Revelation 2:8–11

8 “To the angel of the church in Smyrna write: These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again. 9 I know your afflictions and your poverty—yet you are rich! I know the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.10 Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.11 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes will not be hurt at all by the second death.”

There is always a choice to make, there is a contrast that comes out again and again in the book of Revelation. A little later on, in chapters 13–14, you can have the mark of the Beast on you and face the wrath of God, the wrath of the Lamb, or you can have the mark of God on you and face the wrath of the Beast.

Which one do you want? You’re going to face one of them.

Which one do you want?

So you get this kind of polarization. You can have the blessing of one and the wrath of the other, or the wrath of the one and the blessing of the other.

Which do you want?

Today, we see you can serve the Emperor and live, or serve Jesus and be persecuted.

You get this point/counterpoint theme running through. Yes, you may face death, but then you get the crown of life. Great deal. It is looking at things from eternity’s perspective. The person who thinks this life is everything cannot make sense of the book of Revelation.

There is no spirituality for a person in the book of Revelation who does not think in terms of eternity’s values. None.

Both of the churches about which nothing negative is said happen to be small churches facing certain persecution and not at all sure of themselves.

In each case of these churches, the church involved mirrors in some way its own town. Whether we like it or not, we’re part of our culture and our history and our heritage, even as we’re also part of the church. Part of Christian responsibility is to know what parts of that history and heritage and culture we should be taking up and which part we should be disavowing and even confronting.

The Situation at Smyrna

Smyrna was located about 40 miles north of Ephesus in Asia Minor on the coast of the Aegean Sea. The city had supported Rome for over 200 years and had earned the right to be the main seat of emperor worship in Asia. In 26 BC Smyrna had won the privilege of building the Asian temple to Emperor Tiberius.

Smyrna was settled early by the Greeks. It was fertile, a trading center, and it was a very commercial city with many Jews in it. It was destroyed almost entirely in the sixth century BC. Then it was rebuilt about 280 BC just after the time of Alexander the Great.

So it was a city that had died and then come back to life again. Jesus presents himself as the First and the Last, who died and came back to life again. One suspects that the church itself, which is facing poverty and slander and overt persecution, wondered at times if it was going to die. Jesus introduces himself as the one who is sovereign. He is the First and the Last.

He’s at the beginning, and he controls everything. He’s at the end, and he’s the sovereign Judge.

He faced persecution and died and came back to life again, as did this very city. If anybody should know that apparent death is not the last word it should be the Smyrnaeans.

Emperor Worship

After Augustus Caesar died, at the beginning of the first century, the Roman Senate voted that he should be viewed as having been promoted to some sort of godlike status, whereupon it was appropriate to worship the emperor from that point. When you get to Caligula, 37-41

who was as mad as a hatter, in the 30s, he proclaimed himself a god to the Senate. He came in and said to the Senate, “I have been apotheosized. I am a god.” He declared it as good news.

At that point, loyalty to the emperor became bound up with acknowledging that the emperor was god.

The Roman Empire had a number of ways of keeping peace in new territory they took over. One of the ways they did it was to arrange “god swaps. They insisted that the local people whom they had just captured, whom they had just made a vassal state, adopt some of the gods in the Roman pantheon of gods. Meanwhile, the Romans themselves adopted some of the local gods.

That meant, that the local people who might be tempted to rebel against Rome couldn’t pray to their local gods anymore in the hope that somehow they would take on the Romans and win, because those gods were also being prayed to by Rome. Meanwhile, they were demanded to worship some of the Roman gods as well.

There was one exception to all of that, and that was the Jews. From the Roman perspective, the Jews were such an obstreperous people, so completely perverse in their refusal to acknowledge any god other than theirs, who couldn’t even be seen.… Many Romans suspected that basically the Jews were atheists, because, after all, they couldn’t point to their God.

So they had made an exception in their case. They did not demand that the Jews accept any of the Roman gods, and of course the Romans couldn’t accept the Jewish God because they couldn’t put him in the pantheon. They couldn’t set up an image and say, “This is the Jewish God, and we worship him too.”

