×

Revelation (Part 3)

Revelation 2:1–7

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the End Times from Revelation 2:1–7


“In his right hand he held the seven stars.” They’re about to be identified. One of the things that often happens in apocalyptic is you get some symbolism introduced that is unpacked a little later. The only contemporary literary genre that does that kind of thing is the mystery, where you get something introduced and nobody has a clue what it’s talking about, but if you can remember it, half a dozen pages or a couple of chapters on it’s unpacked for you, and then you see what it was introduced for.

If a writer does too many of those things, a book becomes confusing. A few of them and it becomes challenging. “Oh, that’s odd. I wonder what that’s about.” You read on to find out. Well, John is doing that kind of thing very often. Very often, John introduces something that he then unpacks later. In this case, just a few verses on. In some cases, much farther on.

When you get to chapter 13, for example, it’s the first beast and the second beast, and they’re unpacked for you much farther on. The second beast is really unpacked very carefully in chapter 17, a few chapters on. In this particular instance, they’re unpacked for us in verses 19–20. “The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.”

What you have, then, in verse 12 is the exalted Christ amongst the seven churches, the seven golden lampstands, and the angels of the seven churches (we’ll consider them in a moment) are in his right hand, the hand of his power, the hand of his control, and out of his mouth comes a sharp double-edged sword. Double-edged sword is standard symbolism in Old Testament poetry for a sword that cuts both ways; that is, it wounds and heals.

That’s what the Word of God does in Hosea, for example. It wounds and heals. It’s what good preaching should do. When the Word of God comes to us, it will wound and heal. If it just strokes you and tells you how wonderful you are and encourages you, then it doesn’t deal with the sin. It doesn’t wound. It doesn’t take out the cancer.

On the other hand, if it just comes and cuts and cuts and cuts and doesn’t bind up again, then it is just harsh. It eventually becomes almost barbaric. Thus, the Word of God is presented as cutting both ways, as it were. It’s very thorough in its cutting. In many Old Testament passages, in one fashion or another, the Word of God wounds and heals. To use the language of Hosea, it sings and stings.

So out of his mouth is a double-edged sword. I’ve seen some churches in Europe where in the stained glass window above the altar you will have a picture of Christ so positioned that on Easter Sunday or thereabouts, you will have the sun at a certain time of day, 11:00 or thereabouts, coming right behind the face of Christ, who’s standing there with literally a sword coming out of his mouth. It’s the most asinine sort of thing because it’s terribly literalistic.

You have this sword coming out of his mouth and the sun shining through his face, which brings you to this part. “His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.” The truth of the matter is you’re not supposed to draw pictures of this. One of the things apocalyptic does (we’ll see it again and again and again in the book of Revelation) is it mixes its metaphors.

Now there are not a lot of places you can do that in English. You mix your metaphors in English and it looks a bit silly. In apocalyptic you mix your metaphors all the time. We’ll see, for example, in chapter 5 that he’s the lion and he’s the lamb. He’s both. How can a lion be a lamb? The point is he is both. You don’t add them together to make a sort of lion-lamb, and you don’t diminish one by the other.

You don’t try to draw it, sort of a lion that has the head of a lamb or a lion that has the fleece of a sheep. You don’t do that. It’s misunderstanding how the metaphors work. He is a full-blooded lion with all that that means (we’ll see that in due course), and he’s also a lamb, a slaughtered lamb at that. We’ll see what that means. He is both, and you mix the metaphors.

So also here. He’s walking amongst the candlesticks. He has a right hand, and he’s holding seven stars. We’ll see them in due course. He has a sword sticking out of his mouth, and his face is as brilliant as the sun. You take each of the metaphors separately and see what they mean, but you don’t go home and draw a picture, because what comes out just looks too silly for words.

The sword coming out of his mouth means that it is his word that binds and wounds. It is his word that cuts. It is his word that prevails. He is the ruler. When he speaks, his word prevails, just as God’s word functions in that fashion in the Old Testament. “My word shall not return to me void but will accomplish whatever I send it to.” It is Christ’s word that prevails.

At the same time, that the sun should be blazing through his face in glory.… Can you look at the sun and stare at it? Are you not blinded if you try? In fact, there’s a wonderful story of a Jew in the second century who was taunted by the emperor Trajan. “Show us your God.” Many pagans in the ancient world thought the Jews were basically atheists because they couldn’t show them their God. All the rest could show them their gods, but the Jews claimed that their God was invisible, so probably they didn’t really have one.

