The Land And The Bible
The Land And The Bible
Churches of Revelation Episode 01: Prophecy or History?
Churches of Revelation Episode 01: Prophecy or History?
Welcome back to the Land in the Bible podcast! In this episode, we're excited to kick off a new series on the Churches of Revelation, focusing on chapters one through three. Jamison Creel and Josh Peters explore the historical and cultural context of the churches themselves, the audience, and the author, John. They discuss the significance of understanding the author's literary intent and the relevance of Jesus' messages to the seven churches. The episode delves into the broader context of interpreting biblical literature and engages in a thoughtful discussion on the historical background of Revelation, the persecution of Christians, and the importance of historical geography. Join us as we set the stage for an in-depth exploration of the letters to the seven churches of Revelation.
00:00 Welcome Back and Introduction
01:08 Overview of the Churches of Revelation
01:34 Historical Context and Interpretation
03:25 John's Perspective and Authorship
04:57 Speculations and Interpretations
09:11 Setting the Stage for Revelation
12:38 John's Background and Ministry
20:47 Persecution and Emperor Worship
23:04 Domitian's Reign and John's Exile
35:54 Conclusion and Next Steps
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Welcome to the land in the Bible podcast. We're excited to be back. we've got some fun things to go over today, and then we're gonna be starting a new series on the churches of Revelation I'm here with Jameson Creel. How you doing Jameson?
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:doing great. And you know, like you said, we took a, I don't know, a few months off from recording. We both had life happening. but it's fun to be back. and I'm excited about the next. few episodes got a little bit of content we got coming up.
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:We are going to be talking about Churches of Revelation. And this is, you know, Revelation is always a fun topic. We're not going to get too much into Revelation itself as the interpretation of apocalyptic literature leaves. a lot of room for interpretation. So, when we start talking about what all this stuff means, there's a lot of opinions on it and people want to go read about it. They certainly can. But for the purposes of what we're going to talk about, it really fits, I think, into the greater context of how we should interpret what, uh, uh, interpret all parts of the Bible and especially, literature like this, because we're going to be talking about the historical context of the audience, the churches themselves, and, the author.
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:Well, I think maybe even just first off, we're not doing the whole book of revelations. We're doing chapters one, two, and three, focusing on the letters to the seven churches. So, you know, we're not necessarily, you know, going to The parts that people like to argue about regarding their eschatological in time sort of meanings or whatever. That's not the purpose we tend to focus on history, geography here. but then also we like to branch off from that, into apologetics a little bit and also into the devotional. And so, you know, given that, when we talk about the history and the geography of the seven churches, things that Jesus is referencing because he's referencing issues regarding those cities, when Jesus is speaking to each of the churches, he references historical, cultural, geographic specifics of those cities. And so, we're going to figure out what he meant to them. more importantly, for me, we want to talk about, what we can glean from that. You know, so we'll do the history the geography. what was interesting about Smyrna was interesting about, Pergamon, et cetera. What was Jesus referencing, when he calls Pergamon, the throne of Satan, when he talks about hot and cold water at Laodicea, there certain things that were happening in those towns that made that relevant. So we'll talk about the history of the geography, of course. but then more importantly, we'll want to get to the application. Like, what does that mean for us? You know, and so I think that's going to be, really important. My general perspective on Revelation. So just so you know, as audience, you'll know where I'm coming from. When I talk about it is I believe the book of Revelation was written by John to those seven churches, which is clearly stated in the text, right? To the seven churches and say, you know, and so I, anytime I interpret Bible for me. I try to think of what is the author's literary intent, what is the author trying to communicate to his audience and who is his audience. So I think the book of revelation means what it meant to the people in those churches. And I think sometimes when we untether it from that, then that's when you get into some of the, you know, the, the more sensationalist things that are. You know, it might be true. They might not, but I think they're a stretch. Let's put, can I put it that way? and I also, don't really know how it matters to my life devotionally, my daily walk with Christ and with my family and my neighbors and ministry people. is there going to be a