Join us as we journey into Pergamos, a city where the throne of Satan was said to dwell. Through a captivating historical and biblical lens, David Hawking presents an insightful discourse on the challenges faced by the early church. From the symbolic sharp sword of the Messiah to the cultural and religious dynamics of the era, this episode is a powerful reminder of the ever-present threat of compromise in a believer’s life. Discover how these ancient messages remain deeply relevant for today’s church.
00:00:00 The Fall of Rome and Its Impact on the Church
Very fascinating to me that when Rome finally fell to the Visigoths around 476 AD, it was sacked and burned, but actually it probably fell morally and from a standpoint of its strength as an empire, it collapsed in its will to resist probably many years before. But we kind of date the fall of Rome about 476 AD. From the fall of Rome by the barbaric tribes, it’s very interesting what happened to the church.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome everyone to Hope for Today with Bible teacher David Hawking. And today we’re stepping into a church that stood tall in a city drenched in darkness. We’re in Revelation chapter 2 verses 12 through 13 where Jesus praises this church for their unshakable loyalty even while living in the shadow of Satan’s throne. They refused to back down even when the cost was blood. But even with that, this passage isn’t a call to coast. It’s a wake-up call, a wake-up call to stand firm, stay sharp, and hold fast to the truth, because this church had compromised, and the warning given to them still stands. We’ll open the passage in just a moment. First of all, I want to tell you about a resource that can really deepen your walk with the Lord. It’s called Meditations in the Psalms, and this is our free online devotional series by David Hawking. Every entry takes you into the heart of a psalm, offering scripture, insightful commentary, and a short application that will help you reflect, pray, and grow. And this is available, by the way, in multiple languages, so you can share it with family, friends, or anyone who needs a dose of encouragement from God’s Word. Meditations and the Psalms. You’ll find it right now at DavidHawking.org on the homepage right there in the bottom left-hand corner. DavidHawking.org. Let’s get into the Word. Here’s David.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, let’s take our Bibles and turn to Revelation chapter 2. We’re looking at the message to the church at Pergamos. Religious compromise. Religious compromise. compromise revelation chapter 2 beginning at verse 12 and to the angel of the church in pergamos write these things saith he who hath the sharp sword with two edges i know thy works and where thou dwellest even where satan’s seat is or throne And thou holdest fast my name and hast not denied my faith, even in those days in which Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you where Satan dwelleth. Repent. Repent. or else I will come unto thee quickly and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna and will give him a white stone and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth save or except he that receiveth it. Let’s look to the Lord in a moment of prayer. Father, we pray that in these few moments together, you will help us to understand the danger of religious compromise. We recognize that this message sent long ago by John to this church has relevance for us today. These messages, your word says, are for the churches. Not just the one church, but all churches. And God, help us to understand what dangers can come into our midst, not only as a body of people who love the Lord, but as individuals who are committed to your word. God, help us to see what can happen when we get our eyes off of you. We remember the first church message. You said you’ve left your first love. To love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, with all thy might. And Lord, we pray that in these few moments together you will strengthen us because we live in a hostile environment, a secular world that has not been a friend to God. And help us to know how to live for you and your glory, we pray. In the name of our Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ, amen. A little historical background on Pergamos. It was my pleasure to visit there several years ago, and it is indeed an eye-opener to see this city. Pergamos is located about 55 miles north of Smyrna, which is today Izmir, and about 15 miles from the Aegean Sea. In 29 BC, which is still well before this letter was sent by John, in 29 BC, Pergamos was given permission to erect and dedicate a temple to Augustus Caesar. And it was reputed to be the first heathen temple in Asia that was dedicated to the worship of Caesar. The last king of Pergamos, who was Attalus III, bequeathed this territory to Rome. And Pergamos, interestingly, not Ephesus, but Pergamos was made the capital city of the Roman province of Asia, which we read about in the New Testament. They had a great university there. If you can imagine this before printing, their library had over 200,000 volumes. By the way, that library was sent to Egypt by Mark Antony as a gift to Cleopatra, just for your romantic buffs on that story. The name of the city comes from possibly two sources. One, it could be a word meaning parchment or paper, but probably more likely it’s a compound word coming from two Greek words, a word meaning tower, pergos, and a word meaning marriage, gamos. The two ideas, marriage plus height or