The Seven Churches of Revelation – our reflections after a recent visit.- Brian and Mary Newsom

In April this year we were privileged to join a party to visit these churches and look at both the history and spiritual significance of the letters our Lord wrote, through St. John, to these churches.   It was led by our friends Clifford and Monica Hill and it was hoped that we would help them to complete a book they have written,  From Ephesus to Laodicea.    Armed with their manuscript and our cameras and notebooks we left Heathrow to fly to Izmir.   We stayed at four hotels in order to cover the great distances but in fact only saw a small part of what is now Turkey.

Turkey is a land of contrasts with a population of 75 million, the birth rate is very high and unemployment stands at 13%.    It is potentially a rich country having all the natural resources it might need.   Because it was springtime it was also very green and it is capable of growing more than enough to feed its people.      In spite of this some of its people are extremely poor, we saw gangs of people working in the fields but many have, as a result of their poverty, moved to the towns which are struggling to accommodate them.  

One great bonus is the archaeological remains, not just those associated with the early Christian Church but also with its Greek and Roman history.  There are apparently more remains of Greek temples than in Greece itself.    The Turks are now developing a large tourist industry, based not just on the history but on hot water spas, healing mud baths, beautiful beaches and the climate.     At the various archaeological sites there is much more to uncover and we could have seen much more than our seven-day tour permitted.   We, along with some of the party, stayed on for a further week at the hotel at Gundogan, before flying home from Bodrum.   It was indeed an exhausting first week, and we continued to go on excursions in our second week but it was a trip that we shall not forget and which has given us an awareness of the needs of this land.

After a long journey through the Cayster valley from Izmir, our first night was spent at a lovely hotel at Kusadasi on the coast.   On that first evening we met for prayer and fellowship and Clifford and Monica explained what they were wanting as we visited the sites.     They were looking for impressions and spiritual reactions as well as the accuracy of their text.

Whilst we were praying the Lord reminded me (Mary),  of the text from the letter to the Church in Philadelphia. 

“I know your works.   Look, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.” (Rev.3:8)

That is the message to be considered in several days time and yet the Lord was drawing our attention to it now as a message for us in Turkey.   God himself will supply the power if we keep His word and trust Him to bring this land back to Christ.   This is a message that we must take seriously and we refer to it again.    Turkey is nominally a secular state but culturally Muslim, so that the people cannot easily embrace Christianity.

  Day 2  Ephesus 

In the days of the Apostles Ephesus was on the coast but it is now several miles inland because of the silting up of the river Cayster.   There is a very large area of ruins and much more still to be excavated, it is very popular with tourists.   It was hot and tiring, being very rough underfoot but the Ephesus site is a fabulous place and we didn't have enough time to do it justice. 

In ancient time when visitors arrived at Ephesus, either the top end or the harbour, they had to go to the bath house and then the wine house, to soften them up.  They had to have a bath and be quarantined and inspected and instructed in the rules of the city.   At one place, there is the Heracles Gate which was made too narrow for chariots to pass through so as to provide a pedestrian precinct. 

Perhaps I (Mary) had wanted too much from Ephesus, I didn’t pick up the spiritual side I had hoped for.   It was a secular place swarming with visitors.     This was early in the season but two boats in the harbour ensured that there were visitors there for the ruins, they were not all on Christian tours.   We were conscious of the fact that Paul incited a riot here but there was so much to see that I could not focus on Paul’s presence.   In fact it had been swamped by later history, the library and the tunnel to the brothel and the road sign which points to this house of women.    The library had clearly been a magnificent building and was in fact adjacent to the lecture hall of Tyrannus. (He entered the synagogue and for three months spoke out boldly, and argued persuasively about the kingdom of God.   When some stubbornly refused to believe and spoke evil of the Way before the congregation, he left them, taking the disciples with him, and argued daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus.  This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia, both Jews and Greeks, heard the word of the Lord. - Acts 19)  

 The amphitheatre was clearly magnificent and was the scene of the riot.   Much happened here with signs and wonders as the word was proclaimed (so the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed) but Paul moved on to Macedonia.   On his return he  called the  elders to meet him, and he left them instructions (Acts 19).     He would never see them again.

We hadn’t realised that the Virgin Mary went with John the Apostle to Ephesus.   Tradition says that she died there, for there is a church dedicated to her.    We went on to the Basilica of St John.   Remarkably there are still the remains of the first small chapel, but later a magnificent Basilica was built on this spot where the tomb of John is central.   For us it is strange to see great domed basilicas as the pattern for a church building.   

