Smyrna: The Persecuted Faithful Ones, And You?

Smyrna: The Persecuted Faithful Ones, And You?                           Kelly Durant

Part 2 of 7 Churches Series

Revelation 2:8 “And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write, ‘These things says the First and the Last, who was dead, and came to life: 9 “I know your works, tribulation, and poverty (but you are rich); and I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. 10 Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation ten days. Be faithful until 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. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death.”

2. How many of you have ever been to prison? Wait, stop! You don’t need to raise your hand as for some it is a chapter past that they would like to forget, and we really don’t have to talk about it! I have visited prisons a few hundred times in my lifetime, but to visit someone or to share a testimony and the Bible in jail is much different from actually being in jail waiting for a sentence to end! It is a very hard thing to endure and we should pray for prisoners more often! Many people convicted actually are innocent and no one should judge anyone because incarceration could befall anyone! Don’t exempt yourself! Throughout time many millions of Christians have been wrongly imprisoned due to evil people unjustly persecuting them!

I remember in one prison I use to visit in Santa Cruz, Bolivia there was an American guy inside for drug possession and I would usually go visit on Saturdays, but sometimes during the week. The interesting thing was he was always with his girlfriend beside him and I asked him, “How often does she get to visit? He replied, “Everyday, all day long”! I thought to myself, now that is a dedicated girlfriend, the kind I want! It turns out that in Bolivia you can have family spend the day and even night with you all the time while in prison! That is quite different, right? But most prisoners around the world do not get that privilege! Ancient prisons were cold stone caves with nothing inside, whereas jails today have beds, a toilet, and water!

Today we will explore the bittersweet place of Smyrna, the second church in our study of the seven churches in Revelation.  Smyrna gets its name from the spice of myrrh, and as you know that is a bitter spice with a sweet smell for burying the dead.  Smyrna was a city rich in medicines and many items as it was on the main trade route through ancient Greece. Today the city still exists with the name Izmir, in Turkey.

3. “And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write, ‘These things says the First and the Last, who was dead, and came to life” Let’s go deeper with this phrase, that Jesus is the Alpha, and the Omega. What does that mean? It means that he was there in the beginning when all of creation took place and He will be here when all ends. Jesus was the first being with God, and Jesus will still be the last being around after heaven and earth pass away. He is the eternal spirit that no created being can ever control, kill, or dominate, the first in the spirit bloodline of God.

It is curious how He addresses the ones in Smyrna as the one, “who was dead, and came to life”.

In ancient Smyrna the Greek and Roman Gods dominated the religious relm. The Romans in Smyrna worshipped a god that was claimed to have died and then rose back up again, his name was Dionysus. He was the god of wine and festivity, supposedly born of a virgin on December 25^th, and due to these coincidences pertaining to Jesus, some Christians prefer not to recognize our traditional celebration of Christmas believing it is pagan. But on Christmas we do not celebrate, Dionysus, or A.K.A. as Bacchus (god of vice), those are myths that are long gone: we worship Jesus! Christians must always replace the truth where a lie has existed!

Notice today that most of you probably never even heard of Dionysus because he was a lie, an invented imposter, whereas Jesus resurrection is an enduring truth! Why did all the Greek and Roman gods fade from the cultures? Because their stories about their gods were exaggerations invented and created to justify their carnality, mischief and debauchery! A person that lives in holiness and truth sees through the lies and hypocrisy of false gods, and flees away from the damage that these false pretenses and worldly lifestyles cause.  Smyrna was also rebuilt in the Roman times after a few hundred years of disrepair, so dead and revived was the city’s theme.

4.  “I know your works, tribulation, and poverty (but you are rich)”, What is curious in this verse is that the Lord is honoring and recognizing their works and suffering. He is telling them how rich they are spiritually despite their material poverty.  Our riches are in heaven and we may be looked upon as poor here and now but what does that matter? Being poor is only for a few years but being richly rewarded for doing God’s will is forever!

