Revelation 2:12

Revelation 2:12. The third church addressed is that of Pergamos, now generally written Pergamum, a city which, in every thing except commerce, rivalled the most celebrated cities of Asia at the time. Without in any degree attempting to trace its history, which in no way concerns us here, it may simply be remarked that in the apostolic age Pergamos was especially noted for its worship of AEsculapius the god of medicine. With the genuine pursuit of medicine, however, there was then mixed up a great variety of other inquiries, which, dealing with the secret springs of life, and with drugs, philters, and potions, whose methods of operation no one could explain, invested the healing art with an air of impenetrable mystery. Licentiousness and wickedness of every kind were the inevitable result. Add to all this the temptations of wealth, learning, and art, together with an apparently indiscriminate worship of many deities, and we need not be surprised that Satan had at Pergamos an almost peculiar seat, and that what the Old Testament condemns under the name of witchcraft or attempts to traffic with any spirit, however evil, in order to obtain knowledge or gratify desire was more than ordinarily prevalent among the inhabitants of the city.

Again, as before, we meet first of all a description of Him from whom the Epistle comes. It is taken from chap. Revelation 1:16. Two only of the three characteristics there mentioned of the sword are here referred to, but it will be observed that the third meets us in Revelation 2:16, an illustration of that style of the Apocalypse which leads it to scatter its details of the same object in different parts of the book, so that we have often to bring them together from great distances before we learn to know the object as a whole.