The Word to the Church in Pergamum:

Balaam, Nicolaitans, and Hidden Manna

When I first heard the Lord give this word, I had no idea what it meant, and I am only learning now as I am doing this research, which you ought to check up on yourself in case you feel it is incorrect.

First, this is the relevant part of Scripture from The Book of The Revelation of Jesus Christ, with my emphasis in bold:

^12. “And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: The One who has the sharp two-edged sword says this: ^13. ‘I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is; and you hold fast My name, and did not deny My faith even in the days of Antipas, My witness, My faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells. ^14. ‘But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality. ^15. ‘So¹ you also have some who in the same way hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. ^16. ‘Therefore repent; or else I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of My mouth.
^17. ‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, to him I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it.’

‘Hidden manna’ is deep revelation that only comes to the spiritually minded ‘new wineskins’ and only those who are diligent in searching it out. A ‘White Stone’ is a forgiveness, acquittal, and even can suggest a blessing of honor. ‘A New Name’ can mean a new identify, or a greater calling, and so a new or greater inheritance. Isaiah speaks about doubling one’s inheritance, and Jesus spoke several parables about those having been given certain talents or minas, would get double if they were found faithful: not just more wealth, but in one case it suggests ‘authority over cities,’ which means true spiritual authority over a geographical area.

Plainly, however, the ‘hidden manna,’ ‘white stone’ and ‘new name’ are only given to those in Pergamum who overcome the ways of Balaam and the Nicolaitans first. And note the warning where Jesus says He is coming quickly to YOU, meaning the whole Pergamum church, and when He does Jesus Christ himself wages war against THEM, meaning those who still hold onto the teachings of Balaam and the Nicolaitans. How will Jesus wage war or fight against them? With the Sword of His Mouth, which is His anointed word, and can suggest He will send His prophetic ministers as a forerunner, but this is not just a lecture, tongue lashing or angry tirade that He will wage war with.

When the Lord speaks His word, regardless of how or through which vessel it is ministered, it means His purposes are being released in heaven and they begin to achieve His results with unquenchable fire: His Word is a Fire; and with unstoppable force: His Word is a hammer. But the Lord is already even now releasing the Sword of His Mouth against Pergamum, which means His purposes have already been unleashed in the spiritual world ... things certainly do not look optimistic for the Religious Spirit.

We as people can either take his warning and change our ways, repenting from working with this demonic power, or remain mired in our previous ways and suffer the consequences when His Holiness manifests. The point is, the Lord is on the move and we need to act wisely. When the wise sees trouble coming he hides himself—but the simple just keep right on walking. Let us be wise.

To truly repent from these sins we need to first understand what Pergamum, Balaam and the Nicolaitans represent, but the warning here in this passage is very obscure, which makes it difficult to know what to repent of! I have researched this point and am offering my best presentation at this time as to what this word means. Please check my research if you feel you need to, but I have been through.

First, A Framework

Additionally, in seeking to understand this passage, I think it is helpful to keep in mind the scope of this passage, the Frame of who it applies to.

First, this passage typifies an AGE of the church, so for several hundred years this passage identified the whole church. For example, today we are in the Laodicean Age, the last age of the church, where literally “the People’s Opinion” rules, or to read it another way, the Age where the “People are Judged.” Second, this passage typifies particular churches in existence at any given Age, so any of these churches could still be around today in this age. Third, it is helpful to consider that the symbols in this passage may describe a natural type, a spiritual type, or sometimes even both.

Keeping these ideas in mind will help us to make sense of this warning, and help us repent so we can receive the ‘hidden manna,’ ‘white stone,’ and ‘new name’ promised to the overcomers.

Pergamum: Worship of Man

William Brehm suggests the Age of Pergamum was from Constantine to the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 AD. Constantine was a pagan who said he became a Christian because he saw a sign of the cross before a battle he won—yet He did not see the Lord, or have a conversion experience of being convicted of his sin as Augustine did, or have any revelation of his sin at all in fact. To my knowledge he did not reform his own life in any way as a real believer would have. Once in power he did allow Christianity to have equal religious status within his pagan empire, official persecution stopped, but at many official events he used a mixture of pagan and Christian symbols and artifacts in worship and dedications. The effect in fact was to dilute Christianity and mix it with paganism!

It was also during this time period that the church adopted the abominable doctrines and practices of worshipping saints, angels (375 AD), Mary (431 AD), and when the Clergy started to dress differently than the Laity (the regular people in church), signifying a clear Clergy / Laity split (500 AD).

Pergamum was also the center of WORSHIP OF CAESAR as a GOD. The following excerpt on the history of Pergamum is from the noted source, not a very good interpretation of Revelations, but it contains some commonly held views on Pergamum’s actual history.

