Revelation 3:1 "And to the angel of the church in Sardis write, ' These things says He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars: "I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. 2 "Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God. 3 "Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you. 4 "You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy. 5 "He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. 6 "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." '
Ramsay:
"Sardis was one of the great cities of primitive history: in the Greek view it was long the greatest of all cities. At the beginning of record it stands forth prominently as the capital of a powerful empire. Its situation marks it out as a ruling city, according to the methods of early warfare and early kings; it was however more like a robber’s stronghold than an abode of civilised men; and in a peaceful and civilised age its position was found inconvenient. In the Roman period it was almost like a city of the past, a relic of the period of barbaric warfare, which lived rather on its ancient prestige than on its suitability to present conditions.
As the capital of the great kingdom of Lydia, Sardis had a history marked by frequent wars. In it the whole policy of a warlike kingdom was focused. To fight against Lydia was to fight against Sardis. The master of Sardis was the master of Lydia...
Antiochus the Great captured Sardis through the exploit of Lagoras (who had learned surefootedness on the precipitous mountains of his native Crete). Once more the garrison in careless confidence were content to guard the one known approach, and left the rest of the circuit unguarded, under the belief that it could not be scaled
The rock, however, on which Sardis was built was only nominally a rock. In reality, as you go nearer it, you see that it is only mud slightly compacted, and easily dissolved by rain. It is, however, so constituted that it wears away with a very steep, almost perpendicular face; but rain and frost continually diminish it, so that little now remains of the upper plateau on which the city stood..
Sardis suffered greatly from an earthquake in A.D. 17, and was treated with special liberality by the Emperor Tiberius: he remitted all its taxation for five years, and gave it a donation of ten million sesterces (about 400,000 pounds).
..when the Seven Letters were written, Sardis was a city of the past, which had no future before it. Its greatness was connected with a barbarous and half-organised state of society, and could not survive permanently in a more civilised age. Sardis must inevitably decay. Only when civilisation was swept out of the Hermus Valley in fire and bloodshed by the destroying Turks, and the age of barbarism was reintroduced, did Sardis again become an advantageous site. The acropolis was restored as a fortress of the kind suited for that long period of uncertainty and war which ended in the complete triumph of Mohammedanism and the practical extermination of the Christian population (save at Philadelphia and Magnesia) throughout the Hermus Valley."
"Especially on the day of a Triumph white was the universal colour-though the soldiers, of course, wore not the toga, the garb of peace, but their full-dress military attire with all their decorations—and there can hardly be any doubt that the idea of walking in a Triumph similar to that celebrated by a victorious Roman general is here present in the mind of the writer when he uses the words, “they shall walk with me in white.”
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