This City in Revelation Is Satan's Actual Home Base (Not What You Think)

There's a city in the ancient world that Jesus called the throne of Satan. It wasn't a battlefield. It wasn't an outpost. It was a throne, the headquarters. It was the epicenter of demonic activity on planet Earth. And inside that same city, there was a church trying to survive. But here's what makes this letter to the church so urgent for us today. The greatest danger they faced was not coming from the outside. It was coming from inside the church walls, from their own teachers, from their own pastors, from their own doctrine. And what those teachers were saying, I need you to hear this, is almost word for word what the culture says to us today. If you think the battle we're fighting is against ancient Rome, you haven't been paying attention to the world and what's happening now. Welcome back to Get Into the Word. My name is Robbie Gallaty. We're working through the seven letters to the seven churches in Revelation. Today, we come to the third letter to the church of Pergamum. And before we get into a single word of what Jesus said to that church, I need to take you to the city itself. Because once you see Pergamum, actually, for what it looked like, how it was built, the kind of worship that was happening between those city walls, the words of Jesus are going to land with a weight that you're not going to forget. Pergamum was a city that was built dramatically on a hill that towered the surrounding landscape. It was the culture and religious capital of the ancient world. It was home to the second largest library in all of the ancient world, second only to Alexandria in Egypt. They had 200, this is crazy, 200,000 parchment scrolls in that library. The word parchment actually comes, believe it or not, from the word Pergamum. This was a city of ideas. It was a city of philosophy, of intellect, religion, and raw imperial power. And everywhere you looked, there was a temple.

In 29 BC, Pergamum became the first city in the ancient Roman world to construct a temple to worship a living Caesar, Caesar Augustus. Think about it this way. Before this time in history, temples were only built to the gods. And now a human being, the emperor himself, was being worshiped as savior and lord. Two more temples to other emperors would soon follow. One on the hills stood this enormous temple to Zeus. Zeus was called the king of all the gods. And he was also called, believe it or not, the savior. His altar protruded about 800 feet over the road below. So people would walk by and see this enormous structure. Every person that went through the city lived in the shadow of that altar. But the most significant temple in the city, the one that matters really for the understanding of our text and the letter, was the temple of Asclepius. Asclepius was the god of healing. And his identifying symbol, believe it or not, was the serpent. Now you may actually recognize this symbol, I'll pull it up now, because it appears in virtually every doctor's office in America. We see it on hospital signs. We see it on medical logos today. The symbol, believe it or not, has survived for 2,000 years. And here's what happened inside that temple. Sick people would come from all over the region, seeking healing. They were allowed to spend the night in the temple, on the floor, lying in complete darkness. Then in the temple, there were—this is crazy— tame, non-venomous snakes that would slither around the floor. And during the night, if one of those snakes glided across the floor

and made contact with the person sleeping, the touch of the snake was considered to heal them. The god himself was bringing healing to the person. And that touch was believed to bring not only healing, but salvation. Now let that sink in for a moment. What creature deceived Adam and Eve in the garden? It was a serpent. What animal did Satan inhabit to pull humanity away from what God told them in Genesis 3? It was the serpent. And here, in the most influential city in all of Asia Minor, thousands of people are lying on the floor of a darkened room, waiting for a serpent to touch them and calling it salvation. Is it any wonder Jesus calls this very place the throne of Satan? Pergamum was spiritually suffocating from every direction. There was imperial worship. There was the altar of Zeus. There was the serpent temple of Asclepius. There was the temple of Dionysus, Athena, and Dementor, or Demeter. You cannot walk through this city without being surrounded by all of these false counterfeit saviors, counterfeit healings on one hand, spiritual deception on the other. I grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, and I was raised going to Mardi Gras. I remember as a teenager, and a young adult going down Bourbon Street. And if you've ever been to the city as a believer, you know what I'm about to say. You can actually feel the darkness of the city, the heaviness. There's a spiritual weight of everything

that moves in that place. The sex, there's drugs, alcohol, voodoo, if you will. And it's not just morally dark, it's spiritually dark in a real tangible way. You can sense it while you're there. Pergamum was like that, only amplified. Across an entire city, and right in the middle of all of it, is a church trying to stay alive. Now let's get into the letter, and I want you to see what John is saying in Revelation chapter two, verse 12. He says, right to the angel of the church of Pergamum. Thus says the one who has the sharp, double-edged sword, I know where you live, where Satan's throne is. Yet you are holding on to my name, and did not deny your faith in me, even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death among you, where Satan lives or dwells. But I have a few things against you, and you have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam. Now that will come into play in a moment. Who taught Balak to place a stumbling block in front of the Israelites, to eat meat sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual immorality? In the same way, you also have those who hold to the teachings of the Nicolaitans, so repent. Otherwise, I will come to you quickly and fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

