How often have you either read this passage or heard it quoted? What did it mean, and what does it mean to you? How do you apply it? Some think that it means that if one will live a good life till he dies, then Heaven and the crown of life awaits. The Bible certainly teaches that if one obeys God in becoming a Christian, then lives a faithful life all the days of his life, then Heaven will certainly be his home. However, this is not the passage to quote in favor of this great fact.
Gene Burgett, in an article, pointed out that the key word in the passage is “death.” There was to be intensified suffering in the death addressed in the passage. Burgett then quoted Tacitus, a Roman Senator during the reign of Nero. Tacitus wrote:
They were put to death with exquisite cruelty, and to their sufferings Nero added mockery and derision. Some were covered with skins of wild beasts and left to be devoured by dogs; others were nailed to crosses; numbers of them were burned alive; many were covered with inflammable matter, were set on fire to serve as torches during the night.
With this knowledge, the exhortation to “be thou faithful unto death” (Revelation 2:10) takes on a new meaning. If you and I had lived in Smyrna in the first century, would we have been among those who were “faithful unto death”? When was the last time we allowed something of minor importance to keep us from doing what we knew was right and should be done? Do we pass up opportunities to do something that we had both the ability and the responsibility to do?
