PERGAMOS, A THRONE TO SATAN!
The church of Pergamos was infested with men of corrupt minds, who did what they could to corrupt both the faith and manners of the church; and Christ, being resolved to fight against them by the ‘sword’ of his word, takes the title of him that hath the sharp sword with two edges in his mouth.
(Matthew Henry says…This people dwelt where Satan’s seat was, where Satan kept his court. His circuit is throughout the world, his seat is in some places that are infamous for wickedness, error, and cruelty. Some think that the Roman governor in this city was a most violent enemy to the Christians; and the seat of persecution is Satan’s seat. https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/mhc/Rev/Rev_002.cfm)
Revelation 2:12,13
12 And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write; These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges;
13 I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is: and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth.
In the letter to the church in Pergamos (Pergamum), verse 13 says, “I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is…”
The Greek verse reads “Satanos thronos esti” which literally means, “Where a throne to Satan is”.
The city of Pergamum was an influential city used by Satan to affect the whole nation.
History
At the writing of Revelation, chapter 2, in the Hellenistic kingdoms of Asia Minor-twenty miles from the Aegean Sea and forty miles north of Smyrna stood the most impressive surviving city built during the conquests of Alexander the Great: Pergamum.
Named from the Latin, pergamentum (parchment), this was a city known for its great libraries, a massive royal palace, museums, and temples dedicated to the Greek and Roman gods, Zeus, Apollo, Athena, and especially Asclepius (the God of Medicine).
Here were also a theatre seating ten thousand people sloped down to the stoa, a column-lined promenade that looked out over the plains below.
Ancient Pergamum had a man gifted in the field of medicine called Galen. This man Galen was second only to Hippocrates in fame. It was this same Galen who gathered all the medical knowledge of antiquity into his writings, and who remained the supreme authority in medical science for more than a thousand years. (Galen was born in 129 CE, in Pergamum, Mysia, Anatolia. He was a Greek physician, writer, and philosopher who exercised a dominant influence on medical theory and practice in Europe from the Middle Ages until the mid-17th century.)
But Pergamum, while advanced, was a city under terrible demonic design. The principal stronghold, according to the history of that time, centred around the worship of the god Asclepius.
At the base of Pergamum’s hill stood the shrine of Asclepius, equipped with its own library, theatre, sleeping chambers used in healing rituals, and long underground tunnels joining various other shrines to which pagans journeyed to receive the healing powers of this Apollo’s favourite son.
The early Christian church considered these mystical powers as demonic, for the worship of Asclepius focused on the image of a serpent, sometimes called Glycon.
(Asclepius, was a Greco-Roman god of medicine, son of Apollo (god of healing, truth, and prophecy) and the mortal princess Coronis. The Centaur Chiron taught him the art of healing. At length Zeus (the king of the gods), afraid that Asclepius might render all men immortal, slew him with a thunderbolt. Apollo slew the Cyclopes who had made the thunderbolt and was then forced by Zeus to serve Admetus.
Homer, in the Iliad, mentions him only as a skilful physician and the father of two Greek doctors at Troy, Machaon and Podalirius; in later times, however, he was honoured as a hero and eventually worshiped as a god. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Asclepius)
The Roman approach to religion was an remarkable one. For the most part they just “borrowed” gods from the ancient Greeks for their pantheon and gave them new names.
But Glycon the snake god was different.
So, who is Glycon?
A snake god, associated with the Greek prophet Alexander of Abonutichus. The cult of the snake god Glykon was introduced in in the mid-second century CE by the Greek prophet Alexander of Abonutichus.
Temples were built to Glycon across the Roman world. It has been speculated that live snakes may have been kept in some temples, including the Great Isis Temple in Rome. The Satirist Lucian reports that Alexander of Abonoteichus spread the cult of a snake god called Glycon. Glycon was also an oracle.
The fame of the snake-god, Asclepius, reputed to deliver miraculous remedies for almost all ailments, spread throughout Ancient Greece. Votive offerings with spiralling snakes were devoted in large numbers in his name. (Wikipedia)
It first appeared in the 2nd century AD and seems to have been the invention of one of ancient history’s greatest con men. That didn’t stop the snake god from developing a large and influential cult within the Empire.
Lucian attributed Glycon’s creation to a mid-2nd century Greek prophet called Alexander of Abonoteichos.
Thanks to the pamphlet we know that Alexander most likely “discovered” or found inspiration for Glycon in Macedonia, where similar snake cults had been operating for centuries.
Alexander is said to have brought the snake god (a very large snake) to his hometown of Abonutichus in Paphlagonia after discovering it in Macedonia. Upon his arrival, he built Glycon a temple and made himself the oracle of the temple.
Once installed as oracle, Alexander announced the imminent incarnation of Asclepius (a Greek god of medicine and son of Apollo). Soon after his announcement, people began to flock to the town’s marketplace.
When the crowd was sufficiently large Alexander revealed a goose egg which he sliced open to reveal a large snake. Within a week the snake had grown as large as a man and had formed human features on its face.
Asclepius was reported to have cured untold numbers from every conceivable disease-even raising a man from the dead. This caused Apollo through his oracle at Delphi to declare, “Oh Asclepius!, thou who art born a great joy to all mortals, whom lovely Coronis bare to me, the child of love, at rocky Epidaurus.”8 Such a healer was he reported to be, that Pluto, god of Hades, complained to Zeus that hardly anyone was dying anymore, and so Zeus destroyed Asclepius with a thunderbolt. Mterward, Apollo pleaded with Zeus to restore his son, and this intercession so moved Zeus that he not only brought Asclepius back to life but immortalized him as the god of medicine. First at Thessaly, and finally throughout the Greek and Roman worlds,
Asclepius was worshiped as the saviour god of healing. At Pergamum he was hailed as ‘pergameus deus’, the god of the city of Pergamum.