elevation. That has a lot to say for the meaning of this term because that’s what it looks like when you see the city. There’s a very high elevation, an acropolis, a mountain right adjacent to it. The acropolis, which means high city, the cities they would put on top of a mountain, they often built the Greek cities at the base of those mountains, the acropolis is 1,000 feet high above the city. And it has an amphitheater on the side of it that seats 10,000 people with perfect acoustics. I was able to not only walk through that amphitheater, but to stand at the bottom and to speak in just a normal voice and have people at the top hear me just as though I were standing in front of them. On top of the mountain, there are the remains today of what is well known to be one of the most spectacular sites that Pergamos had. It was a giant altar to Zeus, who’s the head of the Greek pantheon. their number one god in the Greek mythological system. This giant altar, you can still see the remains of it today on the side of the mountain. I walked all over this altar, about 800 feet above the ground. It’s just about 200 feet below the top of the mountain. And it juts out from the mountain, and you can see it for miles. But the altar, if you can believe this, was 100 feet square. We’re talking a giant altar dedicated to Zeus. There were also temples on top of the Acropolis, of which there’s very little remains, but they are there, temples to Athena and to Dionysius. Now, Pergamos is quite famous. Pergamos is known for its medical school and its worship of the god of healing, Aesculapius, or sometimes called Asclepius. That god of healing is symbolized by a serpent. And today you have the remains of a crest with a serpent on a cross-like pole. You have that in archaeological ruins at Pergamos, and it is identical to the crest for the American Medical Association. It is symbolized by a serpent, and the god of healing was being honored. It was also known as the first place in the history of the world to have a school of psychology. Since psychology is so popular today, let me tell you about their school of psychology. They had therapy pools, they had mineral baths, healing waters. You can still feel them today, and they still have the same effect they did then. Now, this therapy tunnel they have is still intact today, and it’s kind of an interesting thing. You walk through this tunnel, it’s a big long tunnel, and at the top there are holes every so often, every few feet. Now what you did is you took some mineral baths, hot baths, got a little massage, felt comfortable, and you’ve got all these psychological problems, emotional problems. So you would come and you’d stand at the beginning of the tunnel and there’s a hole above you and your doctor of psychology is on top, you can’t see him, but he talks through the hole to you. And so what he says to you, I understand that you have very, very serious problems. Oh, yes, it’s just terrible. Now you walk a little ways further to the next hole and he says, but it cannot be that bad. Well, you have a point there. It can’t be that bad. You go down to the next hole and he would say, you know, it’s a beautiful day outside. Things are not as bad as they seem. And you’d say, you know, they’re not really as bad as they seem. And as you come out, by the last hole, he pronounces you, you are totally healed of all your problems. And you walk out completely free. That was the origin of what we call talk therapy. Amen? It had its advantages. You didn’t have to see the psychiatrist. Amen? But anyway, they were the founders of a medical school as well as a psychological school. Now, the worship of the emperor was very strong in Pergamos. As a matter of fact, we are told in archaeological writings outside of the Bible that Christians were in danger 365 days a year in Pergamos. Not just one day, but 365 days. Every day of the year, it was dangerous to be a Christian. One of the major reasons for that is that Once a year there’s a big celebration in Pergamos in which incense was burned by every resident proclaiming that Caesar is Lord. And if you believe that God is Lord and you believe that Jesus is Lord, then you are in big trouble in Pergamos. It’s interesting to me what verse 12 says about Jesus Christ. Would you look at it, please? It says, “…he who hath the sharp sword with two edges.” This is not the hand sword of the Romans. It is the long and heavy sword we’ve spoken about before, used by Thracians and barbaric tribes, the Greek word romphaia, And it’s used in the book of Revelation. It is the sword that the Bible says at the end when Messiah comes that he will with it smite the nations, quoting from the book of Isaiah. Passages that indicate the seriousness of the Messiah’s return for the nations of the world whom he will strike with the sword of his mouth. It is a sword that brings a fatal blow, and it’s talking about the judgment of the Messiah. So how interesting that he would approach this church and say to them, this is coming from the one who has the sharp sword with two edges. It was mentioned back in chapter 1, verse 16. Now, for those of you who like to outline, we want to give you four things about Pergamos from this message in Revelation 2, 12 to 17. Number one. According to verse 13, Pergamos was a dangerous environment. There are two areas in which this environment was so dangerous at Pergamos, especially to Christians. One is in terms of satanic conflict, and another one deals with spiritual commitment. Let’s take satanic conflict first. The position of the