thing called a tribulation period? If so, is the church, raptured or snatched out, or do they stay? And like, will the battle of Armageddon be fought in this valley or some other valley, or will it be fought in Jerusalem? I think these are things that will all work out the way God wants them to. And I don't know that it's all that productive to sort of argue about them. when I was living in Israel, people get really excited about time stuff and they come to Israel a lot of times and, they want to know, have you seen the prophecies being fulfilled and, things like that, I was up on top of Mount Carmel one time. And, one of the things that comes up when you're on top of Mount Carmel is The valley down below the Jezreel valley, which, some people believe is the valley of Armageddon and they believe that because there's a tell, you know, with an old destruction mound of a city called Megiddo at the foot of the mountain. And so they think, well, Armageddon means Har Megiddo. Yeah. Which, I mean, there's a problem because John is dictating, somebody else's writing and they're trying to write. A Hebrew word with Greek letters, which doesn't work very well. They just don't have the same letters for the same sounds. They don't even have the same sounds. you know, there's not even a show in Greek, you know, so there's all kinds of things. It's the reason we call him Jesus, not Yeshua. You know, they just don't have the same letters, you know, so they couldn't communicate the same sounds. so we don't really know what it means. We don't what John said in that room, you know, and so then people conjecture and one of the prominent conjectures is Haramegiddo, but the problem for me with that is he says the place the Jews call Haramegiddo. And what I would argue is that no Jew ever called Mount Carmel, Haramgiddo. They call it Mount Carmel. And so therefore for me that one's a non, I just don't think that was true at all. Um, I do think, you know, that people, there's been lots of battles fought at the foot of Mount Carmel because it is the gateway, the rest of the country. And if you can defend it, you, it, it doesn't matter. Blocks the door from armies going south. But I just don't think that makes sense because you just don't call it that. So anyway, I was sort of making my argument about why I think it's not that. Uh, I think it's Jerusalem. Cause it's like, I think, harmagda, the amount of gathering makes more sense than, than Mount Megiddo. And Jews do call the temple Mount, Mount place of gathering, Mount of gathering. So that's sort of what I argue for is Jerusalem is a site of the last great confrontation. But having said that, I don't care, you know? I just think, you know, if I'm with Jesus and we're coming back, you know, and coming in to rule and reign or whatever's going to be happening. And Jesus says, go to Jerusalem. I'm not going to be like, no Lord, we have to go to Mount Carmel first Like,
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:yeah, I thought it was Har Megiddo.
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:yeah, that's not, no, it's not going to happen, you know? So I just don't think it matters that much, but, some people really care, you know,
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:I know it's like, I totally agree with you on all the, thinking about the audience and the author's intent, because those are the only things that we can really dig around historically. And I don't want to say we a hundred percent know, but we can know with a lot of evidence, those other things are speculative. Um, We can think about the application. So when we're thinking about the audience, we're thinking about Who is the author, and where are they writing this, who are they writing it to, what is the audience thinking, why do they need this text, why did the author want to provide this to them, what are they're supposed to be understanding from it. And then when we think about it from our lives, it's not going to mean the same thing to us, but we can think about what it meant to them, and then we can think about how it applies to us. So it's a, it's a slightly different, uh, different, uh, twist and thinking about like when you read something in Revelation, even the, even the letters to the churches, it's like, there's, there's, there's frameworks for understanding Revelation where the churches represent things. and it's like, well, let's just talk about it in the historical context and try to see what we can get from it that way. And then if we want to think about application in other ways, then sure.
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:Yeah, and for me, I hold these things in pretty loosely, like I, you know, I'm going to give you what I think is most likely true, but there are people who've written, PhD dissertations and books that have other perspectives You know, I don't hold any of this in a death grip, you know, it's like, this is what I think is most likely true. if we find out it's something else, great. it's not going to destroy my self image or whatever, I'll just be like, that's cool. let's learn, let's develop further. And there's plenty of room to sort of figure stuff out.
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:where do you want to go first?
