Traveling in Turkey Part 1…

For years I had dreamed of visiting some of the lands of the Bible. For me, I had been a critical thinker and skeptic at heart. Early in my spiritual journey, in my 20’s, I read and read about archaeology, the reasons why the Bible was disproven, and responses to it. A book called “The Signature of God” changed my life when a friend told me about it when I was drunk at a college party my sophomore year. After reading this book, I was able to put the Scriptures into a context that made sense to me.

But I digress. In my missionary travels, our family found ourselves in the country of Turkey on the way home to the states one year. We were there for some meetings we had, and we planned some extra time to explore the country a bit. I didn’t realize at the time that Turkey is to host the second most biblical places in the world. I did know that most of the approximate 25,000 manuscripts or partial fragments of the New Testament could be found in this region, and that this region was host to the early churches that Paul writes to including Ephesus, Galatia, as well as the 7 churches that Jesus speaks to in the famous chapters 2-3 of Revelation. Revelation was a most fascinating book to me, and an important reason of my spiritual journey and conversion. So that I was able to visit Turkey was a huge deal for me!

We had one weekend where we could fly up to Istanbul, and see a few of the 7 areas of these 7 churches, which are geographically arranged in a crescent. We decided that we would visit Ephesus for sure, as there is so much rich history there. We decided to go to Pergamum one day, just because it was closet to the airport, and had so much rich history as well, and then Ephesus.

The ancient city of Pergamum sits on atop a large hill overlooking the present day city of Bergamum. In this city hosts several famous historical sites, including the Temple of Zeus (what’s left of it, and what is most likely referred to in Revelation as Satan’s throne), the beautiful amphitheater that is built into the hill (gotta see the pic of this!), and so much more. There are ancient spaces to go in and out there. I only had this weekend to see so much of what I had studied for years, so I took my oldest son and we were literally jogging around the ancient city, while the sun was beating down on us. We took the cable car back down the mountain, but we were stuck there for about 45 minutes due to technical issues. We didn’t mind, as the view was incredible!

By the time we got down to Bergamum, however, I was not feeling myself. We decided to get some food and hydrate as the sun on top of the hill was hot. We were used to the heat from Africa, but I think the traveling and being high on the hill and moving so fast caught up with me. I ended up lying on the bathroom floor of a local restaurant, due to apparent heat exhaustion. Ck came to check on me and asked one of the restaurant workers to check on me. Thankfully the owner of the restaurant’s daughter had spent some time in the states and knew English. She drove us to a local hotel where we decided to crash that night and tackle Ephesus in the morning. We ordered food there together and had a good nights rest in a good bed. Later, I heard about the famous hospitality of the Turkish people, and I was able to testify to it firsthand! I will occasionally send her a WhatsApp message and thank her for the family taking good care of me.

We’ll save the rest of the story-at Ephesus-for another post . Thanks for reading along