Ephesus & the First Love | Revelation 2:1–7

Wind on the mic, ruins underfoot, and a challenge that won’t let go. We recorded on location in Ephesus to trace how John and Paul preached into a bustling trade hub where pagan worship, philosophy, and profit collided—and why the words to the church in Revelation 2 still land like a bell in our moment. With help from a brilliant Muslim guide who knows the Scriptures, the myths, and the streets, we uncover a vivid picture of early house churches, a merchant who became a courier of good news to Rome, and the tension that rises when love for God disrupts the economy of desire.

What unfolds is part travelogue, part heart check. We read Christ’s message to Ephesus—commendation for endurance, a rebuke for drifting from first love, a promise to those who overcome—and hold it next to the way we live now. Freedom of religion has quietly shifted into freedom from religion, and the vacuum is filling with idols old and new: screens, status, and the soft tyranny of convenience. If worship doesn’t shape our public life, something else will. The call isn’t outrage; it’s return. Remember, repent, and recover the works that love once fueled.

We also reflect on the beauty of public devotion, from the call to prayer echoing across Turkey to the steady courage of speaking truth without spite. You don’t change a culture by silencing rivals; you change it by outloving, outserving, and living the truth in plain sight. Walk the marble streets with us, stand where John preached, and consider what it would mean to make first love first again. If this conversation moves you, share it with a friend, subscribe for next week’s deep dive, and leave a review to help more people find the journey. What “first works” are you returning to today?

Notes:Editor’s note & sources: 

Patmos & authorship: Revelation 1:9 places John on Patmos (Aegean) by exile; the traditional view is that this John is the Apostle, though scholars discuss authorship. 

Revelation 2:1–7 (letter to Ephesus); Acts 19:23–41 (idol trade & riot); John exiled on Patmos (Rev 1:9). Visitor/guide figures in the episode were rough; I’ve linked brief background sources and clarifications here.

• The “seven churches” follow a real postal/travel route in Asia Minor; John’s exile to Patmos is the setting for Revelation (Rev. 1:9). Visitor/guide numbers I mention are rough; site vs. national totals differ.
• Seven churches & the route: The order (Ephesus → Smyrna → Pergamum → Thyatira → Sardis → Philadelphia → Laodicea) tracks a Roman postal route in Asia Minor—why the letters are in that sequence.
• Visitor numbers: The ancient city welcomed about 2.7 million visitors in 2024 (a record), not “80 million.” Türkiye as a whole hosted about 62 million visitors that year.  
• Guides: There are roughly 12k–15k licensed tour guides in Türkiye (nationally), not in Ephesus alone.  
• Mary near Ephesus: The House of the Virgin Mary near Ephesus is a long-standing pilgrimage tradition visited by popes; the Catholic Church hasn’t ruled on its authenticity. It’s venerated by Christians and many Muslims. 
• Acts in Ephesus: Paul’s preaching threatened the idol trade; Demetrius the silversmith incited a riot (Acts 19:23–41)

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Chapters

• 0:00 Field Note From Ancient Ephesus
• 0:56 A Muslim Guide’s Surprising Insights
• 2:59 Ephesus As A Powerhouse Trade Hub
• 4:27 John, Paul, And The Merchant Messenger
• 7:27 Exile, Patmos, And Revelation’s Origins
• 9:09 Reading Christ’s Letter To Ephesus
• 11:05 Idols, Ruins, And Moral Drift
• 12:20 America, First Love, And Repentance
• 15:35 Faith In Public Or Fade In Private
• 18:12 Calls To Prayer And Culture Shock
• 20:31 Hard Truths, Persecution, And Legacy
• 22:06 An Invitation To Read And Reflect