Now the difficult part, “And I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan”.  The Jews in Smyrna were the direct ones responsible for putting the Christians in jails! Jesus when here on earth identified from where the evil proceeds and called it out, as with the Scribes and Pharisees and again from the spirit realm He still exposes sin! Imagine the shamefulness that the heaviest persecution and imprisonment was not even coming from the drunken orgy practicing Romans or Greeks, it was coming from the Jews!

How sad it is when the people who are supposed to be the representatives of God become the representatives of Satan! That is the worst unforgiveable, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, criminal hypocrisy possible invoking God’s fierce wrath and indignation! It is like a doctor that seeks how to kill you, not save your life, or a cop that instead of preventing violence, does acts of violence! Satan is real and his agenda is to kill and destroy all of God’s good people.  Take note, however, not all Jews are evil, so discernment is always needed for judging each case.

5. Vs.10 “Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation ten days”.  How many of you have ever wanted to know your future?  What if Jesus told you you are going to jail and you were going to suffer for your faith in the near future? The way things are going with the perversion of laws, this is a very real possibility!

That kind of news would not be pleasant at all! Well, as they say, sometimes the worst fear is a fear of the unknown so sometimes it is better to know what will happen so you can prepare yourself mentally and spiritually. In general, all of Revelation is an unsettling warning of what humanity will reap for its sins as they progressively praise and welcome anti-Christ people. The aggressive anti-Christ devils in the present world are corrupting our culture’s morals to distort that evil is good and good is evil so people will be ready to welcome Satan incarnate himself when he forms an oppressive one world government. Hitler tried this, but it was not time.

Researching what it means by being in jail 10 days could imply the time the Romans took to   

Incarcerate and bring to trial an individual, which was usually a speedy process. The Romans did not incarcerate and retain so much as we do today as dungeon jails were not so numerous then. They usually gave you a quick trial and freedom if no accusations were validated, made you a slave for a debt payment, or gave you a sentence of death for other crimes such as theft, murder, or speaking against the corrupt Caesars. Still even today death sentences are enforced in a majority of nations over one having the wrong politics or worshipping the wrong god!

So when something negative is on the horizon in your future, whether it be for 10 days, 100 days, or 1,000 days, in the end it will all not matter at all once you see Jesus in heaven! The basic point is trials in our lives will come and go but they are only for a season, for a limited time so we must stay focused on the end goal of heaven, that all suffering will all pass away.

6. Vs 10 “Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life”. I will share with you something, this verse has convicted me to keep on serving Jesus up until now! I have been in a few life and death situations and I have taken the attitude that no matter when my death comes, I want to be found being faithful in Jesus! I want a crown of life! I know you want one too, so stay faithful even if you get killed in the process! Leaving all this hell behind for heaven is worth it! Sadly, I can tell you by seeing it myself that many do not remain faithful to the end!

Imagine how utterly foolish it would be for a person to train, like an athlete practicing for years to run in a big race, only to start running in the big race but then after going 2/3rds of the way suddenly quitting.  How wasteful and foolish, right?  Life is like a race and some of you are ahead and some of you are behind the place where Jesus wants you to be spiritually! People are watching. Hebrews 12:1 “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us”. Ask God right now, “Do I have any sin in my life impeding my ability to serve as expected so I make it all the way to the very end?

1 Corinthians 9:24 “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it.” Death, or the finish line, will reach every one of us, but only what you and I have done for Jesus will matter! You can gain the whole world and lose your soul! Only a few in this life become as the Cesars, Trumps or Clintons, rich with mega billions living the high life, but what is their legacy with God?  Where is your and their soul headed is the dire question? If a life lived is not one of sacrificing yourself for others as Jesus did, then the life after this one will have nothing for you! God will not pass out a crown of life to those who have proven their selves to not be faithful to Him here and now. All of the abusers, the hoarders of wealth and power, will be horrifically surprised to learn that the first (as they were here) will be last when they arrive then and there. Those without a crown of life will discover that a second death awaits those who are unfaithful to God!