enemy is stated here in verse 13. It has fascinated Bible students for years when it says, I know thy works and where thou dwellest, a dangerous environment, even where Satan’s seat or throne is. The last part of the verse says, where Satan dwelleth. The position of the enemy is presented to us, Satan’s throne. Now people have asked the question, what does this mean? Some have suggested that it is a reference to the giant altar to Zeus on the Acropolis. And there’s a lot of reason for that. Please listen carefully, and you’re going to see a web pulled together that perhaps you have never understood when you read Revelation 2. That giant altar on Zeus on the Acropolis has an interesting history. The pagan worship behind this is directly traceable to the worship of Baal, or we say Baal, which is mentioned so often in the struggles of Israel with its pagan environment. Baal worship, of course, goes all the way back to ancient Babylon. After the fall of Babylon to the Medo-Persian Empire and the destruction of its temples, the high priest of the Babylonian religion, fled with his initiates and their sacred vessels and images, and guess where they came? They came to Pergamos, where the symbol of the serpent was set up as the emblem of, quote, the hidden wisdom. Folks, that’s a lot of what we’re hearing in New Age occultic thinking today. But interesting, they crossed the sea from Pergamos and actually came to Italy, and this ancient cult from Babylon was propagated under the name of the Etruscan Mysteries. And eventually, Rome becomes the headquarters of the ancient religion of Babylon. The high priest took the title of Pontifex Maximus. For those of you who are history buffs, you should remember that Julius Caesar was one of them and was actually elected to the position of high priest of the Babylonian cult. All of the Roman emperors from Augustine clear to Constantine took the title and held the title Pontifex Maximus, supreme pontiff. It comes right out of the Babylonian religion. Very fascinating to me that when Rome finally fell to the Visigoths around 476 AD, it was sacked and burned, but actually it probably fell morally and from a standpoint of its strength as an empire, it collapsed in its will to resist probably many years before. But we kind of date the fall of Rome about 476 AD. From the fall of Rome by the barbaric tribes, it’s very interesting what happened to the church. Rome had already begun, because it was the seat of the imperial government, to exercise a lot of influence over other churches. For instance, in my library, I have a document dealing with a bishop of Antioch in Assyria about 110 AD who writes the bishop of Rome accusing him of trying to assume authority that the Bible never gave to him. That was back in 110 AD, just probably 15, 20 years after John. But by the time Rome politically fell, very interesting, there were some monks at a monastery, literally at Haifa Israel, who were also directly tracing themselves to the Babylonian religion that went all the way back to Babylon, who, through their ingenious plans, got one of their members to become the bishop of Rome, Damasus. And he was the first one to take the title that all these Roman emperors had had, Supreme Pontiff. Now we have a pastor of Rome, in the city of Rome, being called Supreme Pontiff. And I don’t need to tell you much more. It continued throughout history, even to the present day. So what you have happening here at Pergamos is vitally related, not only to what you read in the Old Testament about Baal worship, but goes all the way back to the Babylonian religion. And imagine being a Christian at the time John wrote this letter to this church. Imagine being there in the midst of all this Satanism. Satan’s throne is here, he said. I was up in Canada and ran into a terrible situation of Satanists Many of them who used to center their efforts in San Francisco moved up to Vancouver Island and began to cause a lot of havoc in British Columbia, the western providence of Canada. And in one particular town called Abbotsford, which is near the United States border, there are some powerful churches, strong churches. And the Satanists literally targeted that city. And they set up little covens in the shape of a pentagram all over that city of Abbotsford and began to pray for the destruction and failure of all these churches, for division, for strife, and for the fall of their leaders. And in a year’s period of time that they were involved, all the three major churches experienced the most amazing divisions in their church. They were all in absolute shock. Satan’s throne is here, he said. He’s working uniquely in the world to the Babylonian religion. Isn’t it interesting in the book of Revelation chapter 17 that it says of the woman who sits on this beast that represents the empires and kings and nations of the world that we’ll be describing later. Isn’t it interesting that the woman is called Babylon the Great, mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. Is that not interesting? My dear friends, this whole thing is tied together in a way that I think a lot of us don’t even want to hear or listen to or get close to. It’s very, very occultic, very, very dangerous, but it goes on and it goes on today.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s Bible teacher and author David Hawking, and this is Hope for Today. David’s back in just a moment to close out our time, so do stay with us. First, Matt’s here, and together we’re going to tell you about this month’s special Bible study resource.