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello, gang. Welcome to this week's episode. Before the episode begins, I want to give you a quick note. You're about to hear a field recording. I made an Ephesus turkey. It's raw, it's got some noise in the background because I'm on location at the ancient ruins. And I'm leaving it as is to be authentic. There's a couple numbers in historical details that I mentioned. They're broad. I've added brief editors' notes below in the show notes. My aim is not to debate our faiths, but to let Jesus' word to Ephesus challenge me. Humble in public devotion. Challenging me to that humble and public devotion. Thank you for listening with Grace. Okay, here's the tape. Welcome, welcome to the Body for Junior Show. I am doing a podcast from Ephesus, Turkey. The book of Ephesians. This incredible historical spiritual convergence of an ancient time where the Apostle John, the Apostle Paul, and a virgin Mary come after Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. Mary comes in hiding. We went to her house yesterday. And the conversation that I had with our tour guide, who's a Muslim of Islam faith, was just staggering, mind-blowing. I have tossed and turned all night long over how similar we are after learning a lot about their belief system. And I'm going to get in and break that down on my next podcast. Today, I want to just give the story that I've learned about the Apostle John from a Muslim tour guide who was just this badass. And he understood the pagan gods. He understood the historical significance of where he is and what we were touring. And he was also a student of the Christian Bible, our Bible. He was bringing up terms, you know, how the first house churches were formed for the Christians. It was just an incredible dialogue with a man of a different faith than I have. And he's given these tours to Christians. And he's a Muslim. And his awareness and his wisdom and his knowledge of his knowledge of Christianity was just mind-blowing. I learned a ton from him. And I'm going to break that down. And a few of the things that we learned was first of all, Ephesus, which I didn't know, was like this huge trading route. It was from the seaport to walking to the city, was only a few miles. And you had the Greek and the Romans trading in converging cultures. You have Greek and Roman, you have the Greek, the what is it, the Greco-Roman architectural designs, the convergence, the mixing of two cultures. And then a city of Ephesus, which was this incredible, just powerhouse of an ancient city of trading, of energy, of knowledge, of debates, and of demonic pagan worship, the gods. And this tour guide, there's 16,000 tour guides in uh Ephesus. There's 80 million tourists a year that visit the sites. They don't have enough tour guides. They get certified, they're educated. And this tour guy brought up that he goes, look, it we have 80 million we had last year. He thinks in 2025 it's up over a hundred million. He said in the last 60 days, the amount of people that have come here, it's just overwhelming. And he got into that dialogue, among other dialogue that him and I had separately. That I'm going to dive into, just not today. What I want to talk about today is the inspiration of the book of Revelation, which I did not understand. Revelation scares me. That book just gives me anxiety to try to decipher what it says. It's one of the hardest books I've ever read. I've been in some great churches that have done a great job on breaking it down, which I hope to get in front of these pastors and talk about that. But what I was not aware of is that you had Paul, the Apostle Paul, is preaching in Ephesus and is warned, you gotta slow this role down. Like you're nuts. You're gonna end up killed. Then you have John preaching from the uh square that I'm literally standing in. And he's on top of the rocks. I'm gonna take a picture. John's gonna take a picture of me. And he's sitting here daily just preaching. And to the left, about 20 yards, maybe 25 yards, is the marketplace where trades were happening. And I'll be announced to me, he has this relationship with the number one merchant, like the big kahuna, the Macy's of the old Ephesus, of the mall, right? The the big the big developer. And he is the merchant of the merchants. And he's traveling to Rome 72 times in his life span, which is a month trip. So 72 months he spends on a boat. And he's bringing from Ephesus to Rome pamphlets, notes, word, and he's he's on fire for the Lord. And John and Paul get him fired up, and as and he's bringing messages and he's spreading the gospel in Rome. They're doing this through a merchant. His ministry as a merchant is bringing information and spreading it and reporting back to John and the Apostle Paul, which I had no idea. So they're making like an inroad here in Ephesus, while at the same time, they're disrupting trade. They're preaching righteousness, they're preaching Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior, and you have people that are coming to Ephesus to party, to spend their money, and a lot of the merchants are being disrupted. So you've got this collision that starts happening of the word, of saving and living righteousness, and then you have commerce and a lot of money at stake, and people are being impacted commercially. And it's not good. We're talking about pagan gods, pagan worship, orgies, just a very sexual, high-energy party place, fun. And these guys are coming in and just renting on that parade. And John gets exiled. So the he gets exiled to an island not far from here. And the Torah guide pointed to a mountain. He