The first letter in Revelation chapter 2 is the letter to the church in Ephesus. Ephesus competed with Pergamum and Smyrna for the bragging rights as most important city in the province of Asia. It was also a center for emperor worship. In our book, I wrote:

The emperor cult was prominent in Ephesus during the first century. Archaeologists have unearthed an especially large temple to Domitian, the emperor who banished John to Patmos. The temple was designed to establish Ephesus as the world center of worship for Domitian, featuring a 27-foot-tall statue of the emperor which was visible by all who arrived by sea or by land. The head and forearm of the statue are on display today in the museum at Ephesus; the forearm alone is six feet long. In this city where the Roman ruler was worshiped as the god of gods, any who refused to say “Domitian is Lord” would run the risk of imprisonment and death. We read in the book of Acts that Paul almost lost his life in Ephesus at the hands of the supporters of the goddess Diana; now the Ephesian Christians were in danger from worshipers of another false god.

(Letters From The Lamb, pp.47-48)

It was this worship of the Roman Caesar that was going to lead Christ’s church to an inevitable collision with the Roman authorities. Some would have argued that Christians could pledge loyalty to the Roman empire and still remain true to Christ. But this attitude of compromise was deadly, at least in a spiritual sense. The Ephesian church would resist this false teaching, but at a high price. We’ll look at that in the next post.