John’s primary summons to his congregations in Revelation is to maintain a clear and uncompromised witness, in both word and practice, to the sovereign rule of the one and only God, to the redemptive, kingdom-creating acts of Jesus Messiah, and to the allegiance and obedience that are due God as creator and to God’s Anointed as redeemer and chosen co-regent.¹ This witness required maintaining a critical distance from the propaganda and practices that legitimated or expressed partnership with any and every power and practice that was not aligned with the righteous decrees of God and God’s Anointed. Throughout Revelation, John particularly arouses emulation of, or association with, those who bear witness, whether Jesus (Rev. 1:5; 2:14), John himself (1:2, 9), Antipas (2:13), the two witnesses (11:3-13), or those who maintained the “witness of Jesus” (12:11, 17).² Witness (and God’s vindication of faithful witnesses who testify to God and what is due God to the point of their deaths) emerges as the only efficacious path to provoking recognition of God among the inhabitants of the earth. God’s visitations of judgment do not bring about repentance and recognition of God (9:20-21) – indeed, they even provoke the opposite (16:9, 11, 21). It is only God’s witnesses and God’s follow-up actions in the wake of witness that move “the inhabitants of the earth” to revere God and give him honor (11:13).

Revelation summons us to consider what is the “testimony” that we must bear in our contemporary setting. We might typically answer that Christians in any setting ought to be prepared to “share the gospel” – a fine response if we are prepared to understand “the gospel” as John would understand it. The gospel, for him, includes a call to allegiance to the one who is “ruler of the kings of the earth” and to obey the commandments of God, the one whose enthronement is forever. John himself modeled testifying also to the distance between the political, economic, policing, and ideological practices he observed in Roman Asia (and empire-wide), doubtless not with the hope that Roman officials or merchants or demagogues would change their practice but rather with the hope of alerting Christ-followers to disengage from all practices the one God would consider unjust – and would judge (cf. Rev. 18:4).

John was particularly piqued where other Christian teachers gave Christ-followers permission not to bear such witness. He commends the Christians in Ephesus for testing apostles and for rejecting the teaching and practices of the Nicolaitans (Rev. 2:2, 6). In the voice of the glorified Christ, he castigates believers in Pergamum and Thyatira for giving a hearing to the teachers he labels “Nicolaitans” and “Jezebel,” who make room for “commit[ting] fornication and eat[ing] what has been offered to idols” (2:20; cf. 2:14-15). The vigor and, frankly, venom of John’s denunciation underscores the seriousness with which he regarded their influence and its harm to Christian identity and witness.

“Eating food that has been offered to idols” probably involved being seen to be present and participating in the public festivities surrounding the cults of the city’s traditional and imperial deities. John probably uses “fornication” here in the metaphorical sense that will reappear in Revelation 17-18, namely as an image for “getting in bed” with existing social, political, and economic structures and their mechanisms of self-legitimation to derive some benefit from the same. What is so bad that Jezebel’s position must be declared “out of bounds” for Christian discourse and authentically Christian practice?

When Christians in Roman Asia sit alongside their neighbors eating food sacrificed to idols or making other required compromises to enjoy safety and even prosperity, their witness it blunted. By moving away from vocal witness and prophetic practice, they cease to raise the problematic issues regarding Roman imperialism in their neighbors’ consciousness. As Christians participate, even if only while holding their noses and crossing their fingers, as it were, in the religious legitimation that upholds the Roman order; as they continue to orient their hearts and practice toward the peaceful enjoyment of the goods offered to that regime’s loyal subjects; as they push living out their allegiance to God to private and safe spaces, they cease to maintain the critical distance that allows them to offer their neighbors the gift of calling them to align themselves with the one God and to discover alternative ways of being human together. They reinforce “the lie” rather than offer their neighbors a way out from continuing to live “the lie.”³

John cautions Christians in the contemporary setting in the United States not to forgo their summons to serve as the conscience of the State rather than as cheerleaders for it (or for any particular party).⁴ He would continue to commend the importance of discernment in regard to the many voices that are vying for our attention – and for our allegiance – on behalf of these two major parties.⁵ A significant number of Christians, identifying the cause of Christ with the cause of the Republican party under the specific leadership of Donald Trump, seem unaware of the danger of turning “the kingdom of our Lord and of his Anointed” into a prop for the agenda of one political party in “the kingdom of the world.” The language and trappings of Christianity supply the historic functions of “imperial cult,” lending religious legitimation to a party and identifying support for that party’s agenda with piety itself.⁶ Indeed, they seem to have been seduced into doing so by the political party’s pretended alliance with longstanding interests of the “Religious Right.” John might well describe this political alliance as “fornication,” with the temporal power employing “sorcery” – deceptive wiles – to dupe Christ-followers. He might well indict prominent Christian leaders for playing the harlot, lending religious legitimation to the political agenda of political figures to enjoy the benefits of political patronage in return.

John would call Christ-followers to be careful about using the faith, which declares the lordship of Jesus and the impermanence of all temporal states, to deposit “religious capital into the coffers of political leaders.”⁷ Where a party’s agenda aligns with the righteous vision of God, Christians can affirm it. The fact that so many Christians can identify elements in the agendas of both parties that so align – and so many elements in the opposing party, at least, that fail so to align – should motivate all believers to embrace the critical distance from both parties that Revelation encouraged in regard to the only “party” of Roman imperialism in his setting. Regrettably, it has rather caused Christians to condemn their brothers and sisters whose consciences led them to align with the opposing party.⁸ Recovering the skill of listening to a broader swath of those who will be fellow citizens with us forever in the kingdom of God could lead Christians in either camp to be more discerning about the underside of the party with which they have aligned – and to use their voices prophetically to call each party into closer alignment with the righteousness of God.

Greg Carey has called attention to and criticized John’s use of the technique of “debasing” his opponents in Revelation, focusing particularly on John’s treatment of the rival prophet whom he labels “Jezebel.”⁹ While I personally believe that Jezebel’s teaching was genuinely deleterious to Christian witness and posed a grave danger to her followers’ well-being and witness, the implications of Carey’s critique for Christians in 21st-century America are important. Many believers have too quickly imitated John’s tactics of debasing and demonizing the “other,” generally in the interest merely of promoting or defending a political party’s agenda rather than preserving the identity and witness of the household of God. This serves the political beasts’ purposes well, but it bears witness to the world that our allegiance to our party is more important than showing reverence for the Lord of the everlasting kingdom who commanded his citizens to love their neighbors as themselves, to love their enemies (which fellow Christians, in any case, are not), and to avoid debasing speech as assiduously as avoiding murder (Matt 5:21-22, 43-45; 22:37-40). Again, we would do better to listen to Christians not aligned with our own political outlook so as to preserve our own critical distance from the party seeking our complete and unquestioning allegiance and, thus, to preserve the possibility of serving as the conscience for that party.

The material in this post will appear in modified form later this year in David A. deSilva, Living in an Unholy Empire: Revelation’s Call to a Higher Allegiance (Hendrickson Publishing, 2026).