said, John would also hide on occasions. He would go in hiding in the mountains, and he's pointing to where he said that he would hide up there, and he pointed to a mountain where John would hide, okay, from the authorities. And the book of Ephesians goes through letters, okay. The the the the Paul writes the book of Ephesians, but John writes the book of Revelation, and I'm going to go into chapter two real quick here. As I'm sitting here looking at where he preached, he gets exiled to an island not far from here, and then he has this vision and he writes the book of Revelation. This is the Lord. He takes John's exile, being outcasted, and he turns it into one of the most powerful books, probably the most controversial books in the entire Bible. Revelation. And he writes to the Church of Ephesus, chapter two. So he writes to seven churches. And the seven churches, according to our Torah guide, are all within a trading route from Ephesus, where I am sitting right now. The seven churches that they're warning are within a trading route that was traveled from where I'm sitting at. To the Church of Ephesus, chapter two, to the angel of the church of Ephesus. These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven lampstands. I know your deeds, your hard work, your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles, but are not, and have found them false. You have you have persevered and you have endured hardships for my name and have not grown worry. Yet I hold this against you. You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen. Repent and do the things you did first. If you do not repent, I will come to you, remove your lampshade from its place. But you have this in your favor. You hate the practice of the Michelesians, which I also hate. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches, to the one who is victorious, I give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is the paradise of God. So there's a little footnote here. Nicolatians. The Nicolaitians were a group that troubled the churches of Ephesians. Apparently, their teachings and practices were immoral, perhaps even idolatrous. So there's a lot of idols here. We see them. We see the ancient ruins of the of the idol worship, which I had a very in-depth conversation with a number of Muslims on this vacation, on this trip. And we're going to talk about that on another podcast. I touched on it on my last podcast. But right now, as I'm sitting here and I'm thinking of John, what would we do if someone came along and preached repent America? Your first love has fallen. Come back to your first love. I strongly believe our first love was God. We were a nation that came out of and were freed from the empire of the Brits. And it's a miracle. Like you just think about, you think about George Washington, you think about the battles, you think about the weather patterns, you think about how we became free. It's definitely by a higher power. And then there's this debate we've been having since our inception of freedom of religion. And for some reason, we as a country, come 2025, we have interpreted over the decades that we're freedom from religion. Not freedom of, but we've kind of flipped it to freedom from religion. And it sounds like that's what Ephesus, the same life cycle they went through, and they're part of the book of Revelation. And you have John warning them as he gets exiled for preaching the truth. Charlie Kirk, which inspired me to start talking about my faith and be more public. And then I further became more, frankly, motivated and inspired by watching the Muslim faith here in Turkey and how they openly express their faith unapologetically. It's just completely mind-blowing. And we're going to dive into that next week. I've been tossing the turn at night, just thinking, where do we go so wrong? And I'm starting with my family, myself, my time, and me focusing on creating a better relationship of God with Jesus Christ and expressing it like right here and practicing it through this podcast and holding myself accountable through this podcast. But I'm thinking about our country and our complete flipping of what we're supposed to be doing. We're not freedom from religion. We're freedom for religion, the freedom to practice religion. The first act of Congress by George Washington was a prayer in New York City after he's inaugurated. We have these Bibles that we swear these presidents into office, and then there's just this demonic behavior afterwards. And we're wondering why has a demonic dark world taking over our kids, our school systems, our libraries, our movies, our Hollywood, our TV screens, our behaviors. Something's gonna take it over if we're completely walking away from our creator who gave us our freedom in the hands of God. We've been in the palm of his hands. And the book of Revelations, to me, I never connected the dots to who we are as America and what we need to do to repent until this tour, until Ephesians and listening and observing and praying and just realizing what John went through and his preaching to this city, and I'm scaring the people going, What are you doing? We like our pagan gods. What are you doing? What is this guy doing here trying to upset the apple car? We all get along, we all like our naked orgies, we like our drunkenness, we like our debates of philosophy, but we love our pagan gods. Get this guy out of here. And that's what we've become in America. And I feel like if John was here today and he came in and he preached, he would be exiled. Charlie Kirk was assassinated for preaching the truth. Truth doesn't have to be judgmental. John wasn't