Sardis was a frontier city on the edge of the Persian Empire, at the end of the Royal Road from Persepolis.   It was a prosperous city – gold was said to come down the river as “golden sand”.  In peaceful times, its position gave it all the benefits of a “railhead” collecting goods for transshipment to Persia, and breaking down incoming shipments for distribution.

Its most famous king was King Croesus, who gave his name to the phrase “as rich  as Croesus”.  On learning that a Persain army was on its way to attack, he took advice from the oracle at Delphi, which told him that if he went to war, he would “destroy a great kingdom”.  However, the kingdom he would destroy was his own.  Pictures of him pouring oil onto his own funeral pyre became iconic images, some on Greek vases which still survive.

By New Testament times, Sardis was again a flourishing commercial city.  John remarks that the Christians there “have a  name of being alive, but you are dead”.  They are commanded to “wake up” in view of the imminence of the Second Coming, which will come unexpectedly “like a thief in the night”.

As at some of the other Asian churches, John was worried about the Christians’ contamination with pagan practices, but “there are still a few persons in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes.”  The “conquerors” are promised white clothes, and that their names will not be removed from the book of life.