Introduction
The message to Pergamos is like being served a plate you’d rather avoid, something hard to swallow, yet meant for your good. In this letter Jesus speaks tenderly and firmly to a real congregation living in a spiritually hostile place, and He exposes how compromise seeps in when believers try to “go along to get along.” Revelation’s outline helps us keep our bearings: John was told to write what he had seen (the glorified Christ), what is (the present condition of the churches through these seven letters), and what will take place after this (Revelation 1:19). The letter to Pergamos belongs to “the things which are,” yet it reaches beyond its first-century setting. It addressed that local church in John’s day, it instructs the church across time, including us personally, and it also appears to correspond in a broad way to phases of church history.
Module Content
John is instructed: “To the angel of the church in Pergamos write…” (Revelation 2:12). Jesus introduces Himself in a way that already signals both diagnosis and cure: He is the One “who has the sharp two-edged sword.” The church’s hope in a compromising culture is not cleverness, political strength, or social acceptance, but the penetrating, correcting, and life-giving Word of God. Scripture describes that Word as “living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword,” able to pierce to the deepest places and discern “the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12–13). Christ does not merely observe Pergamos from a distance; He meets them where they live, and He brings the remedy suited to their sickness.
Understanding the pressure on this church requires seeing what kind of city Pergamos was. Even the name carries a warning: it can be understood as a “marriage” (gamos) joined to something like “tower,” “power,” or “strength”, an image of being wed to worldly influence. It can also carry the sense of twisting or objection, an “objectionable marriage.” However you trace the roots, the idea fits the spiritual problem: believers were being pulled into a union with the world’s power structures and practices.
Historically and prophetically, this letter is often associated with the season of church history beginning around the time when Christianity became legally recognized in the Roman Empire (after Constantine’s decree in AD 313) and then increasingly intertwined with the state. What looked like triumph and security became, in many ways, a snare, because a “marriage to power” is rarely neutral. When the church leans on political strength, the line between faithful witness and compromised identity can blur.
Pergamos itself was a place of immense influence. It functioned as a leading capital city in the region and remained prominent even as empires shifted. It was also celebrated for knowledge, boasting a vast library said to contain hundreds of thousands of volumes. But it was not merely intellectual; it was intensely religious, filled with temples, ceremonies, and a kind of public spirituality that often included moral and spiritual corruption.
The imperial cult was strong there. Citizens were pressured to burn a pinch of incense to Caesar and confess, “Caesar is Lord,” receiving a certificate of participation. Without this, a person could be shut out from commerce and community life, unable to buy, sell, or fully participate in society. This pressure did not always take the form of constant executions as in other places, but it did make faithful Christian living costly and socially miserable. And that is where compromise grows: when faithfulness becomes expensive, some begin to calculate how to remain “Christian” while also remaining acceptable.
Jesus acknowledges this pressure without minimizing it. He says, “I know your works, and where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is” (Revelation 2:13). The environment was not spiritually neutral. The phrase “Satan’s throne” likely connected in the minds of the believers to what they saw daily, such as the massive throne-like structure associated with Zeus worship, yet it also points to something deeper: a city saturated with idolatry and spiritual deception.
One of the most prominent and disturbing elements of Pergamos’s religious life centered on the worship of Asclepius (Eskelepios), a serpent-associated “god of healing,” even honored as “savior.” This cult promised miracles, revelations through dreams, and protection from disease. Its practices included purification baths, sacrifices, and “incubation” ceremonies in which worshipers sought visions, sometimes under the influence of drugs administered by priests, sleeping in chambers filled with snakes crawling over them. In that world, the serpent was treated as a sign of divine presence and renewal.
The congregation in Pergamos lived in the shadow of that serpent-centered spirituality. And here the enemy’s strategy becomes clear: Satan does not merely oppose; he imitates, twists, and corrupts. The sermon highlights how such serpent imagery can be understood as a perversion of a true biblical event from Israel’s wilderness journey. In Numbers 21, after Israel complained against God, the Lord allowed fiery serpents to strike the people. When they cried out, God commanded Moses to lift up a bronze serpent on a pole so that whoever looked at it would live (Numbers 21:8–9). That strange act was never meant to glorify serpents, it was a God-given sign pointing to salvation through faith in God’s provision.
Jesus Himself explained the deeper meaning of that episode when speaking with Nicodemus. In John 3, after telling Nicodemus that one must be born again, Jesus connected the bronze serpent to His own saving work: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:14–15). And this leads directly into the famous declaration of the gospel: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…” (John 3:16). What God intended as a pointer to Christ can be twisted into a counterfeit “savior” if the truth is detached from its purpose and turned into something else. That is how deception works, by taking a sliver of truth, pulling it out of context, and building a corrupt system around it.
With that backdrop, Jesus’ words in Revelation 2 come with both comfort and commendation. He sees their faithfulness: “You hold fast to My name and did not deny My faith” (Revelation 2:13). Even in persecution, even when a man named Antipas was killed among them, some remained steadfast. Jesus honors that witness publicly and eternally by naming Antipas as His “faithful martyr.” In a letter meant for the church of all ages, Christ marks one believer’s loyalty and suffering as precious in His sight. In a hostile city where “Satan dwells,” faithful perseverance is not invisible to the Lord.
Yet Christ’s commendation does not erase His confrontation. “But I have a few things against you…” (Revelation 2:14). The core issue is compromise in doctrine and practice. Some in their midst held “the doctrine of Balaam,” a pattern drawn from the Old Testament: counsel that teaches God’s people to stumble through idolatry and sexual immorality (Revelation 2:14). The teaching may not always arrive with the label “Balaam,” but the outcome is the same, blurring the line so that believers treat what God forbids as tolerable, normal, or even spiritually harmless.
Jesus also says they had those who held “the doctrine of the Nicolaitans,” which He states plainly: “which thing I hate” (Revelation 2:15). In this church, compromise was not merely external pressure; it had become internal permission, ideas and influences allowed to remain in the congregation, teaching people to accommodate themselves to the surrounding idolatry and immorality.
And that brings us back to Jesus’ opening description: He comes with the sharp two-edged sword. The Word of God is not only comforting; it is cutting. It exposes what is hidden, separates truth from rationalization, and calls the church back from its “marriage” to worldly power and worldly ways. In Pergamos, where spiritual deception wore the clothing of healing, knowledge, civic participation, and religious tradition, Christ’s Word remained the needed instrument, able to pierce through appearances and judge the intentions of the heart (Hebrews 4:12–13).
Closing Prayer
Father, as we take in Your Word, we ask that it would do what You intend, living, active, and piercing, so that it would not merely inform us but transform us. Lord Jesus, You see where we dwell and the pressures we face. Strengthen us to hold fast to Your name and not deny the faith, even when compromise looks easier or more acceptable. Expose in us any twisted doctrine, any quiet agreement with sin, any desire to belong to the world more than we belong to You. Give Your church discernment, purity, and courage, and keep us anchored in the truth of the gospel, that You were lifted up so that whoever believes in You would not perish but have everlasting life. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.