Bible Matrix ⑦_171_REV 2:15 – The teaching of the Nicolaitans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEFzYhEDVlo
Bible Matrix ⑦: Historical & Scientific Views on Daniel and Revelation
Part 2. Revelation
Revelation 2:12~17 - To the Church in Pergamum, Faith/Martyrdom, but the Church in Crisis of Idolatry
Revelation 2:15 - The teaching of the Nicolaitans
☞ <Revelation> 2:15 - Likewise you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans.(NIV); So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate.(KJV)
○ As I already mentioned in <Bible Matrix ⑦_152>, which explained the acts of the Nicolaitans in the church of Ephesus in <Revelation> 2:6, ‘the practices or deeds of the Nicolaitans’ that had appeared in the church of Ephesus developed into ‘the teaching or doctrine of the Nicolaitans’ and finally the church in Pergamum fell into the teaching of the Nicolaitans.
○ The cunning compromise of the Nicolaitans was to follow the wrong way of the pagan prophet Balaam. To compromise with the world is to become a human-centered (or centric). It is up to you to choose how to survive. For example, the Nicolaitans suggested that, in order to avoid the disadvantages of refusing to worship the Roman emperor, they could attend Emperor worship with their bodies, but seek God with their hearts and despise Emperor worship.
○ Doesn't that mean we forsake our love for Jesus just because we go to the temple of emperor and bow down and say, 'The emperor of Rome is the Lord?’ When we come to the church, we serve the Lord earnestly, but when we come out to the world, can we say that Caesar (Emperor) is the Lord? In this way, the voices of those who pursue secularization grew louder than the voices of faithful witnesses in the church in Pergamum, and eventually they lost the truth and purity, and began to fall into pollution and corruption without realizing it by themselves.
○ Also the problem was the core doctrine of the Nicolaitans. They attacked Christian churches with so-called no-morality and no-law that 'the gospel liberates the Christian from the duty of keeping the morality and law of God’. Because Jesus died for our sins, they claimed that our sins had already been forgiven and that we would be forgiven for committing new sins. Like this way, the human-centric doctrine of the Nicolaitans had a particularly strong influence on the rich and highly educated in the church. So, those who were deceived by their words committed adultery or fornication, became corrupt, and walked the wrong way.