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:just start. So we're going to start in chapter one. you know, the individual letters to the seven churches are in chapters two and three, but I just want to set the background for the whole book. which I think is important to do. so maybe I want to jump around just a little bit. Cause first off, I just want to set the stage. here's what it says. It says, if you start at the beginning, it says the revelation, Jesus Christ, that God gave him to show his slaves what must quickly take place. And he sent it and signified it through his angel to his slave, John, who testified to God's words and testimony about Jesus Christ in all that he saw. Okay, so Jesus sends this to John. If you skip down to verse nine, John then speaks and says, I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation kingdom and endurance that are in Jesus was on the island of Patmos because of God's words and the testimony about Jesus Christ. I was in the spirit of the Lord's day. I heard a loud voice behind me like a trumpet. Okay. Let's pause right there. so let's set this, the historical background. I accept the more traditional view, about the writing and the timing, you know, this was written in the, like maybe early to mid nineties. There are some people who would argue that it was written before the destruction of the temple. That is not the view of the church fathers in the historical documents. You know, there are some interesting points to be made that point towards an earlier date. But, I think the preponderance of the evidence goes to the later one. And this comes up a lot of times in scholarship. You see this a lot in archeology in Israel. Okay. So for instance, in the last few years with the excavation of the city of David, which is the Southern slopes, the temple Mount, you know, you have all these people advocating for, you know, the temple was maybe one or 200 yards further South than we used to, or not that far, maybe let's say 50 to a hundred yards further South. Then they used to say it was, well, this, we should slide it all, you know, that way, and it, what's really funny is when you, when you go to Israel and you have these Israeli certified guides, when you go to city of David, They all advocate for that position. Then you go to do the tall tour, underneath the temple Mount and all of those guys, like, ah, it's dumb. They're just trying to have a new idea. It's really over, and they're all telling you like, no, it's stupid. It's the traditional sites, the right one, you know? and I tend to agree with the second guy. I mean, I'm not a, Expert archeologist. I, enjoy it. I read it. I'm not the guy digging around in the dirt and, translating, inscriptions from, 1500 BC or something like that. I read the guys who do that stuff, you know, and I listened to their arguments and try to figure out which one sounds like it makes more sense. but I tend to go with the more traditionalists until the new guys really have some significant evidence. so. Whatever the people around 200 AD were saying, it was probably accurate unless we prove them wrong, you know? So that's just know that I kind of go with the more traditionalist view, on the origins of the writing. So that aside, I will give you that perspective and what I believe happened. we know that when Jesus died, He entrusted his mother Mary to John and John to Mary, you know, that's your bomb You know, he says from the from the cross John that your mom Mary. I am NOT Catholic nor am I, you know, Eastern Orthodox I think that the Catholic perspective in particular on Mary, I don't agree with it. I don't believe she was a perpetual virgin. I don't believe she was sinless. You know, I don't believe she was born due to some sort of immaculate conception and some of the ideas they have. I do believe that Protestants in pushing back against the Catholic position, I don't think we respect her enough. Like, I don't, I think we want to be so careful to not be Catholic that we're like, ah, she's just some regular woman who cares about her, which that's probably not the right perspective either. You know, the Bible does refer her to her as those blessed of women. That's not nothing. and also she just suffered a lot for the sake of the gospel. I mean, I cannot imagine standing by watching my son being tortured to death and killed. I can't even imagine the pain of that, the suffering that entailed. so she had been, she was went through a lot, at his death. She's entrusted to John. I believe that they traveled together for the most part. and I believe that John, the reason Jesus asks him to write a letter to these seven churches is because that's where he pastored. the historians tell us that John was in residence in Ephesus, church fathers, stuff like that. And I just think that's true. I don't think there's any reason to doubt that. so we know that John was the youngest of the apostles, or at least, you know, I guess what the fathers tell us, that he lives longer than the other ones. He's the only one that wasn't martyred. while maybe Matthew and Peter and Paul and these guys, for the most part died in the maybe late fifties to early sixties ad John lives on into the nineties. Okay, and that makes sense. if John lives to old age, which again, historically that's what we're told, and there's no reason to doubt it, then if he was 18 or 20 when Jesus died, which he likely was in 33 ad, if he makes it to 96, that's. 63 years later, that makes him 81 to 85 years old, which is, yeah, that would have been really old for back then, but people lived that long. So I think all that makes sense. He's an old man. He's the last one left. first off, I think even in his writing of the book of John his, gospel, Matthew, Mark, and Luke have been written. He's probably read them, Late in his life, he's thinking I need to get down the things they didn't mention, which I think is why John is the oddball of the gospels. You know, I think he's writing years later and he's had time to think about it. And he's like, you know, Luke and Matthew for, they didn't talk about the one at the well, that was really important to me. You know, all that meeting with Nicodemus. I thought that was a big deal. Let's get that down. You know, I think he's giving us what they didn't tell us.
