The first letter that our glorified Jesus, our glorified Lord sins, he sends to the church in the city of Ephesus.

Remember John, the apostle, the revelator, was given the revelation, was privileged to be lifted up and to see not only the glorified Jesus, the magnified. And remember, John is the man who put his head on Jesus'

his shoulder. But he hardly recognized him in his glory, in his magnificence, in his splendor.

And so he was given the revelation of the glorified Jesus, is given the revelation

of what's going to happen in the future. And I explain to you that Ephesus is the first stop if you

are sailing from Potomus, the island of Potomis, and going to go to the mainland of Asia Minor,

the first stop is Ephesus, the city of Ephesus.

But there is other reason why. It's not just because it's the first stop.

Ephesus was a very important city. That's why I got the first letter.

Ephesus was the capital city of that region at the time. But more importantly,

Ephesus was a free city. In fact, it was one of the very few cities in that all of these

cities in Asia Minor was under the Roman occupation that did not have Roman soldiers in it.

It was a free city. All the others had Roman soldiers and

controlling the cities, but not Ephesus. But only that, but it was the center of pagan worship.

It was the center of the God Artemis or Diana's worship, and which made it, of course,

to be a very prosperous city, very powerful city, very influential city.

It was a destination of all the pilgrims who were worshipping their God Artemis, and was a tourist destination.

It had the most iconic temple for the gods, Artemis, or Diana, which considered to be one of the seven

wonders of the world at that time. And that is why the apostle Paul himself, while he, literally

in Thessalonica, he spent three years in Ephesus. It probably the longest he's ever spent,

other than in confinement in Rome, the longest he ever

spent in one city. He was in Ephesus for three is why? Because of its strategic importance.

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