Smyrna was the center of emperor worship for the Roman Empire. If Romans had believed in Jesus, they would have put him up on a shelf in the Pantheon with all of their other gods: Jupiter, Zeus, Mercury, Mars, etc. But when Christians refused to name any other God than the one God of heaven they were called atheists and many of them were put to death. That’s the kind of setting in which they lived and that’s why Jesus said, “I know what you are going through.”