-
LaodiceaInsight on the Scriptures, Volume 2
-
-
Laodicea enjoyed great prosperity as a manufacturing city and as a banking center. Indicative of the city’s great wealth is the fact that when it suffered extensive earthquake damage in the reign of Nero, it was able to rebuild without any financial assistance from Rome. (Tacitus’ Annals, XIV, XXVII) The glossy black wool of Laodicea and the garments made therefrom were widely known. The seat of a famous medical school, this city probably also produced the eye medicine known as Phrygian powder. One of the main deities venerated at Laodicea was Asclepius, a god of medicine.
-
-
LaodiceaInsight on the Scriptures, Volume 2
-
-
At that time, toward the close of the first century C.E., the Laodicean congregation had little to commend it. Though materially rich, it was spiritually poor. Instead of the literal gold handled by the Laodicean bankers, instead of the garments of glossy black wool made locally, instead of the eye medicine doubtless produced by the Laodicean medical profession, instead of the boiling hot medicinal waters from the springs of nearby Hierapolis, the Laodicean congregation needed things like these in a spiritual sense. It needed “gold refined by fire” to enrich its personality (compare 1Co 3:10-14; 1Pe 1:6, 7), white outer garments to give it an irreproachable Christian appearance with no unchristian features that were as shameful as bodily nakedness. (Compare Re 16:15; 19:8.) It needed to have spiritual “eyesalve” applied to take away its blindness to Bible truth and Christian responsibilities. (Compare Isa 29:18; 2Pe 1:5-10; 1Jo 2:11.) It could buy these things from Christ Jesus, the one knocking at the door, if it let him in hospitably to entertain him. (Compare Isa 55:1, 2.)
-