judging people. Paul wasn't judging people, they're just speaking the truth. Truth speaking has been something that we have completely abandoned, abolished from our country. And sitting here, will America be the ruins that Ephesus it is today? Will it be the ruins? Will we be just a history book and a city of ruins? Or will we be a blessed nation that repents and you have all this noise and the Muslims are gonna come in and take over? Look at someone's gonna take over. Someone's gonna come in and take over. It's gonna be the devil, it's gonna be another religious group, or it's gonna be or it's gonna be Christianity. It's up to us who takes America from here. If we're gonna be apologetic and hiding from our faith, if we're gonna be afraid to go to church, or if we're going to church three or you know, times a year. Let's see, my pastor has a saying for this. And I look for I asked Pastor Bernard last night, hey, what's Pastor Randy saying? He calls these parish the people who come to church three times a week, the CEOs, the CEOs, Christmas and Easter only. Sorry, three times a year. Not three times a week, three times a year. We're not gonna save our nation. We're not gonna you we can't outlaw the growth of a religion in our country. We have the freedom of religion, not the freedom from religion. We can't outlaw Islamic faith. We can't outlaw pagan worship, we can't outlaw anything, but we can out worship, we can outrepent, we can be proactive in bring our faith forward boldly and start preaching and start talking about the truth and start getting back to our godly foundation and not hiding from it and being embarrassed from it. We're not gonna outlaw anything. So if there's prayer chants and Muslims in the background, which I learned a lot about, we're gonna talk next week. They're not offensive, by the way. If there's Sharia law happening in certain cities, that's because Christianity has been hiding. That's because our cities, our institutions will have a spirit. It's either going to be a religious, godly spirit of some sort, or it's gonna be a demonic spirit. It's up to us what that spirit is. But if we apologize and we cow down and we try to be politically correct, it will not be Christianity. It won't. That is a continuation of the American culture. I had great conversations about what the chants are in Muslim. Jen and I heard them five times a day. We had conversations about them. They're not freaky. They are their culture, their call to prayer to get to the mosque. They're godly. We had a conversation about um the radicals in the Quran and the interpretation. And I can't wait to dive into all that with you. It's been an incredible journey here in Turkey. I love the Turkish people. We met incredible people, have a lot of respect for the Muslim faith. What I've learned is just completely mind-blowing. But what I do know and I have seen, what I do have the discernment of, is America is falling. Our lack of going to worship, our lack of going to church, our lack of biblical values, our CEO, our Christmas and Easter only participation in our faith, won't play anymore. We're either going to get back into the word as a nation, or another word is going to take over our nation. It's up to us. It's up to us what we want to feed our children in whether it's demonic or whether it's heavenly. And I just want to have that conversation here from Ephesus to be authentic, that I was inspired on. And it's just an incredible opportunity to have a conversation about God, about the apostles, about the risks they took for truth telling. Not judgmental. It's we all have free will. They told the truth and they were persecuted for that truth, which sounds like what's been happening in America for the last decade, but it's been boiling a frog. It's been going on longer than a decade. And the fact that Charlie Kirk was murdered over preaching the truth, and then his legacy trying to be destroyed, that he was a racist and a bigot, and all this part of my French bullshit is further evidence of what the apostles went through. And I hadn't I had listened to Charlie Kirk from day one. And I have. And I never saw him as an apostle until now. And he's been murdered over doing what John did and what Paul did. He didn't go in hiding. He did it out in a tent in a public square. It sounds a lot like the apostles. What will we do? Will we be a city in ruins, a country in ruins? Will we be a country of demonic spirits? Will we be a Christian country, an Islamic country, a Jewish country? I don't know. That's up to us. And I'm not picking on any religion. I actually happen to have a lot of respect for the Jewish culture and for now if they're spending time in Turkey, and I'm going to spend more time diving into the Islam faith. I did pick up a Quran about a year ago, and I just discovered from my conversation with this gentleman, I'm reading someone's interpretation of the Quran. Okay, I got to fix that. We talked about the Quran, him and I went through it together for about 15 minutes, the similarities. And I'm going to read you a passage from uh the Quran on the next podcast that you're going to think is our Bible. Like we are very similar, and there are extremists, just like we had problems in our own Christianity of molestation and of just complete demonic infiltration of our holiness, of our holy homes, of our holy leadership. And I'm going to get into all that. Have a great week. Read the Bible, pick up Revelations, read Ephesians, read chapter two of Revelation, and just kind of come on a journey with me. Like this is where I am. I'm an Ephesus. This is crazy. Have a great week. God bless. Enjoy.