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:And, and I, I think too, I mean, there's a lot of evidence from guys I listened to on, on john, uh, that there was more of a, I guess you'd call it the yo, yo yo Hanan
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:Jokhanine. Yeah. Or whatever. How do you say that?
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:Yeah. So there's like, so imagine, you know, for people thinking about thinking through this, you've got this older guy living in Ephesus. He probably has. People he's teaching as his version of his disciples and he's telling the stories and he's teaching the things from his perspective of being a first hand receiver and They're probably telling him like, all right, let's get this down or they're writing down what he's saying and then crafting it much like, you know, the Old Testament prophets where they would they would have scribes and people writing and you would get their intention so yeah, just something to think about. it's a thing that's happening in a place with real people and it has a reason for being written down and then a reason for why it was written down that way. Johannan?
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:way you say that word, you suppose word you see in text all the time, right? You'd ever say out loud.
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:I, something like that.
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:Yeah. Who knows? But, anyway, if you read the gospel for a second, you know, you read his epistles, you read the book of revelation. I think there is a consistent voice there, if that makes any sense. Like John sounds like John, the same way Paul sounds like Paul. And, you know, to me, John is always the more cosmic mystical of them. He's always the one, I mean, how does he start his gospel? You know, the meaning was the word, the word was God, the words with God. Like he just needs you to know. The, the, the deity, the, you know, but you know, the book of revelation, the Lordship, the awesomeness, the supernatural cosmic powers, he needs you to get in touch with that part of Jesus, whereas. the synoptics may have had playing with children and stuff like that, which, children to come to me, like what the baby, you have kind, sweet Jesus taking care of ladies at Wells. Well, I said, John actually taking care of, you know, children or the woman with the issue of blood or the, all these kinds of things You know, I mean, John does have some of that, but he really, really needs you to understand the deity. He wants to land that. And it makes sense maybe because again, it's he's writing later and maybe there are some people that are like, yeah, we like him, but eh, you know, and he's probably wanting to answer, you know, some things that have come up in his,
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:this is giving me an idea for episode or a new series, which I think we should do the Gospels because we've told stories from the Gospels in all our videos and, but it'd be cool to go do each gospel and talk about, What's being said and
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:overall, like why it was
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:Jesus is represented. Yeah, because I think you could shed a lot of light culturally.
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:y'all Matthew.
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:Yeah.
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:Yeah. Cause Matthew's the one written to the Hebrews. all right. So John is older. He's been pastoring, you know, he's an apostle he's been in residence in Ephesus and, and I think sort of like circuit pastoring or, or overseeing that whole region, right? So Asia minor. Now, when the Bible talks about Asia, it doesn't mean China. Or, you know, Vietnam, Thailand, it's talking about the Western 20, 30 percent of what we now call Turkey. sort of the western coast and then go inland, you know, a bit from there. That was the province of Asia or Asia Minor. And then since that was the beginning of not Europe, eventually, that gets extrapolated to everything after that all the way to China. But, at the time with writing the Bible, it just meant sort of the Western bit of Turkey, And so that's where John is pastoring. if you travel around that area, if you drive from Ephesus to Laodicea, It takes like three, three and a half hours, something like that. and the roads are pretty good, you know, they're pretty modern interstate kind of level roads. So, however long it takes you to drive, it's three hours of driving it's probably, 180 miles or so 175 miles like that, that's about as far inland as Asia goes. After that, you get into Cappadocia and other regions, of what was Asia minor or what was, Anatolia. So he's pastoring that area. I think that's why he was instructed to write to them because they had a relationship with him. and that all makes sense. and there's plenty of archaeological as well as historical documentary evidence for John's ministry in that region. Okay. We'll touch on some more of that at Laodicea, but, just for now, no, that's what he was doing. And I, what I believe happened was that the early, early church, so let's say in the thirties, forties, fifties, you know, the first 20 or 30 years, I don't really think they had a huge amount of, of persecution. The first documented persecution of Christians is, I think it's in 64 AD when Nero, you know, has his outburst against the Christians. My opinion on Nero's persecution is that it was, it was just really in the city of Rome. It was localized there. I don't think it was generalized to the empire. but I do believe that under Domitian, he's the first real systematic persecutor of Christians. He's emperor from 81 to 96. AD.