That evening, at Kusadasi, we had a meeting with two young Turkish Christians who worked amongst university students.    To change one’s faith to Christian, means getting identity papers altered, it brings shame to parents and makes it difficult to get a job.   Churches are few and far between and it is not possible to build new ones.  There are only about 3000 evangelical Christians in Turkey.

 Day 3   Smyrna - Izmir    the third largest city in Turkey

Smyrna made me (Mary) weep.   We drove through the poorest part of Izmir to the fortress at the top of Mount Pagus.    Outside these walls executions had taken place in ancient days and included early Christian martyrs, of whom the aged Bishop Polycarp is the most famous.    Ruins of ancient storage rooms were clearly visible.   A group of goats wandered precariously near the edge as an elderly shepherdess kept an eye on them.    Children followed us hoping for money, we were so rich in their eyes.    As I walked down from the top looking at the primitive craft stalls and the elderly women looking for a sale, I found myself praying in tongues.   I felt so helpless and close to tears.   We had been advised to leave our bags in the coach and beware of pickpockets but I would have spent the few euros they wanted for a couple of woven bags.     I knew that any money I could have spent may have bought a meal but would not have lifted them out of poverty.    Later we saw queues of people paying their electricity bills on the very last day, there was no government help for them.    The letter in Revelation says, “I know your affliction and your poverty, even though you are rich.”   They were going to suffer and be tested but were promised the      “crown of life” if they remained faithful.   Now, in a different century, they are still suffering but without the hope and riches of a Christian faith. 
 

The letter to Smyrna is hard, it is prophetic regarding suffering but reassuring for those who overcome.   It may well be speaking to us today, as Christians suffer persecution where there is a dominance of other faiths whose members have a prejudice against Christianity.   Even the secular world in the West in its political correctness can be hostile to evangelism and we may feel the effect.    Let us learn from history, for in 1922 there was great persecution of the Christian city of Smyrna.  There was a bloodbath with mass ethnic cleansing.     The whole region had been mainly Christian during the time of the Ottoman Empire, but in August 1922 Kemal Ataturk launched an attack on the Greek army.   The Greek Government appealed to Britain, France and America for help but it was not given, although both Churchill and Lloyd-George did try.   What followed was mass mob rule, burnings, pillage, rape and slaughter; the city was reduced to ashes.   The Archbishop of Smyrna was himself taken to a barber’s shop and mutilated before being killed.    Any Christians who survived fled to Greece. 

Pray for this land with only a few brave Turkish Christians in great need of our support.

Pergamon - Bergama

We moved on to Pergamum, the modern town of Bergama, 65 miles north.     This was the great city of culture and the ancient capital of Asia Minor before Ephesus.    Pergamum is on two sites, the lower Aesklepion or healing centre, with its snake symbol, and the upper and older Acropolis.    It is important to understand the history  in order to appreciate the letter in Revelation.     It is described as the city where “Satan has his throne.”    There are remains of both Greek and Roman temples and it was from here that, in the late nineteenth century, the great altar of Zeus was removed by the Germans and rebuilt in Berlin, the Turkish authorities are now asking for its return.   Did this have a spiritual effect on Germany?    I (Mary) was not personally disturbed in any of the sites by spiritual influences of either Greek or Roman times but was very aware  of the fact that Christianity  had been suppressed.   It was in the modern town of Bergama that this hit me most strongly.    We passed the Red Basilica of St. John, it had originally been a Greek Temple then a Town Hall and then a Church.    It had been in ruins for centuries, we paused briefly here  but a great sadness came over me.   I was sure that it was linked with the 1922 persecution of Christians.    This cloud over the region can be lifted by deep intercessory prayer, remember that Jesus has the two-edged sword. 

The Pergamum Church will feel this sharp sword unless they repent of the evil and syncretism.   But there is a message of hope to the overcomers, to those who will listen and feed on Christ the bread of life.  And there is the white stone, which was used to send an invitation to a special event such as a wedding.  The implication was that a personal name was inscribed so that the recipient would know he or she was invited to the wedding feast of the lamb.    Traders at the stalls outside the sites were selling perfectly shaped white stones, I just picked one up as we climbed the hill of the acropolis.    But let us beware too, for there is a temptation to compromise our faith as we witness in the post-Christian world today.

We went first to the healing centre.  What we know about it comes from the writings of the Greek historian Strabo, who spent a year there in hospital.  They used hot springs, mud and local herbs.  At the healing centre patients went to the consulting room, then the water and hour-glass rooms and then the sleeping room where opium fumes were poured in.  Here the patient hears the voice of the god, actually a priest, who tells him about his illness.  If the priests thought he wouldn't recover then they told him to go home.  Otherwise they gave him the treatment.  When he was well he went to the temple and made a donation.