From http://www.hpc.sg/ACE/Revelation/Rev%20Lesson%2003%20Churches-1.pdf

In addition, the city was steeped in emperor worship, more intense than all the other cities. It was the first in Asia to have a temple devoted to the worship of Ceasar. (sic.) In other cities a Christian might be in danger on only one day a year when a pinch of incense had to be burned in worship of the emperor. In Pergamum, however, Christians were in danger every day for the same reason. With such multiplicity of paganism and idolatry, it is no wonder that Christ writes with empathy to the church in Pergamum: “I know where you live where Satan has his throne.” (2:13).

Finally, ‘Pergamum’ can mean ‘exalted,’ ‘lifted high,’ or ‘put on a pedestal,’ which in this context that means to put a man on a pedestal and revere him as divine, or at least as being above question by the commoners.

A Pergamum Church therefore could be read as a church that is spiritually open to the corrupting, polluting, or mixing influence of man’s ways (or man’s government) with God’s ways, or a place where an elite group control the whole community, and where men (or a man or a family in charge) are exalted.

Balaam: a hireling

‘Balaam’ means ‘to destroy the people.’ And the two inspired insights from the New Testament that define Balaam’s character and spiritual type are in 2 Peter 2:15, and Jude 1:11. 2 Peter 2:15 warns that false teachers will infiltrate and infect the real church, leaving the straight way and following the way of Balaam, “who loved the wages of wickedness.” He’s in it for the money. These false teachers teach wrong doctrine, telling the people who pay their salaries only what they want to hear. The second verse is Jude 1:11, saying that the church will be infiltrated by godless men who turn God’s grace into a license to sin, who have taken the way of Cain, “and have rushed for profit into the error of Balaam.”

What was ‘Balaam’s error’? Why was the angel sent to kill him on the way to serve the Moabites and Midianites, if God said he could go? Because God first made it abundantly clear that he was NOT to go, but he kept asking, insisting on going. Why did he want to go so badly? Because of the money. God basically says, ‘Fine go, do as you want!’ but sent an angel to kill him along his path of disobedience as well. After making His displeasure more than abundantly clear, to both man and beast, God then turned the opportunity for Balaam to speak in front of the Moabites and Midianites around for God’s purposes—clearly this was not God’s first plan, but God turns all things around for good, not for everyone, but “for those who love God and are called according to his purpose”: in this case it was Israel not Balaam who loved God.

It is recorded that Balaam normally resorted to witchcraft / sorcery / enchantments when he didn’t get what he wanted from God, (Num 24:1), although after meeting the angel he decided against it in this particular case. But still, in an indirect reference (Num 31:16) after he was unable to curse Israel by God’s word, he taught the Moabites and Midianites to entice the men into sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to pagan idols, which he knew would disrupt God’s protection of blessing over them, and in fact caused a plague to break out. (Num 31:12-16).

Why would Balaam, after knowing God’s heart and will to bless Israel, still want to help the Moabites and Midianites to destroy Israel? Wouldn’t he honor God’s heart over man’s money? Not Balaam.

Just for the sake of money and in the fear of man, he sought to destroy Israel, and caused the death of many of God’s people. Balaam’s fate? He was killed with the godless enemies of the Lord as recorded in Numbers 31:8.

Without getting too mired in details, we want to come away from this discussion seeing that Balaam knew better, but was at heart a hireling, a man-pleaser, instead of a God-pleaser, which is probably why the demonic power called by this name is active in Pergamum.

Also, in our case, the presence of “Balaam” is primarily a spiritual attack, but it has natural as well as spiritual indicators, which can include:

1. Serving two masters: causing people to serve God sometimes and the World sometimes; serving Mammon but calling it God; promoting “a different gospel” than the one Paul taught, such as a “prosperity gospel,” which carries with it a host of problems: leading people to rely on the works of giving ‘seed’ to earn blessings instead of relying on the grace of God’s love to freely, generously bestow blessings on us; living a greed (self-enrichment) focused religion, etc.

2. A Hireling attitude / atmosphere: It will cause people to serve in spiritual matters for money, which leads to pandering to the people’s desires (those who pay their salaries) instead of giving God’s honest word full priority, which at times is corrective and unpopular. Not going the extra mile, or doing in private what can’t be seen (fasting, prayer), or sacrificing personal comforts for the sake of the people ... but instead a strong focus on doing what looks good, what is public, what can be promoted as merchandise, and doing it for the sake of the leaders’ comfort at the expense of the people.

3. Compromise, Mixture: The spirit of Balaam works to seduce the people to mix or compromise with the ways of the world (immorality, eating food sacrificed to “idols”), which breaks the protection of personal holiness or singular loyalty to the Lord, bringing a curse upon them as well. So another way to look at this is the mixture of man’s profane ways with the sacred ways of the Lord, so there may be taint and pollution in many areas. “Sure we follow God’s ways BUT….” might be heard, or people would follow God’s ways only on the surface, not from the heart, or they would obey with wrong motives: teaching people to tithe so they will become rich, not to tithe freely “without expecting anything in return” because of generosity. People would try to achieve God’s promises through man’s efforts and external works. Only paying lip service to important matters of integrity and loyalty to the Lord is also common.

