The Book of Revelation: Part 4

To the Church in Smyrna

 Revelation 2:8-11 (BSB)

This week, we are in part four of our sermon series on the Book of Revelation. We will be looking at the second of seven letters written to churches—this one, to the church in Smyrna. Let’s read this brief letter in its entirety. Revelation 2:8-11 says:

8 To the angel of the church in Smyrna write: 

These are the words of the First and the Last, who died and returned to life.

9 I know your affliction and your poverty—though you are rich! And I am aware of the slander of those who falsely claim to be Jews, but are in fact a synagogue of Satan.

10 Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison to test you, and you will suffer tribulation for ten days. Be faithful even unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.

11 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who overcomes will not be harmed by the second death.

Did you notice that, unlike the letter to the church in Ephesus, there is no reproach or criticism in this letter to the church in Smyrna? But instead, it is a letter giving them warning that they are about to suffer persecution. We will go through this letter again, one verse at time, but first, I want to give us some background on this group of believers.

The church in Smyrna was located in what today is Izmir, Turkey, about 40 miles north of Ephesus. And like all of that region in the first century, it was under Roman rule. Jumping forward in history, in the 15th century the area came under the control of the Ottoman Turks, and although Turkish speakers called the city Izmir, it wasn’t until 1922 when the sultanate was abolished and then the Republic of Turkey was established in 1923, that the name Izmir was adopted by the rest of the world. Unlike the letter to the church in Ephesus, there are no other letters in the New Testament that are written to this group of believers, or at least, there are none that say so specifically.

Now, let’s begin by reading the first part of verse 8. It says, “To the angel of the church in Smyrna write.”

When studying the church in Ephesus, I learned that some scholars think that letter was written to Timothy and that he was the “angel” it was written to. In the case of this letter, some scholars think that the “angel” of the church in Smyrna was a man named Polycarp. And indeed, history refers to him as the “Bishop of Smyrna.” In fact, today you could go to Izmir and visit Saint Polycarp Church. It was built in 1625, when it was commissioned by King Louis XIII of France with the permission of the Ottoman Sultan. Over the years, it has survived earthquakes and fires, and has been rebuilt and repaired.

But does all of that mean that Polycarp was the “angel of the church in Smyrna”? While it is always possible, because that term does mean “messenger,” some commentators have questioned whether the chronology lines up. In Ellicott’s Commentary he points out that “Polycarp was martyred A.D. 156. We know from Ignatius, who addresses him in A.D. 108 as Bishop of Smyrna, that his ministry lasted nearly fifty years. It seems too much to assume that his episcopate commenced eight or ten years before [if we adopt the viewpoint that this letter was written around A.D. 90-96]. Of course, if we adopt the earlier date of the Apocalypse, the Epistle must have been written before Polycarp’s conversion—probably before his birth.” 

But regardless, I still think, based on how John began this book, that the angel is an angelic being. What is interesting, however, is that we do know that Polycarp eventually became an overseer (or elder) of this church. And by looking at the account of his life, we can see a glimpse of what happened to this church in Smyrna after John wrote this letter. 

Amazingly, several writings about Polycarp have survived over the centuries. Ellicott already mentioned Ignatius, but there are also writings by Irenaeus, who was a disciple of Polycarp. He wrote in his book, Against Heresies, that Polycarp was taught by the Apostle John. Another book, The Martyrdom of Polycarp, written by the believers in Smyrna after Polycarp was killed, explains in great detail how he died. According to The Martyrdom of Polycarp, as he was about to be burned at the stake, he declared: “Eighty-and-six years have I served Him, and He has done me nothing but good; how shall I deny my King and my Saviour!” But when the fires were lit, they did not burn him up, and in order to kill him, they had to stab him.

With all that history in mind, we can see that this warning—about prison, tribulation and even death—came true.

But before we look more closely at that warning, let’s read the next part of verse 8, which says, “These are the words of the First and the Last, who died and returned to life.”

Here is that refrain again: Jesus is the First and the Last. He is the Alpha and Omega. He is who was, and is, and is to come. He died and returned to life.

These believers in Smyrna would know, just as we do, exactly what these words mean. Jesus died on the Cross for their sins, and He rose to life. They had faith and believed this to be true. And this is the message they needed to hold tight to as they faced persecution. But because this is true, they could endure whatever trials they faced.

And the first few trials are seen in verse 9, which says, “I know your affliction and your poverty—though you are rich! And I am aware of the slander of those who falsely claim to be Jews, but are in fact a synagogue of Satan.”

Just as in the letter to the church in Ephesus, the Lord knows. He sees them. He knows what is really going on. And what He knows here is that they are suffering. He knows that they are being afflicted and impoverished, and they are being slandered. They are suffering in a multitude of ways.

The first trial the Lord knows about is that they are afflicted and poor. Simply based on where they live, they should have been prospering. Smyrna was a wealthy city with abundant opportunities for commerce and trade. What made these Christians so poor?

History, both ancient and modern, shows us that, depending on who is in charge in the government, directly affects certain people’s ability to make money. In this instance, the Christians in Smyrna were being oppressed.

