where Satan lives

I live in a small midwestern town, but we’re not as sheltered as we used to be. We still don’t have much crime, but you can find pretty much any sin you go looking for. Maybe what still makes small towns different these days is you have to go looking for sin.

It wasn’t that way in Pergamum. In that Ancient Greek city, there was a church, and this is how Jesus commended that church in Revelation 2:13: “I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city—where Satan lives.”

Imagine trying to be a church in the city where Satan lives. Historians tell us that Pergamum was full of pagan temples, include no less than three to the Roman emperor, and separate ones for the Roman gods Zeus and Athena, and  one to Asklepios the Greek snake god. As a result, the city abounded with religious rites that involved sex and drugs and drunkenness and all kinds of excess.

Still, there were other cities like that. Pergamum must have been pretty awful for Satan to have made it his home. Unlike God, Satan isn’t omnipresent; he has to be someplace and, according to John’s vision, for a while at least that place was Pergamum.

Even in this wicked place, though, there were faithful disciples of Jesus who stayed true even to the point of death.

I think this is an encouraging word for the American church. Sometimes it seems like my brothers and sisters are falling at an alarming rate. Prominent evangelical leaders seem to succumb to the lure of power, dear brothers and sisters give up their marriages for sex that looks more exciting, and young people explore the darker sides of so-called pleasure made readily available on sites like Craigslist. Hardly a week goes by without news of another banner-carrier for Christ compromising their witness with an unfaithful lifestyle.

Yet in the most evil of places in the ancient world, God preserved for himself a remnant, strong men and women whose staunchness in the face of Satan himself earned a word of commendation from Jesus. He’s doing the same thing here and now.

It makes me remember that there isn’t any temptation I’ll face that can’t be resisted, and that all evil and the Father of Evil himself are powerless against Jesus. The church in Pergamum didn’t conquer that wicked city, but they didn’t give in either. And that was good enough.

There’s a lot of compromise in our churches these days, a lot of going along with bad things that for various reasons look good. But there are still those faithful ones who don’t give in, and we need to find each other. There’s strength in numbers.