Revelation 2:18

IV. THYATIRA. The working Church, yet too careless of Christian truth and purity, Revelation 2:18-28.

18. Thyatira From the renowned capital, Pergamos, to the still more renowned Sardis, our apostle would find a strait south-eastern Roman road: he would be obliged to turn a little aside to the east to the lesser town of Thyatira. When Alexander the Great drove the Persian power out of Ionia, he and his successors planted therein a number of cities, filling them with inhabitants from his own Macedonia. Of these cities one was Thyatira. This city was filled with a number of industrial classes or guilds, namely: bakers, potters, weavers, tanners, dyers, etc. Hence “Lydia of Thyatira” was found at Philippi, Macedonia, by Paul, and she became the first European Christian convert. She was “a seller of purple,” probably the cloth, the “imperial purple,” not the dye alone. She was, doubtless, a Macedonian by descent, a Lydian by birth, a Philippian by residence. She bore the name of her native province, for Lydia was no doubt her proper name. Altogether Luke’s narrative places her as a graceful figure in early Christian history. How vivid the contrast between Lydia of Thyatira and Jezebel of Thyatira! It is curious to note that the American missionary, Brewer, in 1831, found the guild of dyers still working at the occupation in Thyatira. It was never a great city, but a thrifty manufacturing town. The modern town is said by Svoboda ( The Seven Churches of Asia, 1869) to contain 15,000 inhabitants, of whom two thirds are Turks, one third Greek Christians, with a few Armenians. He adds, “The whole trade is in the hands of the Christian population, as it generally is throughout the East, the Christians comprising the most industrious and intelligent part of the population.”

Son of God St. John had identified him as son of man in remembrance of the human humiliation in which he once had known him, he here identifies himself as that same son in his glorification. The promises at close of this epistle are taken from the second psalm, in which that sonship is described in its power.

Eyes… feet Quoted from St. John’s picture of him, Revelation 1:14-15. The eyes are alluded to in searcheth, Revelation 2:23.