As with every letter written to the churches, there is a commendation at the beginning, and it's real, and I don't wanna walk past this. Jesus sees what this church is doing. They're living in the most spiritually hostile city on earth, and they have not denied his name. They haven't turned their back on him. And a man named Antipas was killed even for his faith in Jesus. He was martyred right there in that city, and the church does not fold. It doesn't recant, it doesn't compromise, it doesn't shrink back under the pressure, and that's the kind of courage most of us, unfortunately or fortunately, will never be tested in to serve and to prove that we love Jesus as we say what we do. But then Jesus says, I have a few things against you, and he points to two specific teachings here that have crept into that church and honestly crept into the church today. And it's not from the pagan culture outside, but from the false teachers on the inside of that congregation. Two doctrines were being taught, and they were being taught in the churches on the inside. He mentions first Balaam, and we said this to take a note of this, but that is a nod to the Old Testament. It's a red flag.

Balaam, if you remember, was a false prophet in the book of Numbers, and he was hired by a king named Balak to curse Israel, but he couldn't do it because God wouldn't allow it. So Balaam came up with a different strategy. He advised Balak, and he says, don't attack from the outside. You're never gonna win that battle. Get the people to compromise from the inside. Get them to sit around tables with idle worship. Get them to engage in sexual immorality. Let their own appetites do the work for you, and what happened? It worked, and Jesus is saying the same strategy is working on us today right now. Here's what I want you to understand before we go any further in the text, because this is the most important sequence in the entire letter. The church of Pergamum survived external attacks. They could not survive, though, internal compromise. They held fast to Antipas, who was killed. They didn't bend under the weight of spiritual oppression in a city that was evil. External attacks could not break them, but the enemy decided to get a teacher inside the room, and that teacher began to slowly, systematically, convincingly blur the lines between what God had said and what the culture was offering, and that is a warning for every single person

who is watching this video right now. The greatest spiritual danger we face is not gonna come outside of our homes. It's not gonna come from outside of where we live. It's going to come from inside our hearts, through ideas that we let in, through the media we consume, through the music we listen to, to the news we allow in our mind, through the compromises that we've convinced ourselves don't really add up to anything, but they actually do. Jesus identifies two areas that the false teachers had infected the church with. The first was idolatry at the table. The second one was immorality in the bedroom. Let's take the first one, and before we assume that these are purely ancient problems, let me show you exactly how these are alive and well today in the world. We'll start with the table. You might wonder why eating food sacrificed to idols was such a serious issue. I mean, look at it. It's a piece of carved wood or stone. There's nothing in there. It's just an object. What's the spiritual harm, you may think, in attending a festival meal that happens to honor a God that you don't even believe exists? But here's what you have to understand

about the ancient world. Eating and drinking at someone's table was never a neutral act. It was never neutral. In fact, in the first century, table fellowship was a covenant bond of affirmation. The Gentile world believed that the gods were actually present at the table during those festival meals. To eat there, in a sense, was a form of spiritual alliance with whatever being was being worshiped. Even if you didn't believe it, it was present there with them. It was never just about food. Don't miss this. It was an act of allegiance, an act of acceptance. And here's why this matters today. Anytime you and I participate, genuinely participate, in something that aligns spiritually with something that opposes God, it's never neutral. It always has an effect on our soul. And the question is whether we're honest enough to even acknowledge it. Because we think, oh, it's not hurting us. I'm just going to a bar. I'm just getting drunk. I'm just going to something that is anti-Christ. No, our culture is increasingly pressuring Christians to show up at tables that are in direct opposition

