Pergamum: Theology Matters

Jeff Garrison
Mayberry & Bluemont Churches
June 1, 2025
Revelation 2:12-17

At the beginning of worship: 

In the late 1990s, I was a pastor in Utah. Dave who pastored the church in Sandy, Utah served as a commissioner to the General Assembly. In a heat of debate, Dave stood up and made a bold statement. Identifying the culture in which we ministered, he proclaimed, “Theology matters.” It became a rallying cry for a few years within the denomination. Occasionally, I still hear someone cite it.^[1] Theology does matter. Not as much as love as we saw with our visit to Ephesus, but our ability to articulate our faith is important as we’ll see this morning.

Before reading Scripture: 

We’re going to move inland a bit in our journey through the ancient world of Asia Minor this morning as we work through the opening chapters of Revelation. As you remember, we started out in Ephesus, a glorious city along the coast with a quarter million residents. The Ephesian church hated false doctrine, but in their hate, they lost their love. Next, last week, we moved up the coast to the city of Smyrna. A longtime ally of Rome, Smyrna worshipped Caesar. A rich city with poor Christians. Yet, they remained faithful.

Today we move to Pergamum. From Smyrna, the road follows the coastline northwestwardly for about forty miles, and then you take a turn inland. There, about ten miles from the Aegean Sea, on a cone shaped hill, is the magnificent city of Pergamum. One ancient writer considered this to be the “most distinguished city in Asia.”^[2] Let’s hear what Christ says to them. 

Read Revelation 2:12-17

Pergamum, like Smyrna, was a center of emperor worship. As we saw last week, Smyrna built the first temple to a Roman god. Pergamum had the distinction to build the first to an emperor. In the year 29, they received permission to erect a temple to Augustus. Caesar Augustus, as Luke’s gospel reminds us, ruled the Empire when Jesus was born.^[3]

Pergamum also contains Satan’s throne. Possibility, this refers metaphorically to Caesar’s temple. Or, the fact pagan shrines covered the city 

Residents of the city were expected to go to Caesar’s temple and proclaim Caesar as Lord. Now to the Romans and to Caesar, this didn’t preclude the worship of other gods. After all, after paying homage to Caesar, they could also worship Zeus just down the street. Religious pluralism was the name of the game. You just had to first be willing to pledge your allegiance to Caesar.  

The city had a temple for Zeus, that offered sacrificed animals 24/7. The smoke from these offerings could be continually seen curling up to sky, reminding you of the importance of Zeus in the ancient world.^[4] It also had temples for Asclepius, the god of healing. His symbol was a snake, like that on the symbol for medical doctors.^[5]

All these temples created a problem for Christians who proclaimed Jesus to be Lord. As John reminds us, “Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”^[6] And mostly, it sounds as if those in Pergamum insisted on worshipping only God as revealed in Jesus Christ. One of their members we learn became an early martyr. Antipas, the only martyr mentioned by name in Revelation, died here.^[7] For their faithfulness, those living in Pergamum are commended. But Jesus does have a bone to pick with them.

Although the congregation refused to show allegiance to other gods, they have tolerated heretical teachings. In a way, they are the opposite of the Ephesians. We’re told that they listen to the teaching of Balaam and Nicolaitans. We must go back to the book of Numbers, in the Old Testament, to learn what Balaam was up to. He was a foreign seer, who practiced what we’d call witchcraft. The king of Moab hired him to curse the Hebrew nation. God turned the tables on Balaam, and he blesses Israel. Later, however, Jewish theologians came to see Balaam as the father of religious syncretism, or the blending of religions.^[8]

In the Old Testament, not being faithful to God was metaphorically referred to as adultery. The analogy makes sense. One compromises one’s heart by adopting the practice or the worship of another faith. While it appears the church in Pergamum had been faithful, there were those in the church proposing they compromise their beliefs a bit. “Let’s burn a little incense for Caesar,” they may have suggested. “Then we’ll all get along better.” Jesus will have none of this. If they don’t repent, he’s going to be the one who fights against them.

