Cornerstone Arts :: Newsletters :: The Seven Churches of Revelation

Greetings from Dallas, Texas! I finally made it home! It is GREAT to be back in Texas! And, yes, in case you're wondering, I've had my fill of Mexican food! The weather has been warm, but I arrived just in time to catch the formation of Hurricane Rita, which is hitting the gulf cities of Beaumont and Houston. Please pray for these poor people as they weather this storm.

Production Update

Now having arrived in Dallas, I hit the ground running by going into, NO, not ONE show, but TWO! We have had auditions all week for the English version of "The Judgment Seat", and the Spanish version as well. I have been overwhelmed with work! But, what an opportunity to reach Dallas with the gospel of Jesus Christ through this production! Please pray as we begin the rehearsals, and the preparation for this theatrical outreach to touch thousands of lives here in Texas.

At the Apostle John's Church in Ephesus, the baptistry was right in the center of the church

The Seven Churches of Revelation

Last week, after the successful production of "The Judgment Seat" in Istanbul, I had a chance to relax with some friends, for 3 days, in southeastern Turkey, or better known as the Seven Churches of Revelation! It was truly an inspirational three days, and it changed the way I saw everything in my Bible! I want to give you a short report on each city, to help you understand each city's significance. I'll share a little about each church in the order found in Revelation:

EPHESUS

The ancient city today is the site of a significant archaeological reconstruction. The Celsus Library, the Agora, the Theatre, the Entrance to the Arena where the Pan-Ionian Games were held, the Tomb of John, the Curetas, Marble and Harbour streets can be seen, and yet, only 20% of the city has actually been excavated!

When Jesus, dying on the cross, told John to care for His mother, John brought her to Ephesus with him and built her this home, where Mary lived out her last days.

When John wrote, it was one of the chief cities of the Roman Province of Asia, a thriving commercial centre. There were few cities to compare with it. Paul recognized its strategic position. He spent longer in Ephesus than in any other city — two and a half years. It was Paul who founded the church there. Ephesus witnessed often the pageantry, pomp and splendor that was Rome. Here, too, stood one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Temple of Diana.

Here Paul labored to found a church. Here some of the great triumphs of God's grace were won for the Gospel. Aquilla and Priscilla were won to Christ here, and so was Apollos. Here Timothy ministered for a time, and here too, John the Elder had the oversight for many years. But the Christian community had to bear its witness in the face of powerful vested business interests, as we know from the furor which the silversmiths created (Acts 19, 20) .

The place in Acts 19 where the whole city shouted for hours, "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians" and rioted, and seized Paul's companions.

SMYRNA

Very little remains of this second city mentioned in the Book of Revelation. Smyrna was a very ancient city, with a story that runs back, it would appear, almost to the dawn of history. To this day Izmir, it's modern name, numbers a quarter of a million inhabitants, and is a centre of learning of the Eastern Orthodox Church. In John's day it had many claims to distinction.

Like Ephesus it was a seaport with an especially rich trade in wines. It was also an outstandingly beautiful city, a model of good town planning with wide, spacious streets. Imagine what a staunch centre for the cult of Emperor worship Smyrna was, and as John's letter reveals, this deeply affected the consequences of Christian witness there. To refuse to burn your pinch of incense, acknowledging Caesar to be Lord and God, was to have the mood of the whole city turn violently against you.

The Apostle John died, and was buried in Ephesus, and a great basilica was built over his grave. Although the basilica is in ruins, his grave is still carefully maintained.

Smyrna too contained a large Jewish population. Without wishing to resurrect old animosities, it is a fact of history that the Jews were among the fiercest and most persistent enemies of the Christian Church in New Testament times. So Smyrna held a twin threat to the Christian congregation there — the pride of Rome and the hatred of the Jews. They were caught between the devil of Caesar worship and the deep blue sea of Jewish venom. In that city, to be a faithful Christian meant being faithful unto death.

PERGAMUM

Pergamum was the capital city of the province of Asia in the ancient Roman Empire. After the break-up of Alexander the Great's empire, the King of Pergamum bequeathed the city to Rome. The people of the city were happy enough to fulfill his wish; they entered the Roman Empire by spontaneous choice, not by compulsion.

At the city of Pergamum, where Antony gave Cleopatra the second largest library, to add to the largest one in Alexandria.

Pergamum could not rival either Ephesus or Smyrna in its volume of trade, but it laid claim to some distinction. It held one of the most famous libraries in the world, for one thing, numbering some 200,000 volumes of parchment. It was in Pergamum, in fact, that parchment was invented. and the very word 'parchment' derives from the Latin 'Pergamena Charta' — or 'paper of Pergamum.' The other great rival library in Alexandria used papyrus, but its manufacture in Egypt was a government monopoly. Pergamum was forced to invent something else, and turned to the skin of animals. Ironically enough, Cleopatra later took Pergamum's library away, by permission of Mark Antony, and added it to the one in Alexandria!

But more important for our purpose, it stood out above the other six cities mentioned as the Cathedral city, as it were, of pagan worship; and here we may follow up one or two clues that will help us to see why John described it as "the place where Satan's throne is."Yet again, Emperor worship in Pergamum was as intense as in Smyrna. Add to this the worship of Zeus, as his temple was once here, and Bacchus the god of wine, and of Dionysus whose worship involved obscenities impossible to describe, is it any wonder that John called the place "Satan's throne"?

The Apostle John's church in Pergamum still stands today. At one time, the Muslims wanted to convert it into a mosque, but an earthquake destroyed the church, so they built a small mosque adjacent, and can be seen as the round structure in the front.