The sexual reference in this passage could mean different things:

a. There is a spirit that encourages sexual immorality in the church literally. This is a natural manifestation.

b. This could also be a spiritual type, a reference to spiritual adultery. Adultery is sexual promiscuity within a covenant of marriage. People in the world can’t commit spiritual adultery since they are not the Lord’s bride. It is when Christians trust in idols other than the Lord that it is called adultery.

But this is the same problem of serving two masters again, and the problem with serving two masters is that only one gets the real priority, the real worship, loyalty, trust, and that is whichever one they see as the practical source of their provision: either the Lord, or Mammon, (and Mammon is a pagan god, not a synonym for wealth). Sins of false allegiances of trusting in man, in money, in status or position in society, preferential treatment, prejudice and the like are indicators of spiritual adultery.

Ephesians 5:3-6

³But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. ⁴Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. ⁵For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person — such a man is an idolater — has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. ⁶Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. ⁷Therefore do not be partners with them.

Nicolaitans: Ungodly Control

Do you know what the Nicolaitans taught? I had to research this. I don’t think it is a widely known thing. First in Greek Nicolaitan has almost the same meaning as Balaam does in Hebrew!!! This is from common reading and is easily found on several on-line sites.

Excerpts from A.T. Robertson’s Word Pictures of the New Testament:
“Balaam” is seen as a derivative of the Hebrew bala’ ‘am, “destroyer of the people,” whereas the Greek “Nicolas” derives from nikos laos, “conqueror of the people” (Greek-English Lexicon).

There are three general ideas as to what the ‘Nicolaitans’ refers to, which I think you will need to weigh on your own. I am adding my opinion as to the validity of these indicators after the facts.

The first commonly held view is that ‘the Nicolaitans’ is exactly the same thing as ‘Balaam.’ Which makes me ask why mention it again? If it is the same, then we already know what we are dealing with. But the connective word that begins verse 15 is “So,” or “Therefore,” or even “Thus even thou.” So the verse really says, “You have Balaam, so also you have the Nicolaitans.” This suggests that there is some relationship between the operation of these two spiritual powers that inhabit a Pergamum environment and they are not the same. So I do not think we are seeing Balaam again, but a spiritual cohort.

The Second common view is that this refers to an early Gnostic, or extreme antinomian sect that believed Jesus was the Messiah, but also that his coming abolished God’s law of sin and death … sin no longer existed or could be held against mankind ... so living holy lives was a non-issue. RECEIVING GRACE was DETACHED FROM REPENTANCE—and since sin was abolished for mankind this group was commonly reputed to have had orgies in worship services to enjoy their freedom from sin—a common practice among the pagan religions already³, so having it in so-called Christian churches means they were also following the world’s ways calling it God’s ways.

As a natural type, we’re talking about a group who literally live as a hippie free-love ashram but call itself a Christian church — I have NEVER seen this in real life in the natural, and this was certainly never the typical church for an AGE. But when looking at either spiritual type, “Grace without repentance” by treating grace as a license to sin (Jude:1:11 again) or “Following worldly practices and calling it God’s ways” then this IS a valid possible interpretation.

But the third view is to read the meaning of the name ‘Nicolaitans’ as a type itself, which again means ‘to conquer or rule the people like a tyrant,’ which most biblical scholars agree incorporates the practice of establishing a ruling hierarchy of Clergy, Ordained Ministers or Eldership, who are superior to, above, and so have all the power and control in the church over the common Laity, or normal people, who have no say in the management of church affairs, doctrine or ministry. Remember, the Clergy / Laity distinction grew clear during what Brehm calls the ‘Pergamum Age.’ By scholarly consensus, this is the most common understanding of this doctrine. This interpretation is easy to understand and apply because the natural manifestation is the definition of the spiritual type. It is the Pharisee or Religious Spirit, and is actually nothing more fancy than manipulation and control in the church, power usurped and held by a few elitist people who dictate to the rest of us, beyond discussion, what is what: and sadly, this is an element that is nearly endemic in churches across the whole earth.

Result: The Religious Spirit (a demon that poses as the spirit of true Christianity)

When man is exalted and worshiped in any way, the door to a Pharisee or Religious spirit is wide open. This demon spirit pretends to be the true Christianity, but causes people to be spiritually blind, to favor ritual and program over spiritual truth and ministry, to resist and even to persecute those sent by God: such as what happened to John the Baptist, Jesus, the Disciples, etc. This is the same or a related spirit to that which was in King Saul who was a man-pleaser, who walked by flesh, but also persecuted David who was approved of by God.