But if they do repent, Jesus has a wonderful promise. He’ll give them the “hidden manna,” and a “white stone.” There are questions about what this means.  One plausible interpretation, that ties the stone and manna together to the heavenly banquet, is that the stone was like similar engraved stones used by the Romans as a token admission to a banquet. Similar stones may have also be presented to the poor so they might trade the stone for food.^[9] This is kind of like a coupon some cities have that allow the homeless to buy food. 

If the Christians in Pergamum repent, Jesus offers to invite them to the heavenly banquet. That’s a promise! So keep your eyes on Jesus.

Now, I don’t lay awake at night and worry about you all going off and worshipping Caesar or Zeus or any pagan deity. However, even today the world tugs at us to change what we hold true so that it will be more palatable to the larger world. And in a way, we’re all guilty. Just as we’re probably all guilty of coming down harder on the sins we’re less likely to commit and ignoring those sins with which we struggle.

After all, how many sermons do you hear on the dangers of materialism in America, which is one of our great idols?  From this passage, we learn that what we believe is important. It has consequences. Believing the wrong things may lead us down the wrong path. Wrong beliefs we’ll cause us to create false illusions about what is right and good and noble. Believing in the wrong things causes us to do things which go counter to the gospel. 

This is a hard message for a society like ours which values pluralism and with some who may suggest there’s no bad ideas. That’s a myth; there are plenty of bad ideas.^[10] Think about how ideas of a superior race have led to all kinds of atrocities. It supported our ancestors’ dealings with native populations, to slavery, to the Nazi holocaust, to attacks on Israel and genocide-like policies in Gaza, to Russian continual attacks on the civilians in Ukraine and so forth. Bad ideas abound. The church must stand firm in our truth, Jesus Christ, and resist temptations to compromise our beliefs just so that it is less offensive to parts of the world.  

The late Catholic Bishop Fulton Sheen once said that “tolerance is for people, not for ideas.”^[11] We’re to love and to be gracious to all people, even those with who we disagree, but we must hold firm to the principles of our faith. This is why tradition is not only important in the church, but also necessary. For we aren’t the first generation of Christians called to be relevant to the larger world. Without tradition, without theological grounding, we’re liable to be blown about, and in our attempts to be relevant, we become irrelevant.^[12] Don’t get me wrong. Tradition should not hold us back. It should, “bear fruit” as it builds on the “achievements of the past.”^[13]

The bottom line of what we learn from this passage is that theology matters. What we believe is important for it helps shape how we respond to the world around us. Amen.  

This sermon was modified from one I preached at First Presbyterian Church of Hastings in 2007.

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^[1] This phrase was used by David Gilbert, a pastor in Sandy, Utah who recently retired from Tazwell, Virginia.  

^[2] Quote and description of Pergamum from Robert Mounce, The Book of Revelation, revised, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 78-79. Pliny was the one who considered Pergamum to be most distinguished.

^[3] Luke 2:1.

^[4] Bruce M. Metzger, Breaking the Code: Understanding the Book of Revelation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), 34.

^[5] Metzger, 34-35. 

^[6] John 14:6

^[7] The New Interpreter’s Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003), 2217, footnote for Revelation 2:14.  While Revelation speaks of many martyrs, Antipas is the only one mentioned by name. 

^[8] Numbers 22-25, for an explanation see G. B. Caird, The Revelation of St. John the Divine (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 38-41.

^[9] Mounce, 82-3.

^[10] I am indebted here to Craig Barnes 2004 installation address as the Robert Meneilly Professor of Leadership and Ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.  

^[11] As quoted in a sermon on January 21, 2007 by Dr. Vic Pentz, Peachtree Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, GA.

^[12] See Ephesians 4:14.

^[13] The quote, given to me by Don Drummond. Source: Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Ronald S. Miller, Aging to Saging, who quoted from Robert Augros and George Stanciu, The New Story of Science.