The Church of Thyatira: A Study of Revelations

It’s week four of our seven week series on the letters to the churches in the book of Revelations. We’re a little more than halfway through! Revelation was written by the apostle John when he was exiled on the island of Patmos. It includes his vision of Jesus Christ, who gave John instructions to carry to seven churches. It continues with John’s vision of the end times and God’s ultimate plan for the earth and for the church. When John encounters Jesus in his vision, Jesus gives him messages for the seven churches. We know that there are more than seven churches in the world, but as with most prophecy we also know that we cannot interpret the book of Revelation in a literal sense. It’s very difficult to deal with books of prophecy because we can’t know precisely what they refer to unless God Himself reveals that to us. The number seven in the Bible is a symbol of completion and perfection. I believe these seven churches symbolize the predominant thinking and the attitudes of the church as a whole in the last days.

In our first week, we looked at the letter to the church of Ephesus. The church of Ephesus is considered the “educated church.” Ephesus had a lot going for it. It had prominent men and women of the church. It had a lot of knowledge of God. Miraculous signs and wonders were performed in Ephesus, and the believers there sacrificed all their previous pagan knowledge in exchange for more knowledge of God and His plan of salvation. But for all its education, Ephesus fell away from its first love and devotion to Christ. The church was so busy learning and doing that it had neglected an intimate relationship with the Lord.

In our second week, we looked at the letter to the church of Smyrna. The church of Smyrna is considered the “suffering church.” Unlike in His message to the church of Ephesus, Jesus doesn’t offer correction to the church of Smyrna. Instead, He offers praise and words of encouragement. Smyrna also had a lot of prominent men and women, but Smyrna was a place of severe persecution. The cultural climate of emperor worship made it nearly impossible for the believers in the area to participate in any kind of commerce unless they renounced Jesus. In His letter, Jesus commends them for their faithfulness in suffering and offers them a victor’s crown if they remain faithful, even faithful unto death.

In our third week, we looked at the letter to the church of Pergamum. The church of Pergamum is considered the “compromising church”. In Pergamum, the church had embraced a dangerous teaching of a group of people known as the Nicolaitans. This teaching said that it was perfectly okay to keep parts of pagan life after you became a Christian. These were believers trying to live with one foot in the Kingdom of God and one foot in their past life of darkness. Jesus had extremely harsh words to say about this particular heresy. It is only strict adherence to the double-edged sword of the Word of God and to God’s standard of Truth that can protect us from this trap of the enemy that leads to an ineffective and nonexistent church.

This week, we’re going to take a look at the church of Thyatira. Thyatira is the least known of all the churches from the book of Revelation, but it has the longest letter written to it. Clearly Jesus had a lot to say to this church. If Ephesus was the educated church and Pergamum was the compromising church, then Thyatira is the tolerant church. This is a church out of balance with the gospel. Let’s see what we can learn from Jesus’ letter to this church.

Thyatira is located in the far west of Turkey, south of Istanbul and almost due east of Athens. It’s about 50 miles from the coast of the Aegean Sea. Thyatira located a position along the border between Lydia and Mysia. It’s about 45 miles southeast of Pergamum. The name Thyatira has some controversy. Scholars believe that the name is derived from the title “castle of Thya.” Stephen Byzantium, author of an important geographical dictionary around the 6th century AD, declared that the name Thyatira could mean “daughter.” Ironically, the name of Thyatira in Turkish roughly translates to “hill graveyard.” That’s a pretty fitting name for the tolerant church!

Thyatira was built on flat ground without any natural defense, making it vulnerable to attack. It was the center of the dye industry in the area and the headquarters of many ancient guilds. These guilds were incredibly, incredibly important to the city. In order to ply a trade, you had to be a guild member. Guild members were expected to participate in elaborate guild feasts which involved the worship of the emperor, various pagan deities, and sexual immorality. The city of Thyatira primarily worshipped Apollo. The most famous believer from Thyatira was Lydia, the seller of purple cloth mentioned in the book of Acts. Lydia is credited as being the first Christian convert in Europe. The church of Thyatira lasted until 1922, when the population of Orthodox Christians was deported. There is no church in the area today and no known believers in the surrounding region.

“These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.”

Revelation 2:18-19

This image of Jesus would have resonated with the bronze guilds of Thyatira. It seems the church at Thyatira was doing some things right. They had love and faith. They had service and perseverance, and they were growing in those things. Jesus says that the were doing more now than they had at first, which demonstrates that they were content to stay where they were but were pressing forward to do more and more in His name.

“Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.”

Revelation 2:20-23

Now Jesus gets to the heart of the problem with the church at Thyatira. They are tolerating a false prophetess, Jezebel. There’s a lot of debate as to whether or not this was an actual person named Jezebel leading the church at Thyatira or whether this could just be a Jezebel spirit at work within various members of the church of Thyatira. I don’t think it really matters. It could actually be both. The real point, in my opinion, is what the result of this leading was doing. So who is Jezebel?

If you recall from the books of 1 and 2 Kings, Jezebel was the wife of King Ahab of Israel. She served the Baals and succeeded in leading Israel into Baal worship right along with her. She had the prophets of God killed and was responsible for a lot of bloodshed. She came against the prophet Elijah, especially after he showed Baal to be a false god on Mount Carmel and slew 450 of Jezebel’s prophets. In the Bible Jezebel represents a spirit of tolerance, a spirit of apostasy, a spirit of unhealthy and ungodly dominion, and an anti-prophet spirit.