The story goes that the founder, Aesklepius, who had a son Colostra and a daughter Hygea, was so good at curing people that nobody died.  Hades the god of the underworld complained to Zeus that he was not getting any customers, so he went to investigate.  He found that Aesklepius had almost discovered the secret of immortality, so he killed him.

The hospital remained here until the earthquake in 1334 and then the water system changed course. 

The amphitheatre at the healing centre had seats right down to the front part that the Greeks called the orchestra.   This indicates that it was used for teaching purposes rather than gladiatorial combat like the others we have seen.    

The other site at Pergamum is the Acropolis on top of a hill outside the modern town of Bergama.  Here there are the remains of a Roman temple to Trajan and Hadrian and a library that is now just a pile of stones.   The temple was built at the height of the Roman Empire and led to the deification of man when Pergamum had some 120,000 inhabitants.  From the top of the hill we could see both Greek and Roman amphitheatres.   But the making and use of parchment was invented here, which must have had a big influence on the spread of information via books, known as codices.

Day 4 Three sites today as only a small amount has been excavated.

 Thyatira

Some ruins have been built over, only the ruined 14^th C church remains surrounded by railings in the middle of the modern city of Akhisar.   But it attracts Christian tourists today and this alone indicates that there was once a strong Christian community.   The fact that Christians come and perhaps sing and read the Revelation message here must be a witness to the local inhabitants.

In ancient times it was important being at the intersection of important trading routes and so today much traffic passes through en route to Izmir, Bursa, Bergama and Denizli (near Laodicea).   It was an affluent society that lived on the fruits of commerce, the guilds were strong and so worship of idols or even the toleration of such worship caused the Lord to rebuke them.   It was a place of compromise and as such the message gives us cause to reflect on similar situations in the western world today.

Sardis.  

The tiny village of Sart, near the modern city of Salihi is all that remains inhabited, of the once great city of Sardis capital of the Lydian empire. There are two sites excavated.   In the southern site there was a great Temple of Artemis but amongst these ruins is a small Byzantine church.  This church seemed so much more significant because the walls were high enough to feel that it was a church in spite of the great columns of pagan culture around it.  Excavations in this region have indicated that wealthy Christians once lived here.   Everywhere we have been we heard about earthquakes that had destroyed the towns.   Here in Sardis in 178 AD an earthquake destroyed the temple but it was then restored.   In 334 a worse earthquake occurred and the ruins were covered with earth, marks on some of the columns show this.   So it might be that when our church was in use the mighty temple pillars, so obvious in the excavations were hidden, so much has happened on the same piece of land.   Sardis was abandoned before the Turks built Sart in the 14th C.    

The northern site is quite different and consists of the largest known synagogue of ancient time and a magnificent gymnasium and associated civic amenities - a swimming pool, library and shops.    An earthquake in AD 17 had destroyed much of Sardis, a wealthy commercial city.     The Romans determined to rebuild it and the wealthy influential Jews cooperated with them.     There is an altar in this synagogue with both the Lion of Judah and the Eagle of Rome depicted on it.    At this site we  also noticed early Christian symbols indicating Messianic Jews, there was so much to see here.    But the message again indicates that all was not well.   A church apparently alive, clearly active and yet spiritually dead, they needed to wake up and walk in the righteousness of Jesus.   Paul and John would almost certainly have visited this synagogue.

Philadelphia  -  the city of brotherly love, so named by Eumenes ll in honour of his brother Attalus ll.    It is now called Alasehir by the Turks. 

It has always been a small town, not a rival to the other places we had visited.   But the Christian community must have grown to a strong and influential church, for by the fourth century they had taken over what was a Roman Civic Hall.    That building was there when the letter to Philadelphia was written, and was built on four massive pillars that withstood several earthquakes.   What a coincidence that the letter speaks of pillars of the Temple of God!   These pillars are the most impressive part of the ruins today but much more could be excavated.  

What of the Message?    The Greeks built this town at the edge of their territory in the second century BC to spread Hellenistic culture throughout the region,  i.e. it was a missionary city, but our Lord saw it as an “Open door”  through which to take the gospel.  There were at the time of the letter about 500 churches in the region of which this was on the edge.    In the letters so far the salutation and reference to Jesus picks up some aspect of the description of Christ in Revelation, but in this case we hear of the “One who was true” (1 John 5:20) and who has the “key of David”, for the genealogy of Jesus goes back to David.   But there is the promise that “what He opens no-one can shut and what he shuts no-one can open” this is quoted from Isaiah 22:22 when he prophesies that Eliakim will succeed the unfaithful aide to King Hezekiah.  

