Revelation 2:18

Thyatira, False Teaching

18 And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like a flame of fire, and his feet are like unto burnished brass: 19I know thy works, and thy love and faith and ministry and patience, and that thy last works are more than the first. 20But I have this against thee, that thou sufferest the woman Jezebel, who calleth herself a prophetess; and she teacheth and seduceth my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed to idols. 21And I gave her time that she should repent; and she willeth not to repent of her fornication. 22Behold, I cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of her works. 23And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he that searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto each one of you according to your works. 24But to you I say, to the rest that are in Thyatira, as many as have not this teaching, who know not the deep things of Satan, as they are wont to say; I cast upon you none other burden. 25Nevertheless that which ye have, hold fast till I come. 26And he that overcometh, and he that keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give authority over the nations: 27and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to shivers; as I also have received of my Father: 28and I will give him the morning star. 29He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.

The longest and most difficult of the seven letters is addressed to the least known, least important and least remarkable of the cities, Thyatira. The epistle is much concerned with matters of everyday life,
Jesus reminds hearers of his feet like bronze (1:15) specifically in a city where metal-working was a prominent industry.

The Lord Jesus Christ has called His church to be holy and maintain purity by dealing with sin in its midst. In fact, the very first instruction He gave to the church was about confronting sin. In
Matthew 18:15–17 Jesus commanded,If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

The practice of church discipline that Christ instituted to maintain the holiness of the church has a twofold purpose: to call sinning believers back to righteous behavior, and to purge from the church those who stubbornly cling to their sin. In either case, the purity of the church is maintained.

After the birth of the church on the Day of Pentecost, the Lord demonstrated His commitment to a pure church by executing Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1–11). The Jerusalem Council commanded believers to observe “these essentials: that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication; if you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do well” (Acts 15:28–29).

Paul himself put two unrepentant sinning leaders out of the Ephesian church: “Hymenaeus and Alexander … I have handed over to Satan, so that they will be taught not to blaspheme” (1 Tim. 1:20).

The letter to the church in Thyatira begins the second group of messages to the churches of Asia. In the first group, the church of Ephesus was characterized by loyalty to Christ which was lacking in love. In the church of Smyrna loyalty was tested by fire. In the church of Pergamum the loyalty was lacking in moral passion. Yet all three churches were true to the faith, and had not yielded to the assaults of evil.

The letter to the church in Thyatira is the longest of the seven, though addressed to the church in the smallest of the seven cities. It has an important message for the church today: false doctrine and sin are not to be allowed, even under the banner of love, toleration, and unity. There may be much that is commendable in a church. It may appear on the surface to have an effective ministry, be growing numerically, and even have cordial society. Yet immorality and false doctrine, if not confronted, will bring judgment from the Lord of the church.

The City

Thyatira was founded by one of Alexander the Great’s successors, Seleucus, as a military outpost guarding the north-south road. The city was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt; the scanty references to it in ancient literature usually describe its conquest by an invading army.

Finally, about 190 B.C., Thyatira was conquered and annexed by the Romans.

The Address

Jesus knows that the Christians in Thyatira, in contrast to those in Ephesus, are doing his works more than they have before (2:5, 19), but one flaw in the congregation proves serious enough to offset this praise: Unlike Ephesus, they are tolerating a false teacher of compromise (2:2, 20). Thyatira was known for its merchants, crafts, and their guilds (Acts 16:14). Those who participated in this aspect of public economic life would risk a substantial measure of their livelihood by refusing to join trade guilds. The guild meetings, however, included a common meal dedicated to the guild’s patron deity—a meal thereby off-limits to more traditional Christians (Acts 15:20; 1 Cor. 10:19–22). Aspects of the imperial cult also began to affect nearly every trade guild.

Who is Jezebel?

A large number of commentators envision this situation as a primary contributor to “Jezebel’s” appeal.

Not surprisingly, a prophet or prophetess who tells people what they want to hear can become readily popular.

2 Tim. 4:3–4 3For the time will come when they will not endure the sound doctrine; but, having itching ears, will heap to themselves teachers after their own lusts; 4and will turn away their ears from the truth, and turn aside unto fables.

We must make some judgments about exactly who this woman Jezebel is, what she is being accused of. Jezebel, of course, again is an Old Testament figure, and it helps to know something about who she was. Israel (1 Kings 16:31–33; 21:25–26)

16; 30 And Ahab the son of Omri did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah above all that were before him. 31And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshipped him. 32 And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. 33 And Ahab made the Asherah; and Ahab did yet more to provoke Jehovah, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.

21;25 (But there was none like unto Ahab, who did sell himself to do that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up. 26And he did very abominably in following idols, according to all that the Amorites did, whom Jehovah cast out before the children of Israel.)

She was Ahab’s wife, and she was a wicked self serving pagan. She was obviously the power behind the throne in many ways, and she was almost a paragon of wickedness.

She hated Elijah, tried to have him killed more than once, and was absolutely and totally and utterly determined to bring pagan worship into the covenant community of Israel, and Ahab was not only wicked, he was weak. He was a stupid, pitying, crybaby. You recall, when he wants Naboth’s vineyard? He curls up in a little ball and faces the wall and whines, “I can’t have it. Here I am the king and I can’t have it!”
Jezebel says, “Oh, for goodness’ sake. I’ll get it for you.” She arranges Naboth’s murder and gets the vineyard. She was extremely wicked, and what she was determined to do was bring in idolatry and compromise into the covenant community.

1 King 21;14Then they sent to Jezebel, saying, Naboth is stoned, and is dead. 15And it came to pass, when Jezebel heard that Naboth was stoned, and was dead, that Jezebel said to Ahab, Arise, take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused to give thee for money; for Naboth is not alive, but dead.

