Revelation 2:13

Revelation 2:13. As in the Epistle to Smyrna, the words ‘thy works' do not belong to the true text Three particulars in the state of the church are noted; (1) Its outward position. It dwelt where Satan's throne is. The word used is not ‘seat,' but distinctly and intentionally ‘throne' (comp. Psalms 94:20), the purpose of the writer being to contrast the throne of Satan with the throne of God, of which it is the evil and mocking counterpart, and thus to point with peculiar emphasis to the temptations and dangers which the Christians of Pergamos had to encounter. Very different opinions have been entertained with regard to the reasons which may have determined the Lord of the Church to describe Pergamos by this language. Some have traced it to the circumstance that the chief worship of the place was that of AEsculapius, and that the symbol of that divinity was a serpent. The explanation is fanciful. Others have attributed it to the idea that Pergamos was more given over to idolatry than other cities. There is no proof that such was the case. Others, again, have sought an explanation in the fact that Pergamos was under the Roman power, and that thus, representing the heathen persecutors of the Church, it might be said with more than ordinary force to hold the throne of Satan. This explanation also fails, for Satan is in the Apocalypse distinguished from the world-power. The true explanation seems to be that of one of the oldest commentators on the Apocalypse, that in Pergamos persecution first culminated, reaching even to the shedding of Christian blood. In Revelation 2:10 Satan had persecuted to the point of imprisonment; here he kills; and the repetition of the closing words of the verse, where Satan dwelleth, in immediate connection with the putting of Antipas to death, is obviously designed to associate the thought of Satan's dwelling-place with the thought of this last extremity of his rage. In a city, where science itself was the very pillar of witchcraft and idolatry, Satan had been enabled to put forth against the bodies of the Christians every evil which envy at their souls' escape from him suggested. He had been permitted even to reign over their bodily life; for, whereas he had once been commanded to spare the life of Job, he had now succeeded in putting Antipas to death. Even in such a city, however, the church had been found faithful, for it is said to it, (2) Thou boldest fast My name. The word ‘name' is used here, as elsewhere in the writings of St. John, for the fulness of that revelation of the Father which is given in the Son; and the use of the verb ‘hold fast' instead of the simple ‘have,' may be determined, as in chap, Revelation 3:11, by the peculiar difficulties of the situation in which the church was placed. At the same time, it is the answer of faith to the ‘holding fast' predicated of Jesus in Revelation 2:1. (3) And didst not deny my faith, not the confession of Christ's faith, but faith of which Jesus was Himself the direct object and the substance. The mention of this faith is made still more emphatic by the fact that it had been maintained even in days when persecution reached to death. Who the Antipas spoken of was it is impossible to say, any notice of him in the martyrologies being founded on this passage. There is even a high probability, when we consider the general structure of the Apocalypse, that there was no such person. The name may be symbolical, although it is at once to be allowed that every attempt hitherto made to point out its symbolical signification has failed.