If we assume that the Jezebel of Revelation 2:20-23 was a real person, what we have is the picture of a woman who has taken over leadership of the church in a way that God has not authorized. That isn’t to say that God doesn’t intend for women to do things in the church. There were several women who ran churches in their homes, provided financial support to the ministry, and led godly lives. Women have always been among the disciples of Christ, but there is a pattern to the authority God has instituted in His church. This woman would have gone against that, and by claiming to have “deep secrets” known only to herself, she was actively leading the church away from correct doctrine. There is also a strong likelihood that this Jezebel was encouraging the members of the church to engage in the guild feasts in order to maintain their position in society. The activities of the guild feasts would have been in direct contradiction to a Christian lifestyle.

If we assume that the Jezebel of Revelation 2:20-23 is a spiritual entity, what we have is an overarching spirit that leads people into an attitude of compromise and tolerance toward things that should not be tolerated. This is a spirit who comes against proper biblical authority and that delights in setting traps for believers in the area of idolatry and sexual immorality. It’s a spirit that says anything goes in the name of Christian love. If the church of Ephesus had sound doctrine but lacked love, then the church of Thyatira had the opposite problem: an outpouring of love with no sound doctrine. An analogy would be to think of the chemical composition of salt. Salt is made up of sodium and chloride. By themselves, each of these substances is incredibly toxic, but mixed in the correct balance they form a substance needed to maintain life. The same is true of the church. We need correct doctrine mixed in the right balance with Christian love in order to stay healthy. Too much doctrine without love is just as toxic as too much love with no doctrinal backing!

“Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets, ‘I will not impose any other burden on you except to hold on to what you have until I come.’ To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations–that one ‘will rule them with an iron scepter and will dash them to pieces like pottery’–just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give that one the morning star. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Revelation 2: 24-29

Apparently, some of the teachings of Jezebel included deep secrets. The people of the church who had not fallen prey to her influence were encouraged to hold on to what they had until Jesus returned. They were to hold on to the true doctrine of the church and persevere in that. The reward would be ruling authority and glory. It was the fulfillment of the promises of Christ.

CORPORATE APPLICATION

It’s important for the church to hold the proper balance of correct, sound doctrine, and also of unconditional love. Sometimes it’s easy for us to fall for the temptation that plagued Thyatira. There are voices that say that we need to love each other unconditionally, and those voices are correct. But we aren’t called to love thoughtlessly. True love doesn’t allow another person to do something that would be harmful to themselves or others. True love comes with healthy boundaries. When we see brothers and sisters engaging in sin, we need to love them enough to bring them back to the sound doctrine of Jesus Christ. Otherwise, what we think is love is just tolerance in disguise. What will we say as a church if we accept an anything goes mentality when we stand before the Judgement Seat of Christ? How will we feel knowing that a fellow believer may have lost his reward or not obtained the crown destined for them because we didn’t teach sound doctrine? There’s a saying that says: hate the sin, love the sinner. I think that holds true here as well. It takes both parts, a complete understanding of sin and how God sees it as well as a loving attitude to be disciples of Jesus Christ.

It’s also important for us to watch the types of people we put into positions of authority. Not everyone who claims to be a Christian is a true disciple of Christ. Not everyone with leadership capabilities should be placed in leadership positions. As a church body, it’s important for us to make sure that those in leadership positions are showing good fruit and teaching sound doctrine. If a person does not show the fruit of the Spirit in their lives, or if they begin to teach a different doctrine than the Bible, we should remove them from a position of authority. As we get closer and closer to the end times, the subtle deceptions of the enemy in the form of false teachers and false doctrine will get harder and harder to detect. We must hold to the message that Christ gives us in the Word if we expect to walk in the authority He has given us.

INDIVIDUAL APPLICATION

Again, this is an area where I’d like to place all the responsibility at the feet of my pastor. After all, isn’t it his job to make sure I am learning sound doctrine? Well, only so far as he is responsible to teach it. It’s really up to me, though, to make sure that I am listening to sound doctrine, that I’m in the Word regularly so that I can discern God’s truth from the counterfeit illusion that Satan offers me, and to maintain a teachable spirit. If I refuse to do my part, my pastor can’t take over for me. I have to be the one to cultivate discernment. It’s my job, also, to be sure I’m helping to hold the leadership of my church accountable. If the people of Thyatira had been spending time learning sound doctrine, they would have quickly recognized the work of “Jezebel” in their midst. They could have worked to remove her from her position of authority within their church body.

I also have to be careful that I don’t get enticed by the correct desire to know God more and follow the rabbit trail of secret knowledge. Everything I need to know about God, His character, and His promises are in my Bible. If I’m praying while I’m studying, God may illuminate a specific passage to me and give me deeper insight into how I can apply that passage to my life, but “new knowledge” or “secret knowledge” that does not align with His Word is a trap of the enemy. That’s why it’s so important that I take any prophetic word or any revelation back to His Word to see if it aligns. If it does, it’s from God. If it doesn’t, time to throw it away. It’s a trap! Studying the Word of God for myself is the best way for me to learn the voice of my Shepherd, so that the voice of a stranger I will not follow.

And now here come the hard part for me, am I growing in acts of love and service, or have I been content to stay at the level I’m at? In growing and maturing in acts of love and service have I crossed the line into tolerating sin? That’s a dangerous place, and it’s one I don’t want to find myself in. I want to express the agape love of God. I want to be sure that I am correcting sin and not allowing a brother or a sister to stray into dangerous territory where they are risking their spiritual well-being with their behavior. It’s hard to offer correction to a fellow believer, but if God places us in the position to do so, we need to be faithful to speak the truth in love. God wants us to grow in acts of service and love but also in a mature knowledge of sound doctrine. We need both parts of the equation in balance in order to succeed and grow.