Where were the seven churches located?
The seven cities in chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation were in the Roman province of Asia, now western Turkey. Sailing from Patmos, a small island off the southwest Aegean coast, John would have disembarked at Ephesus, then headed north to Smyrna and Pergamum, southeast to Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and, finally, Laodicea. Today, visitors to these ancient sites see thousands of years of history and remnants of the empires and cultures of the Anatolians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuk Turks, Ottomans and the modem Turkish Republic. Why did John address these particular churches? In the 1st century AD there were certainly more significant churches than some of the seven addressed by John, like those in Jerusalem, Rome, Galatia, Corinth and Antioch, to name a few. John chose these seven because their spiritual conditions were typical of churches and believers everywhere, in any age, in any period of history. Every church in the world today falls into one or more of these categories: •