This Jew was being taunted by the emperor Trajan, so the story goes, about how the Jews could never show their God and, therefore, they were probably atheists. Finally, this old Jewish man said to the emperor, “Sir, I will show you the face of God, if you are prepared to gaze and gaze on one of his lesser emissaries.” Well, the emperor took that one on right away and said, “Oh, I’ll be glad to do that. You just show me his emissary, and then you lead me to this God.” The Jew said, “Then gaze, sir, at the sun.”

The point is you can’t do that without being blinded. We’ll see in a couple of chapters how Christ is at one with God himself on the throne, and the angels themselves cover their faces with their wings, unable to look on the unshielded glory. That’s language drawn, of course, from Isaiah 6. In other words, this God is not a domesticated god. He’s not a god who’s sort of sitting on your shoulder and patting you on the head and telling you what a wonderful chap or wonderful lady you are; everything is going well.

On the other hand, he can claim something the Father cannot claim. “I was dead, and now I am alive.” Not only so, but because of this, he’s alive forevermore and holds the keys of death and hades. For those who are facing persecution, that’s important to remember. “Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now, and what will take place later.” That is, what you’ve seen already, what you’re going through right now, and the visions that will come later.

I need to stop here for a moment. Verse 19 is often taken in the first interpretation of the book of Revelation; that is, the premillennial, pretribulational, dispensational, futurist interpretation. That is, the interpretation that sees most of the book of Revelation as referring to future events. Verse 19 of chapter 1 is often taken as programmatic.

What you have seen is taken to refer to the vision of chapter 1 that we’ve just quickly skimmed. What is now is taken to refer to the content of chapters 2–3. What will be hereafter is taken to refer to the content of chapters 4 through to the end. Thus, the “has been, is now, will be” is taken as programmatic for the whole book. If that’s correct, then they have some grounding for taking chapter 4, verse 1, to the end of the book as all referring to future events. But the only way you could know that’s correct is if that’s what the whole book is, in fact, doing.

In other words, there’s nothing in the verse itself that mandates that you take it that way. There’s nothing in the verse that says, “Now what has been (I’m referring to what has just been said), what is now (that’s the next two chapters’ worth), and what will be (that’s from 4:1 on, in case you didn’t catch the point) …” There’s nothing in 1:19 that says that. This little expression, “what will take place later,” may not mean what will take place later in history but what will take place later in the sequence of visions.

In other words, “The vision you’ve had so far, what you’re now going through, what is now.… As I talk to you, you report that too. Not just the vision that has been but this interchange and the visions that are still to come.” It could be as simple as that, in which case it says nothing about what the visions themselves refer to. So the very least that must be said is that the futurist interpretation cannot be justified by this verse. It is compatible with it, but so are a lot of the other interpretations as well.

Who are the seven angels? What are the seven angels? Well, you can well guess that that one has been debated and bashed around and so on. The short answer is “I’m not sure,” but I have a longer answer. The two most common interpretations are these. The angel of each church is the senior pastor. After all, the word angel is simply the word aggelos in Greek, which means messenger.

In some sense, pastor/teachers in the church are God’s messengers, I suppose. I’m not sure how much Stuart Briscoe would appreciate it if you went up to him and said, “Hi, Angel” next Sunday, but you could try it. The problem with that interpretation is there is no passage in the New Testament that refers to pastors as angeloi, as angels.

Moreover, in apocalyptic literature, angels are common fare. They’re all over the place. In other words, you’re looking at things from the point of view of heaven. It’s not surprising a few angels crop up. That’s why you have angels cropping up in Daniel from chapter 6 on. You’re looking at things from heaven’s perspective, so if some of heaven’s denizens show up, it’s not too surprising.

In the context of apocalyptic literature, it is highly unlikely that angels refers to pastors. What, then, are these angels? There are seven of them, one to correspond to each church. What I suspect you have is some kind of analogue to Daniel. Do you remember how in Daniel you have angels corresponding to the various countries? Clearly, it is impossible to construct out of the few things the Bible says about angels a whole angelology, a whole hierarchy of angels, but you can say a few things.

