Revelation 2:15

So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate.

Pergamos had not only embraced the doctrine of Balaam, that unhealthy marriage with the world, but they had also embraced the doctrine of the Nicolaitans. And Jesus says plainly, “which thing I hate.”

That is strong language.

The Nicolaitans were the priests, the pontiffs, the spiritual rulers, the ones who saw themselves as above the common people and over the common people. They were the kind who thought authority belonged in their hands in a way God never intended. They wanted dominion. They wanted control. They wanted to stand between the people and the Lord.

And Jesus said He hated it.

That is because the church was never meant to become a system in which a religious class rules over everybody else. She was never meant to be handed over to priests, pontiffs, and men who begin thinking of themselves as untouchable or infallible. The church belongs to Jesus Christ. He alone is the Head. He alone is infallible. He alone has the right to rule the conscience.

But that spirit had entered Pergamos.

Once the church married the world, it was not long before hierarchy hardened, power centralized, and religious men began exalting themselves. It always goes that way. When the church starts drifting from simple devotion to Christ, it begins substituting structure for life, office for anointing, and human authority for the leading of the Spirit.

That is the doctrine of the Nicolaitans.

It is not servant leadership.

It is spiritual domination.

It is men putting themselves in the place that belongs to Christ alone. It is the rise of those who think they are the final voice, the protected class, the unquestioned authority. And Jesus says He hates it because it crushes the very people He came to free.

Saints, that is always the danger when church and state join hands and religious systems grow powerful. Before long, the people are no longer being pointed simply to Jesus. They are being taught to look upward to some priestly class, some pontiff, some office bearer who claims special authority over faith and life.

But the church has only one true Head.

Jesus Christ.

And the safest place for any believer is not under the domination of men, but under the lordship of Him who loved us and gave Himself for us.