THYATIRA

An inland town which had none of the wealth or splendor of the others. But it was a centre for the production of purple dye, from the madder roots which grew there. You'll recall that a convert to Christianity was Lydia, as found in Acts 16:11-15. (Was she the founder of the church?)

Archaeologists have found that the city abounded in trade guilds. Like Trades Unions — you could only get a job if you belonged to one. But they had a pagan religious basis, and included was a draught of wine as grace, and meat from the altar. Drunkenness and immorality were common.

Not much remains today of the church in Thyatira. Columns and brickwork are scattered in front of the church.

Could a Christian be a part of this? John said, "No!" Christians who made their living in the idol business — painters, sculptors etc. once flatly stated to Tertullian, one of our church fathers, "We have to live". Tertullian replied, "Must you?" That was the early Christian spirit: no compromise.

SARDIS

Sardis, the fifth town in the province of Asia to which John wrote, had once been the capital city of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, a city of great wealth. Indeed, it was in Sardis that coins were first minted — it was the birthplace of modern money. It boasted a shopping precinct we today would see as surprisingly modern, split level with a traffic free pedestrian area.

Of the seven churches, the one in Sardis is most carefully preserved, because of a group of American private investers who funded the excavations and maintenance of the church, the temple and the gymnasium in Sardis.

But in John's day, though wealthy still, the city was in decline. It had suffered a great deal from fire and earthquake, but even more from the laziness of its inhabitants. The citizens of Sardis had become, as it were, a population of dance-band musicians and indifferent shop-keepers, and the spirit of the town was reflected in its church. It had sunk into lethargy.

The Christian community in Sardis was not threatened by any of the perils that menaced the others. The townsfolk took nothing seriously, so emperor worship was too perfunctory to produce persecution of those who neglected it. The trade guilds that presented such a problem in Thyatira hardly existed. Even the Jews in Sardis, despite the splendor of their marble-columned synagogue there, could hardly be bothered to oppose the Christians.

Only the 4 corners of the church in Philadelphia still stand, but even so, you can feel imagine the beauty of the structure where early Christian believers once worshipped.

PHILADELPHIA

The city of Philadelphia, to whose Christian congregation John addressed the sixth letter, had been founded only a couple of hundred years earlier by Attalus II. What is of the greatest interest for our understanding of this letter is that he had founded it with the deliberate intention that it should be a missionary centre.

It stood at a point where three provinces converged, Lydia, Mysia, and Phrygia, and commanding the highway from West to East, from the direction of Rome into the hinterland of Asia Minor. Attalus shrewdly chose it as a centre from which to spread the Greek language, the Greek civilization, the Grecian way of life through all the regions beyond it, where lay the wilds of Phrygia and the barbarous tribes.

Outside of Hieropolis, the Apostle Phillip's martyrian still stands. A church was built over the place where Phillip was martyred.

It was this the risen Lord had in mind when He said, "See, I have set before you an open door, which no man can shut." It was the door of missionary opportunity.

LAODICEA

The town of Laodicea was one of a group of three which lay within easy sight of each other, at a point where the narrow glen of the river Lycus broadens out into the lower valley. The other two towns were Hierapolis and Colosse. Paul in his letter to the Colossians includes the Laodiceans in his greetings and asks that his letters to them both should be exchanged. His letter to the Laodiceans has been lost, but he must have been known to them personally. By the time John's letter was written there had been a church there for more thirty years. Colossians 4:13 suggests that Epaphras was the pastor of the Laodicean church, and perhaps he was its founder.

Commercially, Laodicea was one of the richest cities of the seven. It was the banking centre for the whole of Asia Minor. Cicero, we know, cashed his letters of credit there. When in AD 60, just about the time Paul wrote to the church, the city was devastated by earthquake, Rome offered her the same grants and tax relief toward rebuilding that Sardis and Philadelphia had been glad enough to accept, but Laodicea disdained such help. She preferred to rebuild the shattered city out of her own resources "with no help from us"... as Tacitus the Roman historian observed.

Near Laodicea, Pamukkale hot springs are still enjoyed by locals and tourists alike. Cold waters refesh in summer, and the hot springs warm year round, but the tepid springs couldn't be drunk, nor enjoyed. The springs were what Jesus compared them to.

Like Pergamum, Laodicea boasted, too, a fine medical school, especially famous for its Tephra Phrygia, an eye-powder exported in tablet form. The school specialized, in fact, in the treatment of eye troubles, and this salve was held to be a miracle remedy. "Your city is renowned the world over for its cure of weak eyes," Christ said to them in effect, "but the eyes of your soul are so short-sighted that spiritually you are groping, though you know it not."

The people here were tepid in their service to the Lord. Outside the city were mineral springs whose warmish waters which, if you drank them, would make you vomit. Christ expresses to this church exactly the same sort of violent reaction of disgust. He plainly said to them, "You make me sick." "Would that you were cold or hot," says Christ. The mineral springs of Pamukkale outside Laodicea rose at their source boiling hot. But by the time they had flowed down the aqueduct to the town, they were lukewarm and nauseous. They were not cold enough to be refreshing in that hot climate. There was neither refreshment for parched men, nor heat enough to cure and disinfect their sicknesses.

Bye Now!

I hope you enjoyed learning a little about the Seven Churches as much as I did! It was truly a blessing to be there. I'll definitely miss Turkey and all the friends I made there, but I'm so thankful to be back in Dallas, and I hope to see many of my friends in Dallas while I'm here, or wherever you are in the U.S.! Please keep us in prayer as we prepare for this very special TWO productions of "The Judgment Seat" here in Dallas. God bless you, my friends, and drop me a note sometime!

Dear Friends & Family,