Revelation 2:8 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Revelation 2:8

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Now we come to the letter addressed to Smyrna, the best of all the seven churches. It is the only city – and perhaps there is some significance in this – that still exists even today, renamed Izmir. Smyrna had an excellent and defendable harbour, some 35 miles north of Ephesus. We are told that it spread delightfully up a hill from the sea, and was so designed, and the buildings so positioned and the streets so arranged that the sea breeze would reach every part of the city as it swept upwards. It was a city with very famous athletic games, with a stadium, a library, and with the largest public theatre of all Asia. It was fiercely loyal to the emperor cult, and was regarded in the ancient world as the most faithful of all cities in Asia to the Roman authority. It was very dangerous to believers because of this almost fanatical loyalty to Rome, and because of the prominence of the Roman emperor cult. It had a large Jewish population, Jews who were very hostile to the church and would join themselves to the pagans in order to attack the people of God. That is mentioned in this very letter. The church was possibly founded by Paul or an agent of Paul around AD 53-56, possibly during the third missionary journey. The Book of Revelation came around AD 95, so the church here is over 40 years old. This was the church of Polycarp. He was born in Smyrna – the great church father, almost the bridge between the apostolic age and the age of the church fathers. He may even have been a junior pastor here at the time this letter came, in his mid-twenties or thirties. It was Polycarp who was later burned at the stake in about AD 155 in Smyrna. There had been unrest, and the Roman authorities decided to execute a number of Christians, and soon rounded up the leading pastor who was Polycarp.

Application

Who has not heard of the martyrdom of Polycarp and those famous words? The proconsul, the Roman proconsul, we read, said to him, ‘Deny Christ, say Caesar is Lord. And if you will swear to that, I will set you at liberty.’ Polycarp replied, ‘Eighty and six years have I served him, and he has done me no harm. How then can I now blaspheme my King and Saviour?’ So the proconsul said, ‘I will throw you to the beasts!’ ‘Call them in,’ Polycarp replied, ‘for we are not allowed to change from something better to something worse.’ ‘Scorn the wild beasts and I’ll have you burned alive, if you don’t change your mind.’ Polycarp said in so many words, ‘You threaten me with fire that burns for an hour and is then extinguished, and you know nothing of the eternal fire for the wicked’, and he perished. That was about 60 years after this time. So Smyrna that is so commended for faithfulness to the Lord stood as a faithful church for many years after this letter.

‘These things saith the first and the last.’ Isn’t that appropriate for them? The Creator of the world and the judge of the world, the author and finisher of the faith, the one who came to Calvary so that forgiveness and life would be possible, and the one who will take us home to glory. The first and the last: it is Christ. ‘Which was dead.’ In his human body and personality he truly died. ‘And is alive.’ What a comforting thing to say to Smyrna. Whatever happens to you, you are in the hands of the one who cannot die, the beginner and the ender of all things.

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Revelation 2:8 Commentary and Bible Study