to what scripture actually teaches. And the argument's always the same. What's the harm, really? I mean, everybody else is doing it. Don't be so rigid. Don't be so legalistic. Well, Jesus' answer to that argument is not a soft one. Here's what he says. Repent, because you are a spiritual being that is having a human experience. Don't miss this. You're not a human being having a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being having a human experience on earth. The battles you and I fight are not ultimately in the natural world we can see. They're in a spiritual realm most people have trained themselves, sadly, to ignore. If you don't believe you're in a spiritual battle, you've already lost the battle. Here's the second area that's important to address, sexual immorality. And the specific false teaching driving it was this. Since you're a born-again believer, you're free from the law. Your body's not sacred, only your soul matters. Your soul's the only thing that matters, so do what you want with your body. Don't let anyone tell you what to do with your body. Your body, your choice. Sound familiar?

It's not an ancient heresy. That's our modern culture, almost word for word. The only difference is in the packaging. And the Church of Pergamum was buying it hook, line, and sinker. Here's the truth false teachers were distorting. They were saying that our bodies and souls were separate, which they're not. They're actually unified. God created you as one, designed by God as a function, together, 1 Corinthians 6, 18. Every sin, whatever a person commits, is outside the body. But the sexually immoral person sins, don't miss this, against his own body. Sexual sin is like drinking poison for the soul. There's no other sin that damages a person like sexual sin. And here's why. When two people become sexually intimate, it's not merely a physical transaction. Their souls are fused together. There's an emotional, spiritual, relational bond that is forming. Whether they intend to or not, that's what's happening. And when that relationship ends, you're not just ending a relationship, you're ripping two souls apart. Whenever you rip something apart, that produces a wound. And wounds, if they're not treated and healed properly, produce scar tissue. A scar has no feeling.

You stop to feel the pain because there's a scar. You can't feel it anymore because there's no healthy tissue. And some of you know exactly what I'm describing. Because you've had a hardness in your heart toward intimacy, and you know this, toward vulnerability, toward closeness with another person. And you can't fully trace where it came from, but I'm here to tell you, it came from a wound that healed over badly. Let me give you one more picture of what sexual sin does to the soul. I preached this message years ago, and I brought a whiteboard on stage to demonstrate to the congregation what happened in one of my discipleship groups. I was teaching on the board, and one of my dry erase markers ran out. So I went to a cup on the table, and I pulled one out. I didn't really look at it, pulled the top off, and I started writing on the board. A few minutes later, I tried to erase what I had drawn, and it wouldn't come off. And it was at that moment, I was in shock, because I realized, looking at the marker, it was a permanent marker. I grabbed the wrong one. Come in close. That is exactly what sexual sin does. It doesn't just wipe clean. It leaves a mark.

It sets. And the only thing powerful enough to remove a permanent marker. Mark is something stronger than the ink itself. Let me direct you to what I'm talking about today. Let me make it practical. If you're dating someone and you've already been sexually active with them, let me encourage you right now, stop and repent. Pursue purity before God, together with that person or separately. If you're in an adulterous relationship outside of your marriage, stop, repent. Walk away today, not tomorrow. If you've engaged in sexual sin, guard what you have. It is worth more than what the culture is lying to you about. And finally, if you're losing a private battle to pornography or sexual addiction, you do not have to fight it alone. At Long Hollow, the church I pastor, we have groups specifically to help people battling pornography called Freedom Fight Groups. If you're interested, you can email or you can look online at longhollow.com forward slash freedom. There are people who are watching right now who know exactly what I'm talking about and you're carrying this shame and you don't have to do it any longer.

Now I wanna show you something in the closing verse of this letter that is probably one of the most beautifully crafted details in all of the book of Revelation. And you can only see it when you understand the historical context. So let's go back to Revelation chapter two, verse 16 and 17. Jesus says, repent or I will come quickly and I will come with a sword in my mouth. Let anyone who has ears to hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will give some of the hidden manna. That's interesting. I will also give him a white stone and on that stone, a new name. And it is inscribed with a name that no one except the person receiving it understands. It's inscribed that no one knows except the one who receives it. There are two sins that I mentioned earlier. Idolatry at the table, immorality that scarred the soul. And Jesus gives two rewards that correspond directly, intentionally, perfectly, not by accident, to each of those sins. For the sin of eating at the wrong table, Jesus offers hidden manna. What is he saying here? You're gonna love this.