In the Roman Empire at that time, Christians were charged with the crime of being “atheists” because they refused to give homage to the Greco-Roman gods or to say that “Ceaser is lord.” Because of their refusal to worship anyone but Jesus, they were always at risk of being jailed or killed. As you can imagine, this severely hindered their ability to make money.

But, as Jesus states in this letter, they were not really poor, they were rich! That is because their wealth lay not in material things, but in the riches of knowing Jesus. As Jesus says in Luke 6:20, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”

2 Corinthians 8:9 says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.” Jesus, taking on the form of a human, humbled Himself, suffered and died on the Cross, so that, on returning to life, He triumphed over sin and death. If we believe in Him, then through His grace given to us, we can be adopted into the family of God, be born again, and become His children and heirs. All that God has, we are given through Jesus’ sacrifice. He made Himself poor, so we might be rich. So even though the Christians at this church in Smyrna were poor in the eyes of the world, they were actually immeasurably rich because of their faith in Jesus Christ.

This most certainly applies to all of us believers today. Though you may be poor in finances, you have abundant wealth in Jesus Christ. All that you might need, He will provide. You may not be financially blessed here on earth, but the wealth that is being stored for you in eternity, as you follow and obey His Word, is immeasurable.

I like what the Benson Commentary says about that verse in Corinthians: “But the Son of God came, that, having assumed our nature, taken our sins and sufferings, and paid our forfeit, we might yet be rich. 1st, in the favour of God, and all the blessed effects thereof, in time and in eternity. 2nd, in being adopted into his family, born of his Spirit, and constituted his children and his heirs. 3rd, in being restored to his image, and endued with the gifts and graces of his Spirit. 4th, in being admitted to an intimate union and fellowship with him. 5th, in having the use of God’s creatures restored to us, blessed and sanctified, even all things needful for life as well as godliness. 6th, in being unspeakably happy with Jesus in paradise, in the intermediate state between death and judgment. 7th, in having our bodies restored, and conformed to Christ’s glorious body, at his second coming. 8th, in being associated with all the company of heaven in the new world which the Lord will make, admitted to the vision and enjoyment of God, and the possession of all things—riches, honour, and felicity, unsearchable in degree, and eternal in duration! And all this we have through his poverty, through his incarnation, life, death, his resurrection, ascension, and intercession; whereby, having expiated sin, and abolished death, he hath obtained all these unspeakable blessings for such as will accept of them in the way which he hath prescribed; which is, that we acknowledge our poverty in true repentance and humiliation of soul before God, and accept of these unsearchable riches in faith, gratitude, love, and new obedience.”

Nothing that we might acquire in the way of riches here on earth could ever compare to what awaits us in eternity. It is good to keep this in mind as we follow the Lord, because then the trials we face here are more easily endured.

And the second trial, this letter mentions, goes along with the first. For this church wasn’t only being oppressed by the Roman government. N.T. Wright in his book, Revelation for Everyone, explains that “in a city where Roman imperial presence and influence was everything, the Jews would have been exempt from taking part in the festivities of the imperial cult…and they may well have been accusing, to the authorities, the Christians who were claiming that exemption as well. Perhaps it was accusations like that, with social and political consequences, that had given Smyrna’s Christians a taste of poverty in an otherwise rich city” (p.17).

That could be why the rest of this verse says: “And I am aware of the slander of those who falsely claim to be Jews, but are in fact a synagogue of Satan.”

The second trial is that they are being slandered, and that slander is bringing dire consequences to the church. But why would the Lord say that these Jewish people say they are Jews, but they are not?  

It might seem backwards to us, because as Christians, we don’t refer to ourselves as Jews. But that was not the mindset at that time. N.T. Wright also explains, “It is impossible simultaneously to say that Jesus was raised from the dead and so is God’s true messiah, Israel’s king and the world’s true Lord, and that He wasn’t and isn’t. Who, therefore, is the true Jew? Paul already gave the answer in Romans 2.25-29: the one who is the “Jew’ in the heart. John would agree — and so, according to this letter, would Jesus Himself. This means that, like it or not, the Jewish synagogue in Smyrna has become a ‘satan-synagogue’—not just in a vague, general, abusive sense, but in the rather sharply defined sense that, as ‘the satan’ is, literally, ‘the accuser,’ the synagogue in town has been ‘accusing’ the Christians of all kinds of wickedness” (Revelation for Everyone, p.17).

They were accusing, or slandering, the Christians of evil, but they were the ones being evil. As the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary explains: “[They] say they are Jews, and are not—Jews by national descent, but not spiritually of ‘the true circumcision.’ The Jews blaspheme Christ as ‘the hanged one.’ As elsewhere, so at Smyrna they bitterly opposed Christianity; and at Polycarp’s martyrdom they joined the heathens in clamoring for his being cast to the lions; and when there was an obstacle to this, for his being burnt alive; and with their own hands they carried logs for the pile.”

So, we can clearly see why Jesus needed to give them this warning about a pending increase in persecution. He says in verse 10: “Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison to test you, and you will suffer tribulation for ten days. Be faithful even unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.”

