Ephesus had become an epicenter of imperial cult in Asia Minor, with a local temple to “the Goddess Roma and the Divine Augustus” and a provincial temple to the emperor Domitian.

Also favoring the close of the first century as the time of the composition of Revelation is the fact that, according to 2:8-11, the church in Smyrna had been persevering under trials for a long time, whereas according to Polycarp,2 the bishop of Smyrna in the first half of the second century, the church there did not yet exist until after the time

Pergamum was also a center for the worship of the emperors. The city was awarded the honor of building a temple to Augustus and the goddess Roma in 29 BC, making it the first among the seven cities addressed by Revelation to become the neokoros (the “temple warden”) of an imperial cult. The city was also renowned for its extensive Asclepion, a

It is clear that John had studied the Old Testament very thoroughly. Of the 404 verses that comprise the twenty-two chapters of the Book of Revelation, 278 verses contain one or more allusions to an Old Testament passage.

Smyrna became a large and prosperous commercial center. The city was renowned for its loyalty to Rome and its ritual worship of the emperor. In 195 BC, almost three hundred years before the writing of Revelation, the people of Smyrna dedicated the world’s first temple to the goddess Roma. In AD 26, almost seventy years before John’s banishment,

Sardis, a busy commercial and industrial city at the junction of five roads about thirty miles south of Thyatira, had been the capital of the ancient region called Lydia. In the sixth century BC, it was one of the greatest cities of the world, where the fabulous King Croesus reigned amid his treasures. Even though the citadel of Sardis was situated

Lest the reader fail to grasp the significance of the Hebrew name, John adds the Greek equivalent, Apollyon (9:11). John’s vision may represent a subversive satire of imperial ideology. Domitian claimed Apollo, one of whose symbols was the locust, as his patron deity; in John’s cosmos, however, “Apollo” is a creature of the abyss, the chief of a

the explicit number, 144,000, symbolizes completeness—not one of the redeemed is missing.

Ephesus, the oldest and probably most important Christian center among the seven cities addressed, especially witnessed a renaissance of the cult of the emperors during this time. While the more balanced emperors were a bit embarrassed by the enthusiasm of provincials to worship them while they were alive, some emperors—and Domitian appears to have