This is the Baymont podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host Brent Billings.

Today we consider the idea that John has been deliberately drawing off of apocalyptic

prophets while speaking directly into culture. And we add one more layer to our

herminated tool box as it relates to the book of Revelation.

Alright, so we're going to take an in-depth look. We're going to try to apply this whole thing.

Like we just dipped our toe into the whole package this last episode. Now we're

going to try to do this whole thing. So we're going to take an in-depth look at the letter of

Thia Tyra, letter two Thia Tyra, in order to fully understand the principles that we just

introduced in the last episode. In this first part, we'll be studying the culture. We want to look

at cultural context of Thia Tyra to understand the cultural relevance of the letter itself.

Then in part two, we're going to look at where John is getting his material and the brilliant way

he is using Old Testament text to preach a sermon within the letter to Thia Tyra.

So first, let's spend time in the first part of this thought process. We need a background on

Thia Tyra itself. Alright, so by far, the smallest of the seven church cities, Thia Tyra was estimated

to be around 25 to 30,000 people. The city sat on the main road and was founded by Solucius,

the first, around 300 BC. Alright, could have been humanes the first, around 250 BC, depending on which

is the story you're talking to. But it was founded as a military outpost. Very much unlike places,

such as Smirna, Thia Tyra was very blue collar. So he said Smirna. What was like one of the things

we talked about with Smirna, Brent? They had a, they liked to distinguish their class with the use of

crowns. Crowns, right? So we talked about crowns and Smirna and it kind of, if you're really kind of

pictured it and thought about it, was kind of highfalutin, you know, really sophisticated,

educated white robes, silver and gold crowns on your head. This is not Thia Tyra. Thia Tyra's blue

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