and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. So, my brethren, be the more zealous to confirm your call and your election. If you do this, you will never fall and there will be richly provided for you an inheritance, an entrance into the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Shall we pray?