I offer better food, a better table, a feast that actually satisfies, not leaving you wanting more afterward. For the sin that scarred the soul, Jesus offers a white stone with a new name, purity, a new identity, a clean record written in the hand of Jesus Christ himself. Can I get an amen? So let me walk you through both of them. The hidden manna is one connection that draws our attention back to Exodus 16. You remember the story. When God fed Israel in the wilderness, every morning they would wake up, there was manna that appeared on the ground. Miraculous bread, if you will, from heaven. But there's also a connection to John chapter six when Jesus gets up at the Feast of Tabernacles and says, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. What Jesus is saying to the church at Pergamum and to us today, I think, is why are you feeding at lesser tables? Why are you filling your soul with counterfeit bread that can never satisfy? When the table I presented is right in front of you. This is not an ancient question. I wanna ask you, where are you feeding right now? What are you consuming every day,

spiritually, emotionally, mentally, to fill the hunger in your soul? Because you're always feeding somewhere. The only question is whether you're feeding at Jesus's table or a poor substitute. Now the white stone, this is the most interesting detail that most commentators miss because they don't understand the local context of Pergamum. I wanna take you back to the Temple of Asclepius on the hillside. When someone believed they had received the healing in the temple, supposedly touched by that serpent in the darkness through a god, they would report it to the priest. And at that point, the priest would take a white stone and on that stone, he would inscribe a person's name and what they had been healed from, in a sense. So it's a testimony of the healing, a testimony, if you will, of salvation from a false god. Those white stones were displayed publicly in the courtyard of the temple for all to see, whoever came to the city. Just a side note, I went to Turkey a couple years ago and took a group there and we actually saw these stones. It's crazy to see this in person. What Jesus does here is he takes the exact cultural symbol, the white stone of a false healer, and he redeems it entirely. To the one who repents, he says,

who turns away from immorality and idolatry, Jesus will write, you're gonna love this, a new name on a white stone of his own. Not in the words of the priest of Asclepius, not from a serpent god who can't heal, no, from the Holy One, the true one. the one who is actually the great physician himself. And here is what undoes me about this promise. He gives us a new name, a private name. No one knows the name except the one who receives it. It's not a public proclamation. It's a personal word from Jesus himself to you about who you actually are in him. Not the name the enemy's been calling you. Somebody needs to hear this. Not the label that the past has stuck on you. Not the identity built on the worst moments of your life. No, a new name. Only one you and he share. The only power strong enough to remove a permanent stain on one's soul is the blood of Jesus applied to the doorpost of our heart through general or genuine repentance. Not general, but genuine repentance. When you repent, when you actually turn from your sin, Jesus doesn't just erase the old record. You're gonna love this. He writes over it. He gives you a new identity entirely. You're no longer defined by what you did in the past.

In Christ, you and I are sons and daughters of God. We are joint heirs with Jesus. We are citizens of the kingdom of heaven, and we have a father who is a king, and let me tell you, that king owns everything. This is not a metaphor, folks. This is our inheritance. Satan has been running the same play since the garden. He doesn't play nice. He always attacks below the belt, and he always attacks not just from the outside, but he tries to compromise us from the inside. He doesn't need to persecute you if he can get you to be comfortable. He doesn't need to destroy you if he can keep you distracted, sitting at the wrong table, convinced that the small compromises of life don't add up, which they actually do. The church of Pergamum survived the altar of Zeus and the death of Antipas, but they were being hollowed out from within by a theology taught to them that the body didn't matter, that the table didn't matter, that God's standards were negotiable some way. There are only two options in this letter, and Jesus gives them right at the same time, repentance or ruin. You can repent or you can be ruined, and God always gives us the chance to choose repentance right now.

We don't have to hide for him to expose us. The sword of his mouth is sharp. You have to understand this, but his grace is deep, and right now in this moment, he is offering you that grace to accept, so let me encourage you. Take it now. If this video helped you see something new in God's word, do me a favor. Would you share it with someone right now? This really helps us get the channel out there, and if you haven't subscribed, make sure you hit that subscribe button and the bell so you don't miss another episode in the days ahead. Until next time, get into the word, and to the word gets into you.