On the morning of December 16th 1944, Nazi forces launched an audacious counter-offensive in the freezing Ardennes Forest in southern Belgium and Luxembourg. American defenders were caught unprepared as more than 250,000 German troops and tanks poured across the lines. The attack was so successful that a 60 mile front, known as the bulge, plunged deep into Allied territory trapping many American troops behind enemy lines. Nearly a month later, it was a lack of reinforcements and fuel and the brought the Germans to a halt.
Have you ever wondered what it might be like to be caught behind enemy lines? In a very real sense, as Christians, we are. We should see the church as a forward operating base set up in enemy occupied territory. Jesus tells us in Jn. 15:19, “You are not of the world,” and Paul declares in Php. 3:20 “our citizenship is in heaven.” 1 John 5:19 tells us that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.
This is something the church in Pergamum understood very well. If there was a place that a church could be described as living behind enemy lines, it was Pergamum.