I am privileged to teach a group of ladies on Tuesday mornings about New Testament geography. One of the greatest blessings in my life has been the places I have been able to travel – my favorites being those places that hold Biblical significance. This past Tuesday, we talked about one of my favorite places, Pergamum. Visiting this ancient site was amazing! The ruins are remarkable! The magnitude, the steepness of the acropolis. Everything about the ancient site is breathtaking.

More remarkable, though, is all that our first century brothers and sisters endured while living in this city. Pergamum was the home of the first imperial cult temple in Asia (29BC). That means that Pergamum was bestowed (by Rome) the great honor of being able to build a temple where the citizens could worship the Roman emperor and the empire itself. During that time period, the Roman emperors often referred to themselves as lord, savior, god, and creator. They demanded worship from their subjects, and failure to do so looked a lot like the Daniel/Nebuchadnezzar scene from Daniel 3.

When we come to Revelation 2, we read about a congregation in Pergamum who have seen one of their own die for the cause of Christ. Antipas is named as a “faithful martyr,” likely being murdered because of his loyalty to Christ instead of holding the Roman emperor in the (improper) place of God. Imagine you are one of the Christians left alive in Pergamum after that. What would be your response? Would you be afraid for your own life or the life of your family? Would you be emboldened to speak out for Jesus? Would you teach publicly? Would you openly confess Jesus’ name?

We don’t live in a country (yet) where we are made to bow down and worship our leaders. Yes, our Christian values are being encroached. There are times when the government tries to stifle our voices and keep God out of things (as if humans could really keep God out of anything!). But at this point, we don’t know persecution like the Pergamene people, or any of our first century brothers and sisters. That is why we must be continually prayerful about how our hearts will respond should that day come. Should America be invaded by foreign nations who do not know or respect God…should America be overtaken by our own countrymen who do not honor and respect God…we must be prayerful that we will be a people who will stand boldly in the face of persecution. Even if it means death (Rev. 2:10), may we people who are always on the Lord’s side, the One who holds the double-edged sword and is more powerful than any government or monarch our temporal world will ever know!

We have been blessed with a lack of persecution, but maybe that’s just what the church needs to wake us up and help us grow and thrive. Let us all be prayerful that whatever the future holds, we will be a good representation of God’s people. A people who are willing to share in the sufferings of not only our perfect example Jesus Christ, but also a people who are willing to suffer just as our first century brethren did – by beast and being sawn in two and burned alive (Heb.11). We are just a few in a long line of God’s people. Let us live in such a way that the world is not worthy of us (Hebrews 11:38)!

And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us,
that they should not be made perfect apart from us (Hebrews 11:39-40).