It is the spirit of tradition that blocks new revelation, reigns in spiritual progress, and promotes false doctrines of man that increase control and stagnancy in the church. It tries to block or otherwise prevent real spiritual manifestations and ministries such as healing, deliverance, prayer and intercession, prophecy, and will work to remove the Holy Spirit’s influence from the church.

This is basically a spirit of control, a false spiritual authority that is really just carnal flesh pretending to be ‘spiritual’ within the church, which stands over the weak, depriving them of the true support and nurturing that a real servant of God in real spiritual leadership would provide. It is the Pharisees, alive and well in the 21st Century church.

There are several specific attitudes that manifest in people when a Pharisee Spirit is present, such as seeing proof of the Lord’s will / ways, but an unwillingness or inability to change. This spirit will mock the weak who live by faith, exalt man’s teachings as if they are God’s doctrines, and will inevitably put leadership on a raised platform above the people.

These types are recorded in the Gospels with great clarity, and people will be moved to say the very things the Pharisees said when this spiritual evil is at large.

But regardless of what fancy name we give to it, it’s really just dead religion, pretending to be alive in Christ.

Christ’s Leadership Models

‘Hidden manna’ a ‘white stone’ and ‘a new name’ are promised those in Pergamum who overcome the ways of Balaam and the Nicolaitans. They will do this by tearing their hearts in true godly sorrow, and actually changing their ways. The fall of the powers in Pergamum, elitism, control, exalting man, will allow the operation of a biblical model of shared leadership among those with multiple gifts and callings to emerge, commonly called the Five Fold ministry as expressed in Ephesians 4, (but also considering the diversity of gifts and callings in Romans 12, and 1 Corinthians 12). This will blossom when the autocratic, top-heavy leadership model of the “eldership council” hierarchy is abandoned. The actual emergence of the true Priesthood of Believers, will occur when the stranglehold of the priesthood of the clergy falls.

I’ve previously mentioned the Lord’s teaching to me about the difference between the spirit of the world’s leadership (the spirit of ‘No’) and the spirit of the Lord’s Kingdom, (the spirit of ‘Yes’). I want to add some more ways we will see this new understanding play out.

The scripture in 1 Corinthians 12:28 says that apostles are “first,” and many feel this being “first” means they will be the bosses, on top of the pile, in charge. And while that would be true under the world’s spirit of ‘No,’ really, being ‘first’ in the Kingdom would mean apostles are on the bottom, serving all, bearing everyone’s burdens. This is why Paul also said the apostles and prophets are the foundation, the bottom, (Ephesians 2:20) and he even said being an apostle was like being last in line, as ones condemned to die. (1 Corinthians 4:9) If we follow the Spirit of Christ we will see leadership this way, as serving, but if we follow the spirit of ‘No’ we will be like Diotrephes who John said “loved to be first” (in the worldly sense) and would have nothing to do with the real believers. (3 John 1:9)

Another doctrine teaches “Prophets and Apostles don’t submit to pastors.” This is a plain contradiction of scripture and evidence of the same worldly spirit at work in such “apostles and prophets.” Why are we arguing about who submits to whom? Why are we jockeying for position of dominance in the Body? Do you know why? Because such people are under the same spirit of the world that crucified Jesus and they want to exalt themselves. In fact, all the Bible really says about this church hierarchy is that we all submit to one another. (Ephesians 5:21) And we do so in fear or reverence of Christ, not by promoting ourselves out of personal ambition. Spiritual authority is not an excuse to dominate and ‘lord it over people,’ and it has nothing to do with title, gifts, calling or positions. We submit to each other, and we follow Christ as the head, the only one who can “pull rank,” yet never would do so, because that is only how the spirit of the world acts to control and dominate.

In Luke 9:46, and Mark 9:34, the disciples were arguing about who was on top and what did Jesus say? If you want to be first, you have to be what? Last, and the servant of all! On bottom. That’s right! How can people teach that the Lord is doing away with the old system of control because it is based on the wrong spirit, only to replace it with a new system of new titles … but the same corrupt worldly spirit?

We cannot achieve the Lord’s goals if we continue to insist on doing it ‘our way.’ But following God’s way will result in more people maturing into the fullness of the stature of Christ, more people equipped to serve, and more sent out accomplishing the real work of the ministry of Jesus Christ.

Footnotes:

NOTE 1. “So,” or “Therefore,” or even “Thus even thou” meaning a connection between these two spiritual powers.

NOTE 2. You may have to check these dates. I took this from http://firstassemblywm.org/resources/The%20Book%20of%20Revelation%20(Pt.%20III).pdf without further verification as to its veracity.

NOTE 3. Such as in NT-era Balaam cults.

Edward Johnson

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Released Aug 2008