The Greco-Roman world at the close of the first century A.D. was in a state of cultural, philosophical, and religious ferment. Religious syncretism and inclusivism were the watchwords of the day, as Donald W. Burdick notes:
Apart from the Judaeo-Christian sphere, the world was religiously inclusivity. There was always room for a new religion, provided of course that it was not of an exclusive nature. Syncretism, however, did not merely express itself in a mood of tolerance toward other faiths.
Its characteristic expression was in the combination of various ideas and beliefs from different sources to form new or aberrant religions.
This was the age of the developing mystery religions, the age of the occult, the age of the proliferation of Gnostic sects. (The Letters of John the Apostle [Chicago: Moody, 1985], 4)
Nowhere was that more evident than in the Roman province of Asia, located in western Asia Minor, in modern Turkey.
The region forms a land bridge between the continents of Europe and Asia, across which flowed the tides of invasion and migration. As a result, it was a melting pot of ideas, philosophies, and religions. The Imperial cult of emperor worship was widespread.
The region was also home to the worship of a myriad of false gods, including Asclepius, Athena, Zeus, Dionysus (Bacchus), Cybele, Apollo, and Artemis, whose magnificent temple in Ephesus was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
In the midst of the darkness of paganism and superstition, the Christian church was a beacon of hope, shining forth the light of truth (cf. Matt. 5:14; Phil. 2:15). But the church in Asia did not exist in isolation from the surrounding culture.
The plethora of competing ideologies inevitably posed a threat—both externally, from false religions, and internally, from false teachers (“savage wolves”; Acts 20:29; Matt. 7:15) and their followers (cf. 2 Cor. 11:26; Gal. 2:4) infiltrating the churches.
The pressure had already begun to take its toll on the churches of Asia. Some had split, with the false teachers and their followers leaving (1 John 2:19).
Only two of the seven churches in the region addressed in Revelation 2-3 were commended by the Lord (Smyrna and Philadelphia); the other five were rebuked for worldliness and tolerating false doctrine (Ephesus, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, and Laodicia).
It was in this strategic location, where the battle against “the world forces of this darkness ... the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12) raged most fiercely, that John, the last living apostle, ministered.
He had come to Asia many years earlier and settled in Ephesus, the capital city of the province (see Date and Place of Writing below).
Though he was by now an old man (most likely at least in his eighties), age had not dampened John’s fiery zeal for the truth. Recognizing the dangers threatening the congregations under his care, the apostle took up his pen to defend the “faith which was once for all handed down to the saints” (Jude 3).
In our inclusivity age of secularism, postmodern relativism, New Age cults, and militant world religions, the apostle’s words of warning and assurance are both timely and relevant. As always, the church ignores them at her peril.
