2:1 Ephesus. Ephesus was an important seaport on the Aegean Sea, where the Apostle Paul had spent a long time (Acts 20:31). It was the location of the great temple of Artemis (or Diana—see Acts 19:27), considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and a very immoral city. As the first church addressed in the seven epistles, it is often considered typical of the apostolic-era church, with the later epistles representing successive later periods of church history. The supposed correlations, however, are arbitrary at best. Since each type of church is represented somewhere in the world in every period of church history, it is more realistic to understand the seven churches in general as depicting all churches in general, thereby surveying all the merits and defects of churches everywhere.