Aristophanes described how long, tame snakes were incorporated into the worship of Asclepius, and how they glided between the sleepers at night in the sleeping chambers in Pergamum.
To the newly formed Christian community in Pergamum, Asclepius was reminiscent of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and the snake handling methods used in worshiping him were considered as idolatry and demon worship.
These convictions were so strong that Christian stonecutters who worked in the quarries around Pergamum refused a commission to fashion a large statue of Asclepius, and for this refusal they were put to death. Antipas, the Lord’s faithful servant mentioned in Revelation 2 :13 as dying a martyr’s death “where Satan dwelleth,” is reported by some to be the leader of those slain for resisting Asclepianism.
Christians in Pergamum understood the local history that lured the pagan community into the serpentine idolatries of Asclepius and considered it demonic.
Delphi with its surrounding area, in which the famous oracle ordained and approved the worship of Asclepius, was earlier known by the name Pytho.
In Greek mythology, Python-the24 namesake of the city of Pytho-was the great serpent or demon who dwelt in the mountains of Parnassus, menacing the area as the chief guardian of the famous oracle at Delphi.
In Acts 16:16, the demoniac woman who troubled Paul was possessed with a spirit of divination.
In Greek this means a spirit of python (a seeress of Delphi, a pythoness). This reflects not only accepted Jewish belief, but the scriptural revelation that the worship of Asclepius and other such idolatries were, as Paul would later articulate in 1 Corinthians 10:20, the worship of demons.
In Acts 7:41-43
41 And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands.
42 Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness?
43 Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.
We find that when men serve idols they are worshiping “the host of heaven”
Psalm 96:5 says, “For all the gods of the nations are idols” (elilim, Septaguint: daimonia [demons]).
Many other biblical references indicate evil supernaturalism as the true dynamic of idolatry and reveal that idols of stone, flesh, or other imagery are simply ‘elilim’ (empty, nothing, vanity); but, they also show that behind these images exist the true objects of heathen adoration-i.e., demons.
Thus, we see the presence of idolatry wherever cities come under demonic siege.
Such was the case with Asclepius of Pergamum.
While the city of Pergamum was magnificent, and natural man would have been impressed with its commerce, organized religion, labour, trade, artistry, and excellence in education. This became Enemy’s Strategy of Sieging Cities.
The One who stood with a two-edged sword by which He pierced the veil and discerned all truth, Jesus the Omniscient, saw things in Pergamum that the human eye could not see.
Jesus revealed that Pergamum was the geographic centre from which Satan influenced that region. It was “Satanos thronos esti”, a place dominated by demons.
When the exalted Christ looked into that city run by Roman authority, He saw things not only as they appeared to be, but as they were in all reality. Jesus understood that the symbol of Asclepius (the caduceus, a winged-topped staff with one or two snakes winding about it, given to Hermes by Apollo, the father of Asclepius) wasn’t really an oracle of healing, but rather a perversion of the brazen serpent in Numbers, chapter 21:16
Jesus looked upon that invisible influence in the skies above Pergamum and designated Pergamum as “Satanos thronos esti”, a city under demonic siege.
For Jesus to have designated Pergamum as a specific area under Satan’s dominion was to have provided all Christian generations with a pictorial revelation which is a lasting diagram of demonic, territorial modus operandi.
Modern failure to accept the possibility that influential cities can fall under demonic influence (which then expands outward toward regional influence and finally national domination), is a direct contradiction to scriptural illustrations, including those above.
From the example of Pergamum, we learn three major things:
- Idolatry and demon worship increase when cities come under Satan’s design.
- God’s revealed truth is perverted; and when this happens,
- Christians are persecuted for their convictions.
So, how much we can learn from Scripture!
Blessings always!
Referrals:
- Dr. William Smith, Dictionary of the Bible
- Albert Barnes, Barnes Notes on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1 979),
- Empires Ascendant-Time Frame 400 BC-AD 200, ed. George Constable (Alexandria, VA, Time Life Books)
- Hutton Webster, Ancient History
- Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians
- The Illustrated Columbia Encyclopaedia, s.v. “Asclepius.”
- Will Durant, The Story of Civilization
- Ibid., vol. III, 62.
- Smith, Dictionary of the Bible
- Fox, Pagans, 153.
- ‘A/9tes
- James D. Brown, Jesus’ Letter to the Church at Pergamus, a sermon delivered at First Assembly of God in New Orleans, LA on 14 December 1986 morning service.
- Merril F. Unger, Biblical Demonology
- Merril C. Tenney, New Testament Survey
- The Illustrated Columbia Encyclopaedia
- Smith, Dictionary of the Bible, 724.
- Ralph Woodrow, Babylon Mystery Religion
- 1 Maccabees 3: 10- 1 3.
- 1 Maccabees 15: 15-24.
- The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia
- The Works of Josephus, Section on Wars
- Charles F. Pfeiffer, Bakers Bible Atlas
- Michael Grant, Herod The Great
- Josephus, Ant.
- William J. Gross, Herod The Great
- Kenneth S. Wuest, Word Studies In the Greek New Testament
