located about fifty-five miles north of Smyrna and twenty miles from the Aegean Sea.

This city, whose name means “parchment,” was where parchment was first manufactured.

Statues, altars, and sacred groves filled the city (Walvoord). A 1,000-foot-high hill, the earliest site of the city, was covered with such temples and altars. The primary local deities to whom temples had been erected were Zeus, Athena, Dionysos, and Asklepios. Zeus, the savior-god, and Athena, the victory-bearing goddess, were testimonials to the Greek spirit and influence.

The shrine of Asklepios, who was noted as a “god of healing,” attracted people from all over the world. Feeding a living serpent in the temple was the manner of practicing this worship. The sick spent the night in the darkness of the temple where nonpoisonous snakes were allowed to roam. If a person was touched by one of these snakes (i.e., by the god himself), he was cured of his illness.8

Compared to all the surrounding cities, Caesar-worship was the most intense here. In other cities a Christian might be in danger on only one day a year when a pinch of incense had to be burned in worship of the emperor. In Pergamum, however, Christians were in danger every day of the year for the same reason.

This new Caesar-worship, it appears, was the greatest menace to the existence of the church in this city (Swete). Though Rome is nowhere mentioned in the message to Pergamum, this appears to be the root meaning of the presence of the throne of Satan in Pergamum.

Probably Antipas, the city’s Christian martyr (2:13), was the victim of Rome, because only the imperial cultus had the power of capital punishment. John’s personal circumstances probably made him believe that Rome was the most recent and strongest agent of Satan because of its totalitarian demands for absolute allegiance to the state and because in her was embodied the epitome of all paganism and worldliness (Caird).

While the congregation as a whole was commended for “holding fast” (krateis) to the name of Jesus (2:13), it is condemned for tolerating some of their number who were “holding fast” (kratountas, 2:14, 15) to the teaching of Balaam and the Nicolaitans.

The fault of the church as a whole was not adherence to the teaching or doctrine of Balaam, but rather indifference to those within who were in sympathy with it (Moffatt).

In Numbers 24 Balaam persistently refused the request of Balak, king of Moab, to curse Israel (Beckwith). In the account of Israel’s seduction to worship Baal in Num. 25 no mention is made of Balaam’s agency in causing this defection.

Nevertheless, according to Num. 31:16, he had apparently advised Balak that Israel would forfeit God’s protection if he could induce them to worship idols, which he did. This tragic incident at Baal-Peor made a deep impression on subsequent generations of Israelites (Morris).

Balaam bears more guilt than even antagonistic King Balak. As an alleged prophet of God, he betrayed his calling and is viewed as the real instigator of the seduction in which 24,000 of God’s people fell into idolatrous worship and practices (Scott).

The emphasis here is not on selling his prophetic gift for money as in 2 Peter or on assuming erroneously that God would curse Israel as in Jude. It is simply on teaching them to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication. These Balaamites at Pergamum taught others to relax their principles the way Balaam did (Moffatt).

Balaam taught Balak how to put a stumbling block into the path of Israel. Skandalon, along with its cognate verb, occurs only in the LXX and NT. It is a trap or more precisely that part of a trap where the bait is placed which, when touched, triggers the trap to close on its prey. The trap could be small enough to catch a bird or large enough to entangle a man’s foot and cause him to stumble. Metaphorically the word referred to anything over which a person might fall or stumble into sin, the occasion of one’s sin.42

The women of Moab were deliberately thrown in the way of unsuspecting people of Israel for the purpose of causing their downfall (Num. 25:1–2), and the plan worked (Swete).

The practices of eating meat sacrificed to idols and immorality are the same two that Paul, under slightly different circumstances, decried in 1 Cor. 10:19–28 and 1 Cor. 6:15–18 (Scott).

The cities were separated too far in time and distance to assume complete identity. In Pergamum, personal involvement in idolatrous feasts was the major issue. It had come to be viewed as morally indifferent by the Balaamite advocates.