You can say, for example, that the cherubim in Ezekiel are right close to the throne. You can say that the seraphim in Isaiah 1 (we’ll come to them in chapter 4) are close to the throne. You can say that some angels in Daniel apparently have peculiar responsibilities for certain nations, one angel to a nation. The angel of this nation or the angel of that nation being sent by God on some sort of commission or other.

We’re given enough of a peep to see that there are whole structures of reality beyond us that we don’t have that ready access to, but they’re there. Eventually, around the throne, there are the cherubim (we’ll see them), the beasts around the throne, and then the elders, and then myriads of angels, and then the myriads of the saints beyond that, almost as if there’s a hierarchizing. We’ll come to that in a couple of weeks as well.

Within this framework, what I suspect the text is hinting at is that each church has, as it were, its angel, just as nations have their angel, just as in Matthew a child might have an angel watching over him, as if God works through means. So also the church may have an angel. Do you remember another passage? There are only these hints. You can’t build a whole structure on them. You don’t want to build too much, but you don’t want to say too little either.

Why should this be thought so strange? In our materialistic, naturalistic world, where we’re afraid of anything spiritual, it all has to be nailed down in terms of stuff you can smell and touch and hear. Either that or we have to systematize the whole thing and control it. But there’s another passage that talks about angels in the church. Do you remember? It has to do with women’s hat and hair, actually.

However you interpret 1 Corinthians 11, which has its own interesting difficulties.… Nevertheless, whatever the restriction is there, you are supposed to observe it also on account of the angels in the context of corporate worship, as if the angels of the churches will be offended if you break what God demands in their presence. Isn’t that what’s hinted at? It’s not a very clear picture, but it does remind us, brothers and sisters in Christ, that there are things going on beyond this realm of touch and see and feel that we should not be too embarrassed at.

It doesn’t give us right to pray to angels. It doesn’t give us the right to teach whole complex angelologies. It does mean that when you come to a passage like Paul, who reminds us that our ultimate opponents are not flesh and blood but the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places, principalities and powers.… I’ve been to enough places in the so-called Third World where demonism is still rife to have seen principalities and powers at work. With rising occult things in this country, we’re going to see more of it here too.

Sometimes these occult powers can operate just in the realm of deceit. Don’t you think there’s some deceit going on in this country? I was sitting down with some friends who teach grade school the other day. In fact, the woman had just lost her father, so my wife and I and another couple took this couple, both of whom teach grade school, grades four and five, out to a restaurant for a chat.

We were talking about this and that. There were three teachers of elementary school around the table. They were mentioning how the kids in grades two and three and four are watching not only R-rated movies but X-rated movies with their parents, the same parents who come into school and say, “I really care for my kid. I hope you’re giving him good stuff. Are you really helping him along his way? Is he doing his math homework? Is there anything I can do to help?” Sitting Johnny or Susie on their knee in grade two and watching R-rated and X-rated films.

Stupid past belief. I don’t know what to make of that. Oh yes, there comes a time when God says he blinds the minds of them so that they will believe the lie. People want this kind of ridiculous notion of freedom, as if there are no entailments, as if there are no burdens to be borne if you do that kind of thing with your kids. It’s like a computer. Garbage in, garbage out. If you want your kids to have garbage out, pump a lot of garbage in. What are you watching that kind of stuff for either? Does it help you in your quiet time?

Behind the merely psychological and educational and formal things, Christians have to come to grips that our enemies are not finally merely intellectual enemies, although they are intellectual. There are intellectual battles to be fought. They’re not merely moral problems, although there are moral problems to be fought. There’s a whole realm of spiritual darkness and spiritual conflict for whom alone the Son of God is adequate. We cannot possibly overcome.

We must recognize afresh that at the end of the day, the god of this world, Satan himself, not only goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour; he deceives, if it is possible, the very elect. He goes about as an angel of light. That’s a major theme we’ll come across later in the book of Revelation. Satan is presented as leading cohorts not only that offer you overt persecution but that deceive and deceive and deceive.

It may be easy for us to see how he has deceived earlier generations. Hindsight is wonderful. The question we must ask ourselves is how he deceives us. I think these angels, then, are God’s provision of angelic beings for the churches. God loves the church. Christ loves the church. He holds the angels of the churches in his hand, as it were. It is another way of saying that Christ is the Lord of the church. He cares about the church.