The Jews Were Slandering the Christians

As long as Christians, therefore, were perceived to be a subset of Jews by the Romans, they would not face persecution if they did not offer incense to the Roman emperor. The minor religious worship to an emperor was, in the Roman mind, a question of fidelity, of loyal citizenship, and the Jews were exempted from that kind of oath.

As long as the Christians were perceived by Romans to be a kind of denomination of Jews, they were safe from imperial persecution. That’s why when you read the book of Acts, all the earliest persecution against Christians wasn’t from the Romans. It was synagogue persecution. It was in-house stuff. All the earliest persecution against the Christians was from the Jews.

As the Christians became more numerous and then became more Gentilic, as you had more and more non-Jews, Gentiles, becoming Christians, the easiest way the Jews had to oppose the Christians was to tip off the Romans that these people weren’t Jews. Then eventually the power of Rome descended on the Christians.

There was a Jewish community in the city that came into bitter conflict with the Christians.

Verse 9 describes the relationship like this. Jesus says to the church, “I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the blasphemy [i.e., slander] by those who say they are Jews, and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.” In other words the Jewish synagogue was speaking things about the Christians which the Christians regarded as slander (the basic meaning of blasphemeo in Greek).

This slander was probably in the form of official indictments to the Roman authorities that the Christians put another king above Caesar (which was true), and that they were rebellious and dangerous (which was false). The Jewish community did not have the right and power to punish the Christians, so they sought to get them in trouble with the Roman government.

For example, when Paul planted the church in Thessalonica the Jews stirred up a mob and said to the authorities, “These men have upset the world … and act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king Jesus” (Acts 17:6–7).

Imprisonment and Threats of Death

That’s probably the sort of half-truth and incrimination that were being hurled in Smyrna. The result of these charges was that some of the Christians were being put in prison with a death threat hanging over them. John says that the Jews who act this way, who slander and thus deceive like Satan, are a “synagogue of Satan.” They follow Satan’s temptation to lie and destroy. Then in verse 10 he says that it is the devil that is going to throw the Christians in prison: “The devil is about to cast some of you into prison.”

This was the same thing Jesus said to the Jews who rejected him and wanted to kill him when he was on the earth (John 8:40): “You are of your father the devil; and you want to do the desires of your father” (John 8:44).

What connects verses 9 and 10 is the reference to the devil. In verse 9 Jesus refers to “a synagogue of Satan” who are slandering the Christians. In verse 10 he refers to the devil throwing some Christians in prison. The natural understanding is that the way the devil is throwing Christians in jail is by stirring up the slander against them through those whom Jesus calls a “synagogue of Satan.”

The reason he calls them a “synagogue of Satan” is because they are so under the influence of Satan that they do his work of slandering the Christians so effectively that the Roman authorities think them a real threat to the empire and arrest them.

That’s the situation in Smyrna. The Jewish synagogue, linked up with the local Roman authorities, are coming against the Christian church with official sanctions that are about to put some Christians in prison and put some to death.

A number of these towns in the seven-churches region were very much involved in worshiping emperors, dead or alive. Cities vied for the privilege of building a temple to an emperor.

For a city that had that as part of its heritage, that built up a temple to an emperor, temple worship was really serious.
So Christians trying to be good citizens, trying to obey the apostle Paul’s injunctions to honor the king and pay your taxes and keep peace with all men so much as it’s possible, and so on was good enough if you did not bow to the emperor God.

None of that counted if you didn’t offer your little bit of incense on demand to the emperor. That was viewed as treason. So Christians began to face persecution for the most idiotic reasons, but that’s the kind of thing they had to face. That went right through this whole period.

Under the Domination of Satan

Synagogue of Satan, that kind of talk will be called anti-Semitic today. Not because there was hatred behind it (which there wasn’t), and not because Jesus aimed to stir up persecution of the Jews (which he didn’t), and not because he was maliciously ridiculing the Jews as a people (which he wasn’t), but because

If Jesus is the Messiah, if he is the Son of God, and if there is a great enemy and deceiver called Satan, and if the Jewish people turn like Satan against the Messiah, then this must be said.

