At a contemporary job interview, we might respond to inquiries like these: “Are you willing to work weekends? Are you okay with being on call one Saturday per month?”

Yet imagine if every potential employer asked us this: “Do you worship the sun god? Are you willing to do so daily as part of membership in our guild?” We'd have to start our own businesses, wouldn’t we? But what if clients refused to come into our stores unless we repented of our “atheism”? Such a scenario gives us a glimpse into life for followers of The Way in ancient Thyatira.

Luke identifies Lydia, Paul’s first convert in Philippi, as “a dealer in purple cloth” from Thyatira (Acts 16:14). Apparently Thyatira had ideal waters for fabric dyeing, with a special reputation for producing “purple”—a word that in Luke’s day included a broad range of reds.

When pilgrims arrive at the site of the ancient city--in the present-day Anatolian Turkish city of Akhisar (pronounced ahk-hee-sahr)--they find that the town lay on a flat plain with no city walls. The smallest of the seven cities mentioned in Revelation, it sat at the intersection of minor trade routes. And it had a long history of changing hands because of its prime location and lack of natural and man-made protections. As in the rest of Asia, Thyatira’s citizens worshiped many gods. But their main deity was Apollo, the sun god, also called Tyrimnas. Old coins represent him with flaming rays and feet of burnished brass. At one time Thyatira was even considered a holy city because it housed a temple to Tyrimnas and held games in his honor.

Ancient remains at the site tell us something else significant about Thyatira. Inscriptions dating back to Vespasian (about AD 69) and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (about AD 211), mention corporate guilds. Thyatira’s trade guilds were probably more organized than in any other ancient city, and every serious artisan belonged to one. All guilds were incorporated organizations possessing property, making contracts, and exerting wide influence. This made it nearly impossible to survive economically apart from guild membership. It would be like a private mom-and-pop store trying to compete for the same bulk discounts offered to Walmart.

The church in Thyatira received lavish commendations from the Lord, yet some of its members followed false teaching. Many experts think the false teachers encouraged believers to join the trade guilds. Doing so would have involved participating in pagan practices such as eating food sacrificed to idols at union feasts, and committing acts of sexual immorality. This, then, was probably the church’s vital flaw: they tolerated the ideas of someone undermining true, whole-hearted commitment to Christ.

Sometimes the pressure of “making it” and fitting in overwhelms us. As my pastor friend, Lance, says, sometimes “my hope is built on nothing less than MasterCard and American Express.” Yet Thyatira’s story reminds us that we must stand firm in our faith, refusing to compromise, trusting God to use the community of faith to take care of us. Are you willing to trust even when it costs you something?

Adapted from the newest book in the Coffee Cup series, Sumatra with the Seven Churches (AMG).

For an excerpt about Smyrna, go here.
For information on Ephesus, go here.
For more about the Coffee Cup series, go here.