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:Yeah, he has a big palace, or he had a big palace,
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:That's Diocletian.
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:Diocletian is the one that's in Ephesus.
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:no Domitian's in Ephesus, Diocletian's in Split, Croatia, where his palace is. And when Diocletian's persecution started, I believe he was in, basically Nicaea or, you know, sort of Northern, Northwestern Turkey, is when that all kicks off.
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:So yeah, cuz that's like a I think That's one of those that when I think about persecution I think about he comes to mind because
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:he's really, really bad. And his persecution is largely directed. He had a henchman Galerius who was. like the Ahab and Jezebel story, Jezebel's the proactive, aggressive, evil, and Ahab's just like, well, I don't want to fight, so I'll just do what she says to get along. Galerius is the driving force, and Diocletian's just like, you want to kill lots of Christians? well, maybe we shouldn't. And Galerius is like, we should kill the Christians. And Diocletian's like, Okay. Let's kill some Christians,
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:this in
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:I mean, I'm,
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:is it
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:I'm about 300,
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:Okay.
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:Yeah.
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:So it is in 300.
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:literally the next emperor is Constantine. So it's like, there's like one last, like, we're going to kill them all. It doesn't work. And so then Constantine's like, God, I should make it legal. This is enough, you know, enough, enough of doing this.
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:So this is like 200 years before that or so.
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:yeah, that's correct. This is 81 to 96. And what you have to know about Domitian is he was nuts. I mean, as emperors tended to be, but like, he's definitely up there on the list. the more I read and try to wrestle with what was going on. In this part of the Roman empire at that time. So what was going on in Greece and Turkey in regards to the church, interacting with Paul and John and, the paganism that was going on, all that crazy stuff. I think that at the end of the day, while worship of Zeus and Apollo and Poseidon and Athene and all those kinds of things, and, you know, Aphrodite was really, really bad. I think the thing that was the worst, that caused the most trouble for the Christians at the end of the day was the emperor worship, like the cult of, the emperors and the empire of Rome, because it wasn't, voluntary, it was compulsory. You had to participate, and if you didn't participate, you had a real problem, there were real sanctions. here's how the cult of the empire developed and how it interacted with Christians in general. shortly after Julius Caesar's death, he is quote unquote deified, recognized as a god. His descendants then are also deified and recognized as God at the time of Paul's writing. So that's in the fifties as this is later. It's during the eighties now or early nineties when John's writing. but when Paul was writing the fastest growing religion in the empire, it wasn't Christianity. It was the cult of Augustus, worshiping Augustus Caesar was a big deal. It was done all over the place. And as the empire was expanding. they began to not just let you worship the Caesars as gods, but demand that you worship the Caesars as gods, and that you go to these temples and bow and pay your offerings or make your sacrifices as this cult is developing it becomes compulsory. You have to do this. Okay. And what I would argue is that all, um, now we'll get a little bit weird, but all Babylon's. Okay. So. and I say that only because the Bible directly says it. Okay, Peter in 1st Peter ends his epistle by saying, Greetings from Babylon. He's in Rome, okay? So, obviously he thinks Rome is in the pattern of Babylon. So, you know, kind of what does that mean? It's a big, global, multicultural empire. You know, that, which is what Babylon was. It was a big giant, multinational, multicultural empire that was trying to suck all the power into itself, which is what Rome did, which is what America does, I think, you know, big multicultural empire that wants to continue to aggrandize itself. I mean, I think that's just simply true. And what I think those kinds of cultures always do is for the most part, you just kind of let people do their thing. You know, because if we try to impose exactly this cultural template on everybody, it doesn't work. You know, think of America, it's an immigrant nation. There's all these different people groups. If they all had to have the same. Weddings and, you know, celebrate the same holidays in the same way and have the same food on their table most nights and blah, blah, blah. It simply would not work. So they're kinda laissez-faire, but they pick certain things that you have to bow to. in the book of Daniel, you have Nebuchadnezzar building the image of himself in the desert. And he doesn't care if Daniel and Abednego, you know, pray to Yahweh in the privacy of their own house, but out there in that public event, you're going