The angels that correspond to the churches he holds in his hands, one by one, and sends them out to do their bidding. I think that’s the picture here. So the message to the church, as it were, is in the heavenly realm mediated to the angels. In the earthly realm, it’s mediated by John through these seven letters to the churches. It’s as if the message is going to the angels and to the churches that correspond to the angels through John, the seer. Let me pause there for a question before we come to the seven letters.

Female: [Inaudible]

Don Carson: You see, it says in what comes up next, “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write …” The next one, verse 8: “To the angel of the church in Smyrna write …” So there’s a sense in which the message of each one is being presented to the angel. Since it comes from the exalted Christ, that makes good sense. On the other hand, John is told not only to write this and to write it to the angel, but he’s also told to send these letters to the seven churches, which are in Ephesus, Smyrna, and so on.

It is as if the message is going in the heavenly dimension to the angel, which corresponds to the church, and the letter is supposed to go to the church as well. It’s as if there’s a concerted plan from the exalted Christ himself to give certain messages through John to the churches, yet the message is being written down also for the sake of the angel, who must understand what God’s plan is for this church. I think that’s the picture.

I think it’s a way of saying that Christ is in charge and he has means. He has angelic beings operating here. I don’t think that means we’re supposed to spend all day speculating on which angel I have or anything like that, but it does open up our categories a bit and stop us from being quite so blindly materialistic, naturalistic.

Now we come to chapter 2 and the first letter. “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands: I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.

Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”

There are seven letters here, one for each of the seven churches. In some measure, all of them have the same form. “To the angel of the church in [blank] write: These things say the …” Then you have some description of Christ that is drawn from the vision of chapter 1, but which element of that vision in chapter 1 is stressed depends a bit on what the message is. Then there is encouragement. In five of the seven cases, there is also rebuke. In two cases there’s no rebuke.

Then at the end, you have an individualizing of the message. You have this message addressed to all of the churches (in this case, they’ve lost their first love; we’ll look at that in a moment), but then there is an individualizing within this body of the professing church. “To him who …” That is, it’s an individualizing. Even if the whole church keels over and dies, by and large, does something really awful (and the possibilities are numerous as we go through the churches), yet he who has an ear, let him hear.

So regardless of what your whole church does, you individually have a responsibility to hear. You cannot simply say, “Oh well, my church is so rotten and my pastor is so cold and I’m a bit bored. It’s not really my fault, is it?” No, no. Even if a whole church is adrift, what does the text say? “He who has an ear let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches, and to him individually who overcomes …” Who overcomes becomes a crucial formula. It’s to him who conquers, nikao in Greek.

The particular form of the conquering depends on the context of the letter. In this case, the conquering does not mean conquering the Devil or conquering the Roman Empire or conquering persecution. What it means in this case is conquer in the particular areas where there’s condemnation; namely, drifting off into cold love. “To him who conquers in the areas where this church is called to repentance, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”

That language clearly is drawn from Genesis 1–2, and it recurs at the end of the book. We’ll look at it more closely in Revelation 21–22 at the end of the course on the last night. Already it’s language clearly drawn from Genesis, where, if you recall, after the first couple ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God said, “We must banish them from the garden, lest they eat of the Tree of Life.”

The Tree of Life thus becomes a symbol of eternal life. In the new heaven and the new earth, likewise, the Tree of Life is there to be enjoyed. What this is saying is the person who overcomes in these areas, that person eats from the Tree of Life and enjoys the very presence of God, finally. Even if the whole church is wiped out, that person at least enjoys the paradise of God on the last day.

Now let’s take a look at some of the things this church is commended for. “These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands: I know your deeds.” Notice how Christ is introduced here. He’s sovereign over the church. He cares for the church (seven stars in his right hand). He walks among the seven golden lampstands as if he is examining, checking things out. He walks among the lampstands, and he knows the deeds of the church.

In each case, Christ is introduced by some form that is found in the first vision, the preamble vision, but which form depends on what is said next. The next one, for example.… “These are the words of him who is the first and the last, who died and came to life again,” for reasons we’ll see next day. The next one, the church at Pergamum.… “These are the words of him who has the sharp double-edged sword.” In each case, something is drawn from the first vision.

