2:12 “And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write; These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges.”
 

• Pergamos [Pergamum] was north east of Smyrna and about 15 miles inland from the Aegean Sea.
• This city is known for her invention of the writing material “parchment” during the time in which the educated world wrote everything on papyrus produced in Egypt.  When Egypt cut off supplies of papyrus, the scholars of Pergamum had to find another medium to write on.  Experiments subsequently led to the discovery that the prepared skins of pigs and deer were excellent substitutes for papyrus, thus parchment was born.
• Pergamum had one of the most famous libraries in the world numbering some 200,000 volumes of material written on parchment. Ironically enough, Cleopatra later took Pergamum's library away, by permission of Mark Antony, and added it to the one in Alexandria.
• Pergamum was the capital city of the province of Asia in the ancient Roman Empire. After the break-up of Alexander the Great's empire the King of Pergamum, in his will, gave the city to Rome. The people of the city were happy enough to fulfill his wish; they entered the Roman Empire by choice.
• Pergamum could not rival either Ephesus or Smyrna in its volume of trade, but it laid claim to some distinctions. Pergamum was the center of worship for Aesculapias the god of healing. The temple had it’s medical wards, its medical schools, and it attracted sufferers from all over the Roman Empire. This god’s characteristic name was “savior”, and to the Christian, for whom there was but one Savior, the title was offensive. More significantly still, the emblem of Aesculapias was the serpent. The temple of this god was infested with tame snakes. If you wanted healing there, you were allowed to sleep the night in the temple, and the touch of a snake as it glided over you was held to heal; the snake’s touch was regarded as the touch of the god himself. But to the Christian, a god whose incarnation took the form of a snake could only be that “old serpent Satan.”   You have seen medical badges that have the serpents on them; and now you can know where that came from.
• There was the worship of Zeus. His altar stood on a hill one thousand feet high which rose behind the town. Eight hundred feet up, a ledge jutted out from the mountain, and on it stood the altar of Zeus, ninety feet square and twenty feet high. All day long this altar smoked with the smoke of endless sacrifices. It dominated the city, like a pillar of cloud by day and a column of fire by night. Could this be the origin of the phrase, "Satan's throne"?  It certainly was the city of the worshipping of other god’s!  They also worshipped the god’s Apollo, Athene, Aphrodite, Bacchus the god of wine, and of Dionysus whose worship involved obscenities. Yet again, Emperor Worship was also in Pergamum.  Is it any wonder why Christ called this place "Satan's throne"?
• The messenger of Pergamos [Pergamum] is addressed by “he which hath the sharp sword with two edges” (Revelation 1:16).

• Now, we read of the third church addressed and we read for a third time that Jesus knew their works.  Does this not bring about two significant points?  The first being that Christ knows what His body is doing and the second being that works truly are significant in the salvation of our souls.
• Jesus gives a distinction to the town of Pergamum.  He says that this is where Satan’s seat [throne] is.  The word “seat” in the KJV is derived from the Greek word “Strong’s #2362 thronos”. Translated in the NKJV and the ASV of 1901 as “throne”. Defined as: “a chair of state having a footstool; assigned in the NT to kings, hence, kingly power or royalty - Thayer”. One can only imagine, with that distinction, what the saints must have been facing in their vocations and lives outside of the assembling times with the Saints. Jesus warned that His work would be done among the evil of the world (Matthew 10:16-25 and John 17:13-20).
• Antipas is mentioned only in this one verse of the Bible.  All we know from this is that he was a faithful brother who died for the cause of Christ among the saints there.  What a terrible event that would be to witness.

• Balak (king of Moab) hired Balaam (a prophet) to stop the progress of the children of Israel (Numbers 22-24).  Balaam taught Balak to have the children of Israel to eat meat sacrificed to idols, to commit fornication, and it worked (Numbers 25:1-6).
• The brethren in Pergamum had those there that taught false doctrine, and they put up with it.  False doctrine is not be left alone (Romans 16:17-18).

• These brethren also put up with the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which the Lord does hate.  See earlier comments for more detail (2:6).

• When one person or a congregation is wrong, they must repent.  If not, the word of God will do the judging (John 12:48; cf. Hebrews 4:12).

• Overcome and Christ will give of the “hidden manna” (Matthew 4:4 and John 6:31-35; cf. Exodus 16:12ff). A white stone of acquittal will also be given to them (I John 1:9).  White representing pure and clean.
• In that pure stone will be a new name written of which the only man to know that name is he whose name is written.  In ancient times a trial was decided and the innocent were notified of their acquittal by the dropping of a white stone into an urn while the guilty received a black stone.  The secrecy of the name on the stone indicates that ones salvation matters only to oneself and is not a badge of bragging rights. To take this verse to be talking of the names written in the “Lamb’s book of life” (Revelation 21:27) is to conclude that somehow everyone that has their name added to the book, sees their name in that book, under a literally new name.  When in fact, the new name just represents a new identity of person just as we gain in our conversion (Romans 6:3-6, II Corinthians 5:17, and Ephesians 4:22-24).

1. All Scripture quotations are from the King James Version unless otherwise noted.
2. James Orr, John L. Nuelsen, Egar Mullins, Morris Evans, and Melvin Grove Kyle, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Hendrickson, 1929),
3. Joseph H. Thayer, Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, (Reprint by Hendrickson, 2002, original copyright 1896).