7. 11 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death.” This verse seemed to always make since to me but after having a deaf son to raise, I sometimes questioned, why would God require an ear to hear?

I have come to peace with God that this has several implications. For one, it means that if you have ever been exposed to this message by hearing it or reading it, then it means you should not just let it go in one ear and out the other! In other words, you are responsible for this message once you have heard it and you are expected to react upon it by taking action by obeying all of Jesus words.

In most past cultures, deaf people were not taught to read, so the only way they could have learned about what Jesus taught and said would have been with sign language, but the development of sign language is actually something that has occurred only within the past few hundred years! Even up until in the 1970s there were people promoting that deaf people should not be allowed to use their hands to communicate but instead should read lips. Do you know how hard it is to read lips when you have never even learned a base language to begin with? What a frustration and outrageous discrimination! How horrible it was that the deaf people were usually just put away in insane asylums up until recently, or had to live as beggars as in Jesus day! Those without ears to hear suffered greatly!

Jesus is also speaking in a figurative way implying that the ear, which is a detection device for the entrance of words so their meanings can be discerned, is prompting that everyone should be paying attention!  But Jesus’ messages are only spiritually discerned, and many hear and do not understand.  Matthew 13:13 Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. People have selective hearing!

8. You and I understand Jesus words clearly because we have obeyed Him, accepted the Holy Spirit, and experienced what it is to live persecuted for repeating His good news! His words are real in my life, and I do understand most everything He taught. To tell others about Jesus is to honor Him, and to announce Him as the Savior of the world who grants eternal life to those who believe. Some people tune Him in, while others tune Him out, and every person ever born will either reap life or death as a consequence concerning how they responded.

 Vs 11 “He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death.” What does it mean hurt by the second death? We must overcome by being full of God’s goodness and not overtaken by the evil offered in this world. But since when did we learn that we live in a world where we can die two times?! Death for no one is ever pleasant, even though I have known of a few sweet people who have died in their sleep. But basically this communicates that when we are released from our bodies that things are not over at all! There is no rest for the wicked!

Jesus taught us that He would resurrect us unto life, so what this implies is everyone still remains as a conscious being after leaving the body, but some will go on to life, while others will be punished or perpetually hurt by an incarcerated existence or second death known as hell.  My grandmother was a nurse and she told me stories of people dying screaming, “I don’t want to go! I am burning, no, no please!” She wasn’t trying to scare me, she only told me this when I asked her to tell me about how people die. The second death is real, and if we have an ear to hear about it, then we must react accordingly, in choosing God’s will! 

9. I do not know your future, or the future of the church Corps of Hialeah, but Jesus does! Jesus did directly reveal the future to certain ones, as He did to the seven churches in Revelation, and He sometimes reveals events to those who pay attention. But all of Apocalypses is a Revelation of the future of the destruction of mankind who will choose to submit to Satan instead of submitting to Jesus loving way of living in God’s holy peaceful love preaching His gospel. God will not stop man’s evil acts until the final reaping. The end is near and historical events always repeat. Prophecy often gets fulfilled in several different instances and intensities.

We do not know if you or I will be persecuted and killed in the future, or if we will just die of old age as the majority of Christians do, but what we do know is we must be overcomers and faithful until death no matter what we suffer! We must be holding onto the testimony of those who were faithful in the past despite poverty and jail, as those of Smyrna!

Abiding in God’s will is the only safe place to be! Some of those in Smyrna were destined for a difficult time due to Satan’s hate of God’s people. But consider the following, a shorter life could be a blessing in disguise when you consider being here on earth is not all that pleasant experiencing all the suffering that goes on. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:6 “So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord”.  Never fear your future! You will have God’s power for the hour when it comes! Be overcomers, faithful until death!