The specific accusations of Jews before government authorities were probably that Christians were upsetting the peace of the status quo, were not a Jewish sect, and refused to pay homage to Caesar as Lord.

The history of Smyrna reveals its particular loyalty to Rome, especially that it had built more than one temple in honor of Roman religion. Such religious patriotism meant generally that there would be even less patience with Christians refusing to pay homage to the deity of the emperor.

The imperial cult permeated virtually every aspect of city and often even village life, so that individuals could aspire to economic prosperity and greater social standing only by participating to some degree in the Roman cult.

Citizens of both upper and lower classes were required by local law to sacrifice to the emperor on various special occasions, and sometimes even visitors and foreigners were invited to do so. City officials were so dedicated to the cult that they even distributed money to citizens from public funds to pay for sacrifices to the emperor. It was almost impossible to have a share in a city’s public life without also having a part in some aspect of the imperial cult.

Pressure on Christians to conform to such participation would have increased during Domitian’s reign (81–96 A.D.). Those refusing to participate were seen as politically disloyal and unpatriotic and would be arrested and punished according to Roman law. But genuine Christians could never call anyone Lord except Christ.

Romans 9:6 But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham; but, “In Isaac your seed shall be called.” That is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted as the seed. For this is the word of promise: “At this time I will come and Sarah shall have a son.”

The Issue is Serious

Revelation 2:9, the opponents of Christianity are going to oppose us not by saying that we are wrong, but by saying that we are evil and dangerous, anti-Semitic, anti-choice, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-intellectual, anti-tolerance, anti-diversity, etc. And they will do this in direct proportion to how public we are about the claims of Christianity.

What’s Happening Today Happened in Smyrna

This is what was happening is Smyrna over 1,900 years ago and it is still happening. When Christianity goes really public in a pagan world (instead of remaining in our safe, isolated, comfortable sanctuaries) the opposition labels us not as mistaken, but as evil and dangerous.

The ironic and tragic response of many Christians in that atmosphere of conflict is to simply disappear. And to think that they are doing God a favor by stirring up no opposition to his name.

That is not the way the Christians in Smyrna responded. Jesus said in verse 10 that some would soon be cast into prison and that they would be tested to the point of death, all brought on by slander, by people who stood up and called them names. Jesus’ counsel to them was not to lay low and disappear. His counsel was (v. 10), “Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life.”

The Way Things Appear

What they may not know is that the devil, and not just people, are behind their persecution; that it will result in some of them going to prison soon. And it will mean that some will be tested to the point of death. If they think it is bad now (with tribulation and poverty), it will get worse.

Verse 8: Christ is the first and the last. Christ will have the last word. This is what nullifies all slander. In the end there will only be truth. Christ and not slander will be last.

Verse 8: Christ died and has come to life. Christ went through death before us. It is not the worst thing that can happen. Christ triumphed over death, and all his people will too.

Verse 9: Christ knows your pain. “I know your tribulation and your poverty.” He is not a distant king. He is not unable to sympathize with your weakness and trouble. He is near and he knows..

Verse 9: You are rich, in poverty, even in prison, even in death, You are rich. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. “If you are children of God, then you are heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ … the sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that is about to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:15–18). You are rich!

Verse 10 (at the end): You will receive a crown of life. “Be faithful unto death and you will receive a crown of life.” When the fight is fought and the race is run and you die at the finish line, the wreath that will be put on your head will be the crown of everlasting life, no more pain, nor more slander, nor more shame, no more tears, no more depression, no more frustration and discouragement.

Verse 11: You will not be hurt by the second death, that is, the lake of fire (20:14). There is something worse than death, namely, the second death. God is not mainly in the business of sparing us from the first death, or the pain that leads to it. He is utterly devoted to rescuing us from the second death.