We don’t know if those ten days are a literal number or if it’s figurative, because sometimes in this book of Revelation, days seem to represent years. But regardless of what they were about to face, or for how long, because Jesus is the One “who died and returned to life,” they do not need to be afraid.

What’s interesting to me is that it’s basically impossible to know exactly what the number of days is specifically referring to. Depending on which century a person lives in, we interpret them differently. So, depending on which century a theologian is living in, his or her opinion on this changes dramatically. As an example of this, as I was researching the history of Smyrna, I learned about a terrible fire that claimed almost 200,000 lives there. Most of those who died were Greek Christians. It lasted for 10 days. But this fire happened in 1922. Could that be this event? We have no way of knowing because we have no way of knowing what will happen in the future, just as no one in the first century could have known of that fire. Now, I don’t think this verse is that fire, but do you see how “easy” it is to make assumptions and try to work out events and apply them to these verses?

It seems to me that this letter was written specifically to this actual church. Yet, we can still apply the truth in this letter to whatever situation we face. Those Christians in Izmir in 1922, trying to escape from the genocide they faced and the devastating fire that was started to wipe them all out, they could have remembered these words in their Bibles and taken comfort that the Christians who came before them and lived in their same place, they too faced terrible persecution. Knowing that would have comforted them to know that God sees their suffering, and He is with them, just as He was with those early Christians. And because Jesus is the Christ who died and returned to life, they too do not face their trials without hope. Even if they died, they knew they too would return to life, because their Savior did and so would they.

The devil is still prowling around like a roaring lion, as 1 Peter 5:8 warns us, seeking to devour us. Physical death is something all of us, except any people who are living when Jesus returns, will face. But for those of us who are “faithful even unto death,” when we die, we will see Jesus. We do not need to fear death. Because He returned to life, so will we if we endure in our faith, and we will receive “the crown of life.”

This same idea is what 2 Timothy 4:8 is talking about. It says, “From now on there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but to all who crave His appearing.”

Multiple verses within the Bible speak about believers receiving a crown at Judgement Day. The description isn’t always the same though. For example, it’s been called a crown of righteousness, a crown of glory, an incorruptible crown, or, as in this letter, a crown of life. Something interesting that Ellicott points out in his commentary is that in Smyrna at the time of this letter, the Olympian games were being held there. So, this idea of a crown being given to a victor is something that would have been very familiar to them. As we saw with the previous letter, Jesus is speaking directly to this group of people, using words and images they all would have understood.

Then, finally, we have the last verse of this letter. Verse 11 says, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who overcomes will not be harmed by the second death.”

All seven letters end with the phrase, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” and then one other phrase that is unique to that church. In this instance, “the second death” He speaks of is the death that follows Judgement Day. We will read more about the second death at the end of Revelation, in Revelation 20 and 21. Those chapters make it clear that this second death does not mean that those who experience it will cease to exist or cease to be conscious. In that second death, the eternal life they experience is not eternal life with God, but eternal death in the lake of fire.

Jesus says in John 17:3, “Now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.” So, if knowing God is life, then separation from God is death.

All of us who believe in Jesus Christ have the promise of eternal life with God. If we endure in our faith, then instead of facing the second death, we will be given the crown of life.

This church in Smyrna was facing a real threat of increasing persecution. Some of them were going to be thrown in jail, and others would be killed for their refusal to say that anyone but Jesus Christ is Lord. This letter was to encourage them to keep their faith and endure whatever threats they faced. The Lord was saying to them: remember your goal, keep going, don’t give up, and you will receive the prize.

Let us pray that we may have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to this church because we need to hear this message today, just as they needed to hear this in the first century, and just as they needed to hear this in the 19th century, when Alexander MacLaren wrote this to his congregation in England. He said in a sermon: “The victor wears his past conduct and character, if I may so say, as a fireproof garment, and if he entered the very furnace, heated seven times hotter than before, there would be no smell of fire upon him. ‘He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death’… the crown is promised not merely to the man that says, ‘I have faith in Jesus Christ,’ but to him who has worked out his faith into faithfulness, and by conduct and character has made himself capable of the felicities of the heavens… for the joys of that future require the fitness which comes from the apprenticeship to faith and faithfulness here on earth. We evangelical preachers are often taunted with preaching that future blessedness comes as the result of the simple act of belief. Yes; but only if, and when, the simple act of faith, which is more than belief, is wrought out in the loveliness of faithfulness. ‘We are made partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end’ [as Hebrews 3:14 says].”

Let us pray that we have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to us today. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. His message does not change. Let us be encouraged. Let us hold to our faith and overcome through God’s grace any trial that we may face today. If we do, then we too will not be harmed by the second death, but we will be victorious and wear the crown of those who overcome.

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father, we want to be found faithful at the end of our lives. We want to be able to proclaim, not just after death, but whenever we face any trials, that You are our Savior, and we will trust in You. We want to declare, just as Polycarp did, that all the years that we have served You, You have done us nothing but good; how shall we deny our King and our Savior! Please help us to trust in Your unfailing goodness, so we may overcome all the attacks of the enemy. We ask this in Jesus our Savior’s name. Amen.