The Church at Thyatira
By Mark Odell
Thyatira is the fourth of the seven churches John has been directed to write to, and it receives the longest commentary. The city itself was located some 35 miles southeast of Pergamum on a secondary road to Sardis along the Lycus river in Asia Minor, part of the Roman province of Asia called Lydia. It was considered a holy city dedicated to some local deities, and by the time of Revelation was a well-established center for manufacturing, metallurgy and textile-dying, run by monopolistic trade guilds.
Membership in the guilds for artisans was required, and was the predominant way to obtain property, wealth, and political power. The guilds were not only professionally and economically oriented, they were religious as well, and because they were full ofpagan beliefs, worship, and feasts replete with immoral practices, the guilds were hostile to Christianity. Choosing faith in Christ would be a direct confrontation with the guilds and all that came with them, and so being a believer would be costly and there would be a strong pull, as there is to a degree in our day, to compromise in the name of “tolerance” and practicality.
Jesus acknowledges the church’s works—love, faith, endurance and perseverance, and its trajectory of progress, which are to be expected. But there is a big problem: The church tolerates a woman called Jezebel, a self-described prophetess, who is teaching and leading the church astray. It is unlikely the woman in question is actually named Jezebel, but the use of that name would draw an immediate parallel for the Jewish Christians there with the OT wife/queen of one of Israel’s most notoriously evil kings, Ahab. This original Jezebel was a pagan Canaanite woman, someone an Israelite was not to marry precisely because of her religious belief and practice, and she actively pulled Ahab, and the nation, away from God. She persecuted God’s main prophet at the time of Ahab’s reign, Elijah, and she had no problem seeing to the murder of anyone she wanted eliminated for whatever reason she had.
Thyatira’s Jezebel was following a similar path, presumably without the literal murder part, but no less deadly. She is having an OT “Jezebel” effect by leading the church into sin by compromise. The fact that she calls herself a prophetess is of particular significance because a prophet is one who speaks the mind of God. But who is Jezebel speaking for?
Syncretism was a common way in history of reconciling competing deities and those who worshipped and served them, so Jezebel’s successful infiltration/seduction of the church would fit with that pattern, thus making confrontations with the guilds less sharp and less costly. More specifically, her teachings are implied to be among the “deep things of Satan,” which refers to a Gnostic belief about how to overcome Satan, supposedly by entering into his kingdom and his practices to defeat him and rob him of his power. Never mind that Jesus did that already and we can’t do that on our own.
Those listening to Jezebel are being led astray into idolatry, that they can compromise or accommodate to their surrounding culture and still be obedient to God and in good standing in the church. This situation is a problem of inaccurate theology and practical and spiritual immaturity combined with no pastoral correction or discipline; this is both her failure and the church’s. She is a false teacher running amok unopposed, and Jesus is not pleased. It is worth noting that Jesus commends the Ephesian church for not tolerating evil men whose claim to apostleship is tested and properly rejected. Thyatira should do the same with Jezebel.
Her specific problematic teaching has to do with meat sacrificed to idols and sexual immorality, something evidently more notable in Thyatira than elsewhere among the seven churches, although Pergamum is similarly guilty and called out for it. These two issues were also the main subjects addressed in the Jerusalem council’s discussion (Acts 15, c. 50 AD) about how to incorporate Gentile believers into a universal faith that at this point in history was still comprised mostly of Jews. The council issued a statementin a letter that believers were to “abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality” (Acts 15:20, 29), something all the churches, Asia Minor included, were aware of. Thyatira’s Jezebel was teaching the opposite, so her teaching was unambiguously wrong, flouting the apostles’ authority. She was a libertine, and she was way off track. Worse, the church was doing nothing about it.
Revelation of Jesus
The Lord’s gracious patience and desire for Jezebel’s repentance is clear, but so is her hard-hearted refusal because she cherishes sexual immorality. Jesus warns of the consequences of a refusal to repent, both on the part of Jezebel and those who follow her: a promise of significant suffering and even death, deservedly so. The consequences are particularly dire for her precisely because the impact of her sin is not limited only to her. This is a major consideration for teachers and leaders; their effects go beyond themselves and into those they influence, for good or ill.
Jesus encourages those who have not or do not let themselves be seduced into error, and he tells them he will put no other burden on them. In other words, the church is to “hold fast” what it has, with boldness empowered by confidence in the knowledge that they are doing it right. Those that overcome temptation to compromise will receive two things: First, authority over the nations. While this does refer to power, the Church in authority in Christ’s stead still is loving toward those not in the faith, not merely wielding power as the world does and would. Thyatira’s guilds and all they represent will lose, but they may still have a chance at life in Christ.
The second promise for the overcomer is the morning star. There are a couple of views on what this means, and both may be correct. On the one hand, Jesus calls himself the “bright morning star” in Rev. 22:16, and if this is the meaning, then the overcomer will receive Jesus in his fullness himself, which is an apt description of the consummation of the kingdom at Jesus’s return. On the other hand, Satan is also indirectly called the morning star, from Is. 14:12, so the meaning could also be that the overcomer is given authority and power over Satan as one vanquished and not to be feared. This is also theologically sound. Both meanings are great news!
The historical record shows that the church in Thyatira failed to heed the warnings of the Lord and ceased to exist in any organized way by the end of the second century; in the city as it is today, called Ak-Hissar or Akhisar, there are no recognized Christian churches.
There are some important parallels for us today. First, a church that teaches cultural accommodation is in serious jeopardy. Things that are theologically central are not negotiable, and if the historical dogmas of the faith are being dismissed or downplayed, a church has fallen or is at least well on the way. False teachers do not announce themselves. Rather, they usually offer a “new” insight or interpretation on scripture or dogma, or a more “enlightened, sensitive, and nuanced” perspective on something, often couched as being intended to be more inclusive and to avoid giving offense or division, and they often have little regard for “tradition,” however they define it.
Second, a church that has someone leading or teaching heresy must address it, both by removing the teacher/leader and correcting what has been erroneously taught. This is of course risky, and the history of the Church is full of examples where splits occurred as a result of conflict, over doctrine and practice, but the need to safeguard the church from error is too great to overlook. The bottom line is that genuine love involves confrontation and even at times conflict in the interest of Truth and safeguarding souls, and this is the responsibility of believers, whether they are church leaders or not. Thyatira punted on this one. Let us not follow that example and have Thyatira’s outcome.