Feasting on sacrificial meat and licentious conduct are the usual accompaniments of idol worship in both the OT and the NT

The literal sin of fornication was closely associated with this city’s pagan feasts and was an inescapable consequence of them (Mounce; Sweet). The compromisers had given their approval to this practice also. It is no wonder that Christ voices this strong complaint against the church for not raising its voice in protest.

Irenaeus took the sect to be followers of Nicolaus of Antioch, one of the seven original deacons (Acts 6:5), a Jewish proselyte, who is said to have apostatized. It is possible that the Balaamites of v. 15 were a variety of this sect.

they were “a heretical sect, who retained pagan practices like idolatry and immorality contrary to the thought and the conduct required in Christian churches” and a Christian group within the churches of Asia Minor whose professed insight into the divine allowed them freedom to become part of their syncretistic pagan society

The Ephesians are refreshing in this kind of response, especially when compared with those at Pergamum where the deeds of the Nicolaitans were tolerated rather than hated

In essence, this is a call to the church at Pergamum to demonstrate its genuineness by repenting of its lenience toward the errorists who had become part of that local fellowship. Failure to do so would mean dreadful consequences for them.

Suggested meanings for “the hidden manna” include future reward when the struggle is over (Scott), Christ as the bread from heaven, the present spiritual food of the saints (Walvoord), and the pot of manna in the Ark of the Covenant within the Tabernacle (Charles). The last of these is most convincing, but the other three have elements of truth in them.

The manna within that ark is the proper and heavenly food of God’s people in contrast to the unhallowed food offered to idols (Alford). As with promises to the other churches, there is special appropriateness in connection with a current activity from which the church is to abstain (Trench).

The “white stone” is even more difficulty to identify. Is the white stone symbolic of the victor himself, seen as white because he has overcome in the final strife (Charles)?

Does the white stone allude to the practice in the Greek surroundings of the Asiatic churches where such stones were used as counters in calculations (cf. Rev. 13:18) (Swete)? If so, they may mean that if a man is faithful, he will be counted among the people of God.

Could the stone symbolize a happy day, a day of victory (Charles)?

the white stone is an amulet that keeps a person safe. These were often made of white or precious stones and were considered doubly effective if none but the wearer knew what was written on it (Swete; Beckwith; Moffatt).

Another view tries to explain the white stones by resorting to rabbinic speculations that when manna fell from heaven, it was accompanied by precious stones.

Could the white stone be an allusion to the stones in the breastplate of the high priest, each of which had the name of a tribe written on it (cf. Ex. 28:36–37; 39:8–13) (Lee; Bullinger)?

Another way of identifying the white stone is to say it is the Urim that was hidden beneath the twelve stones of the high priest’s breastplate of judgment (cf. Exod. 28:30) (Trench)

A view that has NT support is the one that sees the white stone in light of the ancient practice of juries reaching judicial decisions by casting stones into an urn. A white stone was for acquittal, and a black one for condemnation. The noun psēphos is used with this connotation in Acts 26:10, where Paul tells about “casting his pebble” against Christians before becoming one himself.

white stone derives significance from the free doles of bread and free admission to entertainments that people of the Roman Empire received from time to time. These were in exchange for “tickets,” which often took the form of white stones (Alford). Such a white stone with one’s name on it was the basis for admission to special events. It was also a well-established custom to reward victors at the games with such a token enabling them to gain admission to a special feast.

This practice coincides with the victor’s participation in the feast of Rev. 3:20 (cf. also 19:9) (Lee). The “hidden manna,” the other part of the reward in v. 17, suggests a reference to the Messianic feast. The white stone is, then, a personalized tessara, which would serve as his token of admission to this great future feast (Mounce). This furnishes sufficient incentive for faithfulness to Christ in the meantime. Admittedly, limited information about ancient customs makes identification of the white stone difficult, but repeated contextual reminders about the future Messianic feast make this the most probable of the proposals made to date.