Revelation 2

1To the angel of the church in Ephesus, write: “This is the message of the one who grips the seven stars in his right hand, who walks about among the seven lampstands of gold: 2I know your works, how hard you have labored and how you have endured. I know that you cannot put up with people who do evil. Those who call themselves apostles, though they are not, you put to the test and found to be false. 3You keep going. For my name’s sake you have carried heavy loads, and you have not grown tired. 4But here is my complaint against you: the love you had in the beginning, you have let go. 5So call to mind the height you have fallen from. Repent, and act as you did at the start. Otherwise I am coming to you, and I will move your lampstand from where it stands, unless you repent. 6Yet there is this to your credit: you hate the things the Nicolaitans do, and so do I. 7Whoever has ears should listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. I will let everyone who overcomes eat from the tree of life that grows in God’s paradise.”

8To the angel of the church in Smyrna, write: “This is the message of the first and the last, the one who was dead and came to life: 9I know your affliction and your poverty—though in fact you are rich—and the abuse you receive from those who claim to be Jews but are not. They are Satan’s synagogue. 10Have no fear of anything you are going to suffer. Look: some of you the devil is about to throw into prison, so that you will be tested, and you will face affliction for ten days. Stay faithful even to death, and I will give you the crown of life. 11Whoever has ears should listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. The second death will never harm anyone who overcomes.”

12To the angel of the church in Pergamum, write: “This is the message of the one who has the sharp sword with two edges: 13I know where you make your home: the place of Satan’s throne. Still you keep a firm grip on my name. Even in the days of Antipas, my witness and my faithful one, who was killed among you where Satan lives, you did not disown your faith in me. 14But I have a few complaints against you. You have people there who hold to what Balaam taught. He showed Balak how to set a trap for the Israelites, so that they would eat food offered to idols and commit sexual immorality. 15You also have, in the same way, people who cling to the Nicolaitans’ teaching. 16Repent, then. Otherwise I am coming to you soon, and I will wage war on them with the sword that comes from my mouth. 17Whoever has ears should listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. To everyone who overcomes I will give a share of the hidden manna. I will give each one a white stone too, and written on the stone is a new name that only the one who receives it knows.”

18To the angel of the church in Thyatira, write: “This is the message of the Son of God, whose eyes are like a flame of fire and whose feet are like fine bronze: 19I know your works—the love, the faith, the service, the endurance that are yours—and that your recent works outnumber your first ones. 20But I hold this against you: you put up with the woman Jezebel, the self-styled prophet. She teaches my servants and deceives them into sexual immorality and into eating food offered to idols. 21I gave her time to repent, and she is not willing to turn away from her sexual immorality. 22Look, I am laying her on a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I am throwing into great affliction, unless they repent of the things she does. 23Her children I will put to death, and all the churches will come to know that I search the inner self, mind and heart, and that I will give each of you what your works deserve. 24But to the rest of you in Thyatira, all who do not hold this teaching and have not learned the deep things of Satan, as they call them, I say this: I will lay no other burden on you. 25Just keep a firm grip on what you have until I come. 26To everyone who overcomes and keeps doing my works to the end I will give authority over the nations. 27They will shepherd the nations with a rod of iron, as clay pots are smashed to pieces, 28with the same authority I myself received from my Father. And to each of them I will give the morning star. 29Whoever has ears should listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”