SPEAKER 01 :
Western culture is working furiously to abandon democratic principles and moral values. We no longer seem capable of controlling ourselves in our pursuits of pleasure and material gain. The good life, Matt. Yeah. The good life has brought corruption, greed, and self-destructive narcissism. You know, Jim, we talk of human rights, but care little for the innocent and plenty of talk, but little true compassion and care. The sanctity of life. Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
is sacrificed on the altar of convenience, career, and license. The rights and privacy of the individual seem more important than our responsibilities to one another and our desire to work for the common good.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, I mean, whatever happened to words like duty, altruism, responsibility, accountability, and concern for others? I mean, why do crime and violent acts flourish in our cities And our police departments seem helpless in their efforts to control the rampage. All right. Our news sources.
SPEAKER 02 :
Matt, this is something that is close to my heart because for years, as you know, I had classes in journalism. I was on the school newspaper. And it was impressed upon us repeatedly to maintain the highest level of honesty and integrity in reporting. And today… Our news sources so often lack integrity, to say the least.
SPEAKER 01 :
Entertainment outlets glorify evil as good and good as evil. The most tragic of all, Jim, is that we’ve left God out of our public life. We’ve decided that the so-called political doctrine of separation of church and state means people of faith stay out of government. But government can intrude on our beliefs and practices.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, we need a moral and spiritual revival. Do indeed. Well, this month, folks, we have a powerful and encouraging way to say thanks for your most generous contribution of $20 more. Yeah, it’s my dad’s book, Whatever Happened to Morality. Great book it is. Inside, your dad takes us into the word and history for answers, encouragement. This book is so hard to put down. And your donation today is a ministry investment in the future work of Hope for Today.
SPEAKER 01 :
And as always, please do pray for Hope for Today.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, yes, we do cover your prayers. They are quite literally the wind in our sails when it comes to being able to withstand the attacks of the enemy as we seek to continue doing the work that God has called us to do. And if you’re praying for us and if you’re contributing to this ministry, you also are a part of that work. Oh, and before I forget to mention, if you’re tracking with us through this powerful series in Revelation, well, you owe it to yourself to pick up David’s complete message outlines and study notes. Now, these are notes, outlines for all 48 messages in the series, packed with scripture references, cross-references, historical context, definitions, and deep biblical insight to help you go even further and faster in the series. They’re just $10 for the complete pack in print or download form. And you can order by phone, calling us at 1-800-75-BIBLE in the U.S. or 888-75-BIBLE in Canada. Bible is 24253. Or visit davidhawking.org, make the purchase, download them, you’ll have them right away. If you’d like to drop us a quick note to ask for prayer, we’re here for you for that. You can also share a testimony or maybe even send a contribution. And you can do that by mail at Hope for Today, Box 3927, Tustin, California. 92781. In Canada, write to Hope for Today, Box 15011, RPO Seven Oaks, Abbotsford, BC, V2S 8P1, or contribute at davidhawking.org. Here again is David.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed our beginning study of the church at Pergamos. Boy, it was a mess. And I’ve been there, and I can tell you why. And that’s what we’re going to teach on the broadcast. So you’ll want to have a part of this in your heart, because the Lord has a few things against this church. They were compromising tremendously. They had the doctrine of what’s called the Nicolaitans, and it says, which thing I hate. Imagine! And God calls out to these people at Pergamos and says, repent, or I’ll come quickly and I’ll fight against you with the sword of my mouth. Well, there’s a lot here, and we’re going to be getting into that study. If you haven’t found any of our booklets lately, here’s one. Israel in the last days. You know, In that booklet in Israel, it’s a lengthy one, but only $5. It lists you 26 things about Israel that’s coming in the last days. You’ll want to get a copy of it. Study along with us these extra materials because they will really help you as you study the book of Revelation with us every day on Hope for Today radio broadcasts.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, thank you, David. And friend, you can get your copy of the booklet David just mentioned called Israel in the Last Days by phone, if you like, at 875-BIBLE, that’s in the U.S., or 888-75-BIBLE in Canada. You can also see the book and order it at davidhawking.org, and the price, just $5. You might even consider ordering a few copies to share with friends, especially considering all that we see going on in Israel in recent days, right? Well, tomorrow on the broadcast, David takes us deep into the city that Jesus called the place where Satan dwells. It’s a warning to any church that makes room for compromise or starts to look more like the culture than Christ. What happened in Pergamos and why does it matter right now? Well, you’ll find out next time right here on Hope for Today.
Join us as we journey into Pergamos, a city where the throne of Satan was said to dwell. Through a captivating historical and biblical lens, David Hawking presents an insightful discourse on the challenges faced by the early church. From the symbolic sharp sword of the Messiah to the cultural and religious dynamics of the era, this episode is a powerful reminder of the ever-present threat of compromise in a believer’s life. Discover how these ancient messages remain deeply relevant for today’s church.