Why is it this element here? Well, it’s because he’s presented as the one who knows this church. He’s walking among the churches, and he’s checking them all out. He’s walking among the seven lampstands. It’s not as if God doesn’t know what’s going on in your church. He holds the angels of the church in his hand. Christ knows what’s going on. He’s walking among the churches and examining all the time. “I know your deeds,” he says. That’s the way he’s presented here. You cannot hide from him. You cannot deke him out. You might fool the district superintendent, but you can’t fool Christ.

Then he begins with commendation. Look at the lovely things that are mentioned here. Wouldn’t you like all of these lovely things to be said of your church? Hard work. Not even flash-in-the-pan hard work but hard work and perseverance. Not only so, but God commends them because they cannot tolerate wicked men. In our pluralistic society, that sounds a bit harsh, but I remind you that this is what Christ says. He commends this church because it cannot tolerate evil people.

In other words, this is a disciplined church. It doesn’t mean they hate everybody in society who’s nasty. It means that in the church, this is a disciplined church. If somebody practices evil, they’re removed. They can’t stand evil being practiced constantly among them. Then, as if the point is not strongly enough made here, it’s repeated in verse 6. “You have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.” We don’t even know who the Nicolaitans are. There are all kinds of theories. It doesn’t really matter for our purposes.

The point is that there are religious practices, moral practices, perhaps, certainly a religious outlook (they crop up a little later again).… The exalted Christ hates their practices, and these Christians are commended because they hate them too. Now the question becomes.… What practices today do you hate? If there are no practices that you hate, is there something wrong with you? I mean, are there any practices that Christ hates? Shouldn’t you hate what Christ hates?

Now let me insist in the strongest possible terms that this hate is not self-righteous self-promotion. You do get some people going around hating things, and all they’re doing is justifying themselves. It’s not some deep, principled, moral revulsion against that which God detests. It’s just a form of self-righteousness. Their ego is on the line. “This is my opinion. If you don’t like it, then you’re wrong.” It’s not that.

It’s a genuine principled alignment with the mind of God, so that if God hates certain evils, we do too. Otherwise, we’re less than faithful to God. How else can you put it? These Ephesians have in their favor that they can’t tolerate endless wicked men. Moreover, they have tested those who claim to be apostles. This is a discerning church. At the time, the church was expanding so fast they didn’t have enough good teachers around, so there were a lot of itinerant teachers, like early Methodism.

There were a lot of early apostles. That is, apostles not in the high sense. Apostle in the New Testament is used in a variety of different ways. Sometimes it’s just a messenger. Sometimes it’s a roving evangelist, and sometimes it’s one of the Twelve. It’s used in different ways in different contexts, and you have to check the context. Here, clearly, it’s various roving preachers, and this church is smart enough to test them.

Just because they come in and spout a good line, just because they come in and claim to be orthodox, just because they come in and talk about Jesus and his death and resurrection, just because they seem to be do-gooders and help a lot, this church isn’t snookered. This church tests them. It puts them through the wringer. It wants to find out what they live like. It wants to find out what their doctrine is. They’re not going to be given the pulpit unless they’re checked out, and the church is commended for it.

Not only so, but their perseverance has been brought up again. “You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.” Isn’t that wonderful? Some people are flash-in-the-pan types. Not the Ephesians. Then Jesus says, “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.”

That’s clearly not just more works. It means, “Love the way you did at first. Adopt the kind of attitude you did at first. If you don’t repent, the church eventually will be closed down.” That’s what it says. “I will remove your lampstand from its place.” Isn’t that remarkable? Most of us who are Christians have gone through patches in our lives of dry spells. Am I the only one who has gone through dry spells?

Part of that is the give-and-take of maturation under pressure in a fallen, broken world. Where it happens to individuals, it’s often used as a means of grace in God’s hand to bring you to a renewed level of Christian experience and maturity. By itself it’s nothing to be frightened of. It might not be the best thing at the time you’re going through it, but the Lord is able to use even the wrath of man to praise him. What is far worse is where that thing characterizes a whole church.

This isn’t a church, then, that is backsliding morally or doctrinally (it’s checking out the teachings) or that is short on zeal in terms of persevering, sticking with it. They can find enough bodies at the Sunday school classes and find enough bodies to do their door-to-door knocking. They face some persecution. They can face that.