to daggum pray to this thing. You know, these are certain things they want you to publicly bow to. And I think that's true. I think in our culture, there are things that you are supposed to publicly bow to, and we know we have different conversations in our houses, right? I mean, it's just, true. That could be politics, religion, racial dynamics, gender stuff. Like there are things that it's like, here's what you say in public. And if you don't, there are sanctions. So I think it's the same. Okay. I think that dynamic is standardized. Right? So in Rome, the thing they made you bow to that you, well, you can believe in all these gods, hundreds of them. You could worship Osiris, an Isis Egyptian god. You can worship Greek gods. You can worship, you know, Covelli, which was a central Anatolian goddess. You can worship Artemis. You pick it, and the emperor, you know, and the emperor. Well, and, and, and for pantheists and polytheists, that kind of worked because they don't care. You're always allowed pantheon. But as the empire expanded, they bumped into a weird little group of people that, Caused them a problem. Those people being the Jewish people, because the Jewish people said, we ain't doing that. And the Romans were like, look, you know, just go to the Augustus temple, you know, once or twice a year and bow and throw a coin in, kill a goat, whatever, you know, just, just go worship. You know, just get a little nod of the head to Augustus, you know, every so often. And you said, no, we're not. We won't do that. so we're going to be doing this whole thing in turn to give you a little bit of context and insight on why we're doing it. and how we're building it. I'm going to get started with a couple of elements of the Jewish tradition that we all have a part in. You know, they're fairly financially successful. They make decent money and they pay taxes. So the question is, do you want to keep these 7 million people alive paying taxes, or you were trying to wipe them out, which is expensive and difficult and kind of a pain in the rear. And so the Romans decide we'd rather have them, you know, living, thriving, paying taxes, but we got to figure this out. And, you know, somebody comes along and says, we have an idea. you know, one of the, one of the Jewish representatives basically says, look, what if we pray for. Instead of to your emperor, would that be acceptable? And some pragmatic Romans says, sure, that'll work. So the Jews had an exception. They're the only people that were allowed to pray for and not to the emperor. Okay. And just so you'll kind of know, this becomes very important. And we study Smyrna, for instance, the Christians tried to live under that exception. This is what happens in Corinth with Paul, with a BMO. And you know, when he said, when the Jews say they're worshiping in a way, it's not legal. And then the governor says, you know, this is something about your laws. So he makes it internal to Judaism. but Jews are trying to live under that exception. And the time of Domitian is when that really starts to break down when, you know, the Jews by and large are looking at the Romans and saying, they're not us. And the Romans are like, There's a whole lot more y'all than there used to be, you know, and, last weekend you were worshiping Dionysus or whatever. And now you're saying you're a part of a Jewish sect, but you're Christians and the Romans started to stop accepting that excuse basically. And so that's kind of the background, but then you got to push into who Domitian was. I mentioned earlier, he was crazy and here's how he was crazy. So from Julius Caesar going forward, the Roman Emperors were typically, unless the people hated them, but typically were deified after their deaths. Okay you know, which is why you'll see these inscriptions like the one that I think we got pictures of it in Ephesus where it talks about Augustus Caesar son of a god Domitian is the first one to have himself deified while he's still alive. So Domitian comes along and he's like, Why wait till I'm dead to say I'm a god? I'm a god now. And, you know, there are some people that anytime you get into biblical archaeology, you have people argue about what something means, even though it looks very clear sometimes. if you go to Ephesus, there's a certain platform you can stand on, and we've stood there. And you're, it's, you know, it's a nice picture spot because you can look down the road at the library down at the end, but if you pivot and look to your left, what you can see is it's sort of still buried half in the hill, but you can see there used to be this sort of like wedding cake of Roman arches. And what that was, was the temple of Domitian. So Domitian was so infatuated with himself that he, goes to Ephesus, which is one of the two or three richest cities in the empire, huge city. And he decides he wants the biggest, tallest, most dominating thing on the skyline to be his temple and his statue. So he builds this like three layers of arches, just this giant platform elevated up in the air. the column supporting the third layer, if I remember correctly. All the columns had carvings of Greco Roman gods built into them. What he's saying by that is the gods support me. Zeus, Apollo, Athena. They support me and the Roman government, okay? Which is crazy. And at that temple, he had commissioned a 40 foot tall statue of himself. Okay, we know that for an absolute fact because we found the head of that statue and the head is like seven feet tall. So, you just kind of do the math. You take human ratios, like how big is a human and you multiply it