Welcome to Gateway Church's podcast. Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

We are going to continue our series called The Seven Churches of Revelation.

And this is the third church, the church at Pergamum, is the name of it.

Just to show you the map, again, if you'd like to know where it is, the first, the honor of the Patmas is where John was.

We went to Ephesus, then Smyrna, Pergamum, so we're going clockwise as the way the Lord chose to do it.

So that's the third city. We talked about, return to your first love. Remember God's faithfulness.

And this week is refuse to compromise.

Now, you're probably thinking, Pastor Robert, it's wonderful how you use ours. And you know, you use these, you know, they all sound together.

Okay, I don't know how that happens, all right. It just, to me, when I start out, I get that, I got the first burden to return to your first love.

And it just seems like that the Lord leads me. So now I'm looking for our words for the rest of the series if you'd like to email me.

All right, so I'm going to make a few comments as I read it. And then we're going to talk about that I believe he is talking to them.

The message is to refuse to compromise to the culture that we're living in.

So I think it's very applicable even to us today, all right. Revelation 2 verse 12.

And to the angel of the church in Pergamus, Pergamus is the Greek word for Pergamum, right.

These things says he who has the sharp treasured sword. Now let me make a comment.

Every one of the seven letters Jesus uses a different facet about himself to introduce himself to the church.

If you remember, Ephesus bragged that they were the first among the seven.

And Jesus starts with, I'm the first and the last, I'm the beginning and you know, right.

A smourna bragged that they were dead and came back to life. Jesus said, I'm the one that was dead and came back to life.

Okay, Pergamum bragged. They boasted. This was their boast that they carried the sword.

That was their boast because that was where most executions and capital punishment was carried out.

Pergamum. So their city motto is, we carry the sword. Jesus shows up and says, by the way, I'm the one that has the sword.

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