But there’s no joy in the Lord left. They’re doing it because they do it. “We’re Christians. We do that sort of thing.” There’s no love for the Lord in it anymore. They may even be secretly proud that they’re persevering when all of the other people sort of drift away. A bit like Peter. “Though all others fail you, yet not I.” You know what happened to him.

Oh, but these people, it wouldn’t happen to them. They’d be faithful even unto death. Face persecution and hardship even. Grin and bear it. Stiff upper lip. Stoic approach to life. “Here goes another one we’re getting from God. Whatever he throws at us, we can take it.” Have you met people like that? What does Christ say? “Repent of it, and if you don’t, the church will be closed down.”

Genuine Christianity, vital Christianity, real Christianity, though it includes doctrinal elements and moral elements and all the rest, also includes an element of delight in the living God, love for him. If you persevere because you have to, it’s better than not persevering. They are commended. But it’s not enough. What is needed is the kind of delight in God that truly loves him, that wants to know Christ, that is pleased with his love. Isn’t that what we want?

“Repent.” It has to be labeled as sin and turned from. In other words, it’s not something you sort of sit around waiting to get zapped on. It’s something you’re responsible to change. You repent of your attitude. You ask the Lord’s forgiveness. You take the steps that will increase your love and devotion to him. Maybe prayer with somebody else.

Start reading some books that will give you a bit of a flickering flame. Read some Tozer. Read some Packer, Knowing God. Read your Bible. Maybe it will mean doing some evangelism, where you work with people who are really lost so that you see what you really have. You have to do something to keep your delight in the Lord fresh, and if a whole church fails to do that, Christ himself threatens to shut down the church.

Now in the remaining 10 minutes or so, I will show you some slides of Ephesus. All we’re going to do is look at the slides of the area and of Ephesus this week, and we’ll look at the other six next week. This is Patmos from the sea. Patmos town is clustered around the eleventh-century monastery on the hilltop. The harbor town today is called Skala.

The building on the hillside to the right, just below that nine-dome affair, is a building commemorating the traditional cave of the apocalypse, but it might just be tradition. Whether that’s the real site or not I can’t really say. Now you are looking down on the harbor; that is, east over Patmos town from the window of the monastery on the summit. The coast of Asia, where Ephesus is, is just over the horizon, south of Ephesus.

This is a taxi rank in Patmos town looking across the island, showing Skala and the natural harbor, looking roughly north now. That’s not a very good map, but it gives you something of the idea. That’s Patmos here. There is Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. That is the way the Roman road went. In other words, you wouldn’t normally travel this way because of the mountain range in there. That is the way the road normally went.

The reason they’re listed in this order is not because they represent seven ages of the church or something like that but because that’s the way you drop off the letters when you follow the road. You go to Ephesus first, and so on. It’s as simple as that. This, of course, is modern Turkey, and this is the area that was called Asia Minor, because it was the part of Asia that was first taken over by the Romans.

Now we’re at the Gulf of Ephesus. The silt of the river here, the “Little Meander,” has been responsible for making the coastline extend about six miles since ancient times. (This is obviously the modern coastline. I wasn’t there to take pictures 2,000 years ago.) The site of ancient Ephesus is about six miles up to the right from here.

This one is a bit dark. It’s sunset over the coastal plain at Ephesus. What you are doing now is looking from Ephesus all the way down the six miles to the sea. This is the Arcadian Way. We’ll come to that and see it properly in a few moments. The ancient harbor used to come right in like that. That’s where the boats came in. You came in down there and then walked up the Arcadian Way into the town here. So that’s how far the sea used to come in and no longer does.

This is from a German commentary, so all the words on it are German, but it’s the best map I know of of ancient Ephesus. The reason it’s important is because what you discover in the seven letters to the seven churches is that each church has, in some measure, taken on something of the characteristics of its surroundings, either for or against. Churches tend to do that, for good or ill, sometimes for good and ill.

Ephesus was a town that was living on its reputation. A thousand years earlier, it had already been a great port city. It was still a port city, but it was a port that was beginning to die. The reason it was beginning to die is because the river was silting up, and they didn’t have the dredgers in those days that would handle this stuff. The city was doomed to die.

So although the Roman Empire would have taken over Asia Minor and moved the capital from Pergamum to Ephesus, anybody with half a brain in his head could see that in due course Ephesus would die. And Ephesus did die. The church was a bit like it. It had a reputation for being alive, but it had lost its first fire, and it was doomed to die. In fact, hafen here means harbor. That’s where the harbor came in. There’s the Arcadian Way that we looked at. There’s the theater. We’ll look at that shortly.