(Mary) But this was the passage that the Lord brought before me on our first evening in Turkey.    I now see a greater implication for us all, both in Britain today and for us in ARM(Wales).   At our recent EGM I remembered this and I am sure that the Lord was prompting me as I prayed that day.

We went on to the Pammukale region for our next overnight stay at the Lycos River Hotel.    This is the area of hot springs and mineral waters that have healing properties.   

The Evening Prayer meeting was led by Jock, several of the party were unwell with the flu-like bug that was doing the rounds of the party.   There was a Taize input to our worship, and we were encouraged to be prophetic as we prayed for Turkey.    Anticipating Laodicea  we inevitably thought of Revelation 3:20   Jesus knocking at the door, we were reminded that that is key for our churches back home.

Early next morning I (Mary) awoke having had two dreams in quick succession.   The first clearly said to me “Return to your first love”.     It came in a strange and personal wuay and I could not mistake the message, it was not just the bringing of the words to mind.    The Ephesians had been told that they had forsaken their first love, so I knew that it meant that the church did not love the Lord Jesus as it should.    The next was very different but equally vivid.   I was watching a horse, a black horse, and it jumped over a fence and fell down dead.   Did this have anything to do with Turkey or the seven churches?  I checked with our guide that there is nothing symbolic about horses in Turkey.   That left my other thought that this was the black horse of he Apocalypse.     I looked up the verse, Revelation 6:5.   When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a black horse!  Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand.

As soon as I read this I realized the significance of the black horse being dead.    There is no need for judgment if we return to our first love.   My prayer at the time had been significantly for Turkey, there must be some descendants of the churches who received the message of Revelation, but it applies to all our churches.

Later I discovered that the fear amongst Muslims is judgment, they believe that after this life they are judged and will spend a period of time in hell to pay for their sins before going to heaven.   What joy we have in knowing that Jesus has already taken our punishment upon himself, for us the black horse is truly dead.    May we reassure many who go to our churches that we are only asked to believe on the Lord Jesus in order to be saved for eternity.

Day 5 - Laodicea

But first we visited Pammukale and its hot springs which tasted like mineral water.    The water flowed out over rocks which were white from the mineral deposits.  

Our next stop was Hierapolis.    Outside the gates was a military cemetery with some extravagant tombs.   Armies came here to recover during the winter months and benefited from the healing qualities of the hot springs. 

The entrance gateway was built in 83 AD by Domitian.    St. Philip lived here with his three daughters and after they had been to a wedding in Colossae they were supposed  to  return  through  the  gateway  to pay  their  respects  to  the  emperor

Domitian, that is worship him.  Only one of his daughters went through the gate,  Philip and the other two refused and were subsequently crucified.   In the distance  we could just see the church that was built in their memory.

Laodicea is a new site, and a small area has been excavated by Pammukale University over the last three years.   It was a very wealthy city built in 260 BC on the main trade routes from the Mediterranean, Syria and Egypt to Decalia and Troy. It was in the very fertile Lycus valley.  It was rich due to their banking system and the many caravans which came through to trade.   Their industries included wool and textiles, perfumeries and eye ointment.  Being half-way down the mountain the natural water stream was only lukewarm.  The earthquake in 60 BC completely destroyed the city.  Nero offered money to help rebuild it but the Laodiceans preferred their independence.  In 200 AD they built a major church.  In 319 it became part of the Byzantine empire.  In 660 it was attacked by the Persians.  In the 8^th C it was attacked by the Arabs.  After that the city was abandoned when its population was 120000.

(Mary) This city spoke to me as you could just imagine a group of self-sufficient people in that church.   The ornamentation on the stone work was beautiful and it was here that I took the picture of the open doorway.   We were standing in the area that had been the church looking out to an unexcavated region.   In the distance are beautiful snow capped mountains, I would like to have spent much longer here praying for lukewarm Christians in our own churches.    God has so clearly shown me in the past that he wants us to open up the doors in our hearts and thinking of the open door in that context brings new visions of what God can do.     

At the bottom of the mountain on the flat, valley floor lies the city of Colossae.   It was built by the Hittites  in 2000 BC and was the third most important city in the country.       It was ruled by Pergamum until the Romans arrived in 130 BC.   However at present there is practically nothing to see, just a large, green mound and some scattered bits of masonry in the burial ground, it is all underground waiting to be excavated.     In 4 BC Colossae had a population of 20000 but when Laodicea  became more important many people moved there. 

So finally…..

Not only did we learn some history but this journey was spiritually enlightening and we pray that you will be moved to pray for Turkey and perhaps visit these churches.

Return to Issue 40