Jesus Says: Awaken!
Despite the city’s paganism, the Christian community there seems to have experienced no persecution—and hence no spiritual life.
He sent messengers to test the wisdom of the oracles, and gave his implicit trust to that of Delphi, which answered him correctly (1.47–49). On consulting it about war with Persia, he was encouraged with the response that if he crossed the Halys, then his frontier, he would destroy a great empire (1.53). He accordingly found pretext for war, disregarded wiser counsel, and attacked and captured Pteria (1.71–76). On the arrival of Cyrus an indecisive battle was fought. Croesus, having the smaller army, withdrew to Sardis, dismissed for the winter season his powerful allies from Egypt, Babylon and Sparta, and summoned them to reassemble in five months. Meanwhile he disbanded all but his Lydian troops, ‘never expecting that after so close-fought a campaign Cyrus would venture against Sardis’ (1.77). Cyrus however followed unobserved: αὐτὸς ἄγγελος Κροίσῳ ἐληλύθεε (1.79). Croesus, caught off guard, led his formidable Lydian cavalry desperately into battle, but the horses were thrown into confusion at the sight and smell of the camels which Cyrus had posted in front of his army (1.79–80). Croesus then summoned his allies and prepared to endure a siege in his precipitous stronghold.
But on the fourteenth day Sardis fell. An enemy succeeded in climbing to an unguarded point, ‘where no guard was stationed, for there was no fear that it would ever be captured at that place, for the acropolis is sheer and impregnable there’ (1.84).
At the approach of Alexander, however, the Sardians hastened out to surrender their city without resistance (Arr. Anab. 1.17.3; cf. 3.16.5). Alexander ascended the undefended citadel and was greatly impressed by its immense strength (1.17.5; 334 BC). Nevertheless the place was again captured by Antiochus III in 214 BC through the negligence of the defenders.
Therefore, behind the image of receiving “white robes” in 3:4b–5a, as well as elsewhere throughout Revelation, stands the idea of a purity that has resulted from the fidelity of the faithful being tested by a refining fire.