out. He was like 40 feet, something feet tall, huge statue on the highest pedestal overlooking the city. And this is where John is pastoring. And so, what you can imagine happened, and the historians sort of back up, is that at some point, John is the leader of the church in Ephesus, is pushed to go worship there, and he says, nah, I'm not going to do that. And he's pushed, and he's pushed, and there's varying degrees of pressure that are brought to bear. Okay. One of them is you're forbidden to have any business. You can't buy, sell, you know, which is mentioned in the book revelations, by the way, the whole thing with the mark of the beast, you could not buy or sell or purchase. Well, whether or not that's going to happen in the future, it definitely has happened in the past that that was one of the things that was done to you. And then eventually, you know, beating death, like they're just increasing pressure put upon you to comply, which could eventually end with, you know, Execution. And what the Church Fathers tell us is they decided to kill John, they chunked him in boiling oil, and John did not die. You know that he's like in the boiling oil still preaching and so the romans were freaked out And it really does beg a question because generally speaking imprisonment was not a part of roman punishment they usually just beat or killed people, so why is john exiled? And they did exile periodically, but that was usually just reserved for like really, really high end. You know, you're a member of the royal household and we don't want to kill a prince, but we're going to stick you on an island somewhere, you know, to isolate you. That was not a part of normal, punishment. You know, that was, punishment for the Clinton family, the Biden family, the Obama's, the Bush's, you know, if you're like way, way up there, we're not gonna put you in jail. We'll just stick you on an Island somewhere, you know? So why is John sent to Patmos? So for me, I'm like, yeah, I haven't had no problem with, you know, the traditional story that he was, they tried to kill him. It didn't work. It didn't take. And so he gets, hauled off to his prison Island. So he's an old man. They tried to kill him. It didn't quite work. He's on this Island. And reflecting back on, I'm sure his life, his time as a young man with the Lord and, the churches that he's helped to grow over all these years. And, the Bible says he's in the spirit of the Lord's day. He's praying, you know, on a Sunday, I suppose, could have still been a Saturday for all I know. And, but he's praying and the Lord shows up and he gets this revelation. I think that's the general outline that the church is under heavy, heavy duress. Like really, really heavy duress. And in that context, you know, Jesus shows up to speak to his old friend, you know, that there was his favorite one, you know, way back in the day, near the end of his life to give him one last bit of encouragement to share with the churches, before John passes, you know, so I think that's the general content, or the background for what's going to be said, it's the Lord is speaking encouragement. to churches under great duress.
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:Cool. that's a good intro. I think that's going to be super helpful for people to kind of get the context of, of where we're going. And I love, going to Ephesus It really paints a very clear picture of this time period and what was going on and,
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:what, I mean, emphasis is one of the, I don't know, the most, it's one of the you know, Greco Roman historical sites is just beautiful, you know, it's, it's really great. There's three or four other ones I think are in the same category, but, you know, it's hard to beat for sure. it's spectacular.
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:yeah, absolutely.
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:we'll get there. We're going to finish with that one.
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:we're going to, save it, right?
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:yeah. So we're going to actually start with number two and we'll go two, three, four, five, six, seven, back to one. Cause I actually want to finish with Ephesus. So it's going to be like a Quentin Tarantino movie.
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:That's perfect.
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:yeah,
Revelation Episode 01_Josh:Awesome. We've teased it. So now, yeah, now we gotta do it. Cool. Well, that's great. I think this is a good intro, and I'm excited to, Let's see where we go from here, but hopefully everyone found this interesting, hang with us as we continue this series. And if you enjoyed this and you want to see more content like this, go over to thelandandthebible. com and we've got travel series where we actually go to the places. We did go to Ephesus. You can check out our footsteps up there. Paul series. and we're in, you know, we did also go to, Pergamum. So we're going to get to that eventually. So you'll, you'll get to see that as well. If you head over there, or you can just, subscribe to the podcast, check us out on YouTube and like, and subscribe, and we will see you later
Revelation Episode 01_Jamison:Thanks for watching this video. If you enjoyed it, click like and subscribe. It really helps us. If you really enjoyed it, go on over to our website, thelandofthebible. com and become a supporter. It helps us generate more content and gives you access to our full library of video and Bible study content.