Thyatira

Thyatira was a city in the region of Lydia in Asia Minor, famous for its trade in purple dye and cloth. During Paul’s second missionary journey, Lydia, a seller of purple from Thyatira, believed and was baptized at Philippi, becoming one of the first Christians in Europe (Acts 16:14). In Revelation, the resurrected Jesus addresses the fourth letter to the congregation in Thyatira—commending its love, faith, ministry, and endurance, but rebuking it for tolerating the self-styled prophetess “Jezebel,” while promising the conqueror authority over the nations and the morning star (Revelation 2:18-29).

Thyatira lay on a north-south trade road in Lydia, western Asia Minor. It was founded around the 3rd century BCE by Seleucus I of the Seleucid dynasty as a military colony settled with Macedonian soldiers. Because of its strategic location its crafts and trade flourished; it was especially known for woolen textiles and purple-dyed cloth, and its guilds of weavers, dyers, leatherworkers, and bronze smiths were powerful. In the 1st century CE the city belonged to the Roman province of Asia. During Paul’s second missionary journey, at a place of prayer by a river outside Philippi in Macedonia, he met “a woman named Lydia, a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira, who worshipped Jehovah God.” Jehovah opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message; she and her household were baptized and she insisted that the missionaries stay in her home. Lydia thus became one of the first recorded believers on European soil, and her hometown Thyatira was immortalized in the account of Acts through this witness (Acts 16:14, 15, 40). By the time the apostle John received Revelation, Thyatira had a thriving Christian congregation. In the fourth letter to the seven congregations of Asia, the resurrected Lord identifies himself as the Son of God “with eyes like a fiery flame and feet like fine copper.” He first commends their love, faith, ministry, and endurance, noting that their later deeds exceed the first. But he firmly rebukes them for tolerating a self-styled prophetess likened to “Jezebel,” who teaches and misleads his slaves into sexual immorality and eating food sacrificed to idols. The Lord declares that he searches hearts and will repay each according to their deeds, and he urges the faithful remnant who have not followed this teaching or known “the deep things of Satan” to hold fast until he comes. To the one who conquers and keeps his deeds to the end he gives authority over the nations, together with the morning star (Revelation 2:18-29). Thyatira survived as a Byzantine town before declining in the Middle Ages; the Turkish town of Akhisar grew up over its site, and ancient remains are still unearthed in the surrounding area.