There are various bits and pieces. Marmorstrafle, Marble Street. We’ll look at that in due course as well. If Paul was imprisoned in Ephesus.… That’s not certain, but if he was, this is where it would have been. This is the so-called Paul prison. That’s where it would have been. That’s the Celsus library. We’ll see that in a few moments as well. There are good remains that can still be seen.

Now this one actually shows you something of the nearby town that is still in good order, but I won’t go through it now. Okay, now you’re looking up the Arcadian Way. Now the old harbor is down here. You’re looking up the Arcadian Way to this, which is, in fact, the theater. It’s cut right out of the mountainside, the ancient theater, where you find Paul’s treatment in Acts, chapter 19, where for two hours the people are crying, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians! Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” ready to mob him. That all took place there.

You’ve come to the top of the street and you’re on Marble Street now. All of those pillars would have covered some of that. This is the remains of Hadrian’s temple. This is something we’ll deal with more next week, but cities in the ancient world vied to become.… The word literally meant temple sweeper. They vied to become neokoros.

After an emperor died, it became common after Augustus to vote him god. The Senate deified him, reified him. They voted that he became a god. From about the late 30s on, the emperors claimed to be god even during their lives. Thus, it became part of allegiance to the empire to offer incense to the emperor. Obviously, Christians couldn’t do that.

We’ll come to this whole question of emperor worship and what it meant for Christians a little more next week, but cities vied for the right after an emperor was dead to erect a temple in his honor. A city that was called neokoros was a great city, and Ephesus was neokoros. In fact, there’s one city in this sequence that was twice neokoros, although the second one didn’t come about until the second century.

You can see the temple of Hadrian again a little farther down, and you can see way off on the left the Agora, the marketplace. This is part of the square at the top of Curetes Street. We won’t go into that one. Inscriptions tell the story of history, of course, and are often a check for details in the New Testament. This is the Latin version of the career of Celsus, to whom the library was dedicated. This was all written in Latin. Some of them are in Greek. Provinces that have New Testament names are mentioned here: Bithynia, Cappadocia, Galatia, and so on.

There is a column here in one of the buildings with an inscription giving names of benefactors to the cult, people who paid big money to keep the cult going. Among the persons named is one Tyrannus, as in Tyrannus Hall in the book of Acts. It’s probably not the same chap. And another one called Trophimus, another name that crops up in the New Testament. Again, probably not the same one, but it shows that they were common names at least.

There’s the theater. This particular form of it was completed after Paul’s time, later in the first century, but it would have been basically the same. Down here, this would have been covered over, and probably both gladiators and lions were kept in there. This wasn’t used everywhere in the empire, but the bigger cities sometimes had them. Of course, they were common in Rome.

You could seat thousands of people in some of the bigger ones here. How many this one can seat I don’t remember now, but it’s quite a good crowd that it could manage. That’s what’s left of it to this day. This is where the crowd in Acts 19 called out for two hours, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.”

This is one of the most famous inscriptions of the ancient world. It’s in Greek, and it’s this last line that’s important. It’s mentioning a particular, we would call mayor, who was at that time the town clerk. The reason it’s important is because in the ancient world, the chief officer of a town could be called many different things depending on where the town was politically, whether it was a Senate-run town or a free town or whatever. It meant many different names.

One of them was grammateus, town clerk, and that was very rare. Acts always gets them right. It mentions the chief officer of half a dozen towns and always gets the right label for the right town, even though, in some cases, it would be that label only for a two- or three-year period, and then it became something else because the politics changed.

Wherever Acts can be checked out in this regard, it always gets the details right, and this is one of the inscriptions that is shown that it has right. He’s the town clerk. Remember the town clerk, in the King James Version, comes and tells the people to be quiet? “We are in danger of being called into question for a rebellion this day because of this mob, this riot.” The town clerk, the grammateus. That’s the inscription that corroborates what Ephesus says in this regard.

One more. The remains of the temple of Artemis, Diana. The remains were excavated from this swampy hollow, and most of whatever could be preserved is now in the British museum. That’s as far as we’ll go. The next one we go on to Smyrna. God willing, I’ll see you next week.