She was an unknown woman who had undue influence in the local church and met the problem of Christian membership of the trade-guilds with permissive antinomian or Gnostic teaching.

It may be just the writer’s point that the original Jezebel was a heathen whose ways had been accepted and who had corrupted the chosen people. It is quite conceivable that in this racially mixed city the church was threatened by some monstrous syncretism of Christian, Jewish and pagan elements through a priestess who combined ‘magical Judaism’ or Gnostic views with a professed adherence to Christianity.

The choice of the name ‘Jezebel’ is likely to be pointedly apt, as was that of ‘Balaam’. The syncretism exemplified in the city is in point here, but the particular problem seems to have been the guild-feasts, as the occasions when the Christian may have been particularly pressed by the need to conform to his environment.

Something of the actual teaching and influence of Jezebel may be learned from the letter. She called herself a prophetess (2:20), and led the servant of Christ astray to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed to idols.

The association of these prohibitions goes back, as we have seen, to Num. 25:1–2, apparently the incident occasioned by Balaam’s evil counsel.

Jezebel’s Teaching

Presumably Jezebel argued that a Christian might join a guild and participate in its feasts without thereby compromising his faith. He was initiated into a superior wisdom. He knew the idol was nothing and he could not be defiled by that which did not exist.

So what is this woman doing here? Well, she calls herself a prophetess. That is, she’s claiming to be speaking for God in some ways. “By her teaching, she leads my servants into sexual immorality.”

Yeah, there were some religions like that, fertility cults, but they were more common in an earlier period. They weren’t all that common here.

One of the images that you get in the Old Testament, then, is what comes to be called spiritual adultery. Just as the relationship between Yahweh and the covenant community is seen as a parallel to the relationship between a husband and his wife, so also in the New Testament the relationship between Christ and the church, Ephesians 5, is seen as having as a fundamental type of this archetype the relationship between a husband and wife.

Revelation teaches that the Jezebel at Thyatira will reappear throughout the church age in different forms.

Reflections for us Today

What practices or social norms exist in our culture that place churches under pressure to conform and compromise?

Do we have specific instances of compromise in our church or fellowship of churches?

Are there false teachers today who lead churches astray under the guise of a need to make the gospel more palatable to the world or to help Christians get along better in dealing with the world in their own situations, workplaces)?

On the results of compromise, we compromise because it seems to be the easiest route for us to acceptance by the wider community. Like those in Thyatira also, perhaps, we do not realize the dire consequences of our actions.

At Thyatira, Christ is pictured as One who comes in judgment, and at least some of those involved in this deception will be judged temporally and at the final judgment.

How do we reconcile this picture of Christ with what we know of His infinite grace and mercy?

Have we lost sight of the holiness of God because of a preoccupation with the mercy of God?

Do we focus on God’s mercy because we are involved in compromise and would prefer to believe He will tolerate our behavior?

Is it possible that Christ could come in such judgment of pseudo-believers to local churches today?
What is the significance of the fact that believers are pictured as overcoming in this life?

What does it mean that so often in Revelation this overcoming is expressed in suffering and even death?

This makes the message of Revelation especially applicable and comforting in nations where Christians are persecuted, for in their faithful witness and suffering they are pictured as truly following in the footsteps of Christ.

But how are those who do not live under threat of persecution to apply these truths to their own lives?

How can we express overcoming through suffering?

And how are we to understand teachings that appear to present believers unconditional offers of material blessing in this life for their faithfulness? Sometimes where persecution is not present there is the temptation to compromise in some way (sexually, theologically, financially, etc.), and not to give in to compromise is to “overcome.”

Deep Things of Satan

What is going on here? It could be, that you’ve got this prophetess giving deeper teachings, but they’re really from Satan. She calls them deep teachings, and John calls them “Satan’s deep teachings.” There are some people who are always giving you some special inside tracks on how to be spiritual, but they can lead you astray.

Like those in Thyatira, we may tolerate some who falsely claim “deep” teachings that directly undermine the gospel or Christian ethics. Few evangelicals today are tempted to question some cardinal Christian teachings like Jesus’ deity or resurrection. But because relativism has become increasingly popular in our culture, the absolute necessity of faith in Christ for salvation has become a more uncomfortable position for many to hold.

“Over nineteen centuries of Christian missionary activity hinged on this belief alone,” but studies reveal that this remains “the single most socially offensive aspect of Christian theology,” and that this has been the most prominent impact of theological liberalism.

The problem is not yesterday’s heresies; it’s today’s heresies, isn’t it? Any idiot can be discerning with 20/20 hindsight. The problem is how to be discerning in your own day, so that on the one hand you’re not some sort of narrow, right-wing, knee-jerk reactionary who’s always saying no to everything.

Many are some form of traditionalist. You like it just because it’s old. On the other hand, there are people who come along and they’re so open they let in every kind of poison around, and they call it faithfulness and love for Jesus and spirituality.

The character of Jezebel’s teaching may be seen against the background of the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15. The emphasis here seems to be on the tendency to immorality, whether literal or figuratively of apostasy.

The Curse

22 Behold, I cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of her works. 23 And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he that searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto each one of you according to your works.

I will kill her children with pestilence. Jezebel’s children were not her biological but her spiritual children. The church was about forty years old when John wrote, so that her false teaching had been around long enough for a second generation of errorists to have arisen. As he did with Ananias and Sapphira, the Lord threatens to kill these errorists with pestilence (literally “kill them with death”). It was too late for Jezebel; her heart was hardened in unrepentant sin. But the Lord Jesus Christ mercifully warns her disciples to repent while there is still time.

The severe judgment promised to the false prophetess and her followers again reveals Christ’s passion for a doctrinally and behaviorally pure church. He will do whatever is necessary to purge His church of sin—even to the point of taking the lives of false teachers.