The Greco-Roman World and Why It Matters

Coming here to Turkey. Turkey is quite, quite different. It's alike in some respects from where we came from, but in other ways a lot is different, too. And very soon now we will begin experiencing another very different world as we go and explore some of the ruins of the first century and the first century church, where the churches existed in that period.

And over this coming week we will be seeing a number of ruins from some of the greatest cities in the ancient world. We saw some of that with Pergamum yesterday. A tremendously wealthy, magnificent city. Approximately 200,000 people possibly in the first century. But one thing to keep in mind as we go through these ruins that we'll be visiting is they weren't always ruins.

There were real people who lived there. There were real church members, like you and like me, who lived in those areas. People who were our spiritual ancestors. People who hosted the Apostle Paul, who heard Paul speak live in Sabbath services, who read his letters in Sabbath services. Some of these people heard the Apostle John speak. We were able to meet him and hear his stories of Jesus, the Messiah firsthand. So we'll be walking among the ruins of places where real church members lived in the first century and where these things happened.

And if you're like me the first time you go to the Holy Land or a place like Turkey here, it'll forever change the way you read God's Word. And that's what I hope all of us will really get out of this trip. And I think that's probably why there are a number of repeat people coming back here who've gone to the Land of Israel or come to Turkey on one of the previous trips here.

So this afternoon's study, I'm going to take off my preacher's hat, take off my teacher's hat, and I'm going to put on a historian's hat. And take a look at some of the historical perspectives as to why the Roman Empire was important. So I'd like to take a look at two major themes that will help us put in greater context the things that we'll be seeing. And hopefully wrapping our minds around over this coming week.

And the two major themes revolve around why the Greco-Roman world matters to us today. Why the Greco-Roman world matters to us today. And this term Greco-Roman, if you are not familiar with that, Greco is referring to Greek, the Greek Empire that preceded the Roman Empire. And the Roman Empire basically just took Greek culture and wholesale adopted it. So it's commonly called Greco-Roman culture or history because it's basically the same thing that carried on over a number of centuries here.

And those actually became the foundation for Western civilization as we understand it. So we'll be walking among the roots of Western civilization throughout this coming week. And as for why the Greco-Roman world matters to us today, there's three aspects to it. There's a past aspect, there's a present aspect, and there's also a future aspect to that.

And the first that we'll talk about here, and that is the past aspect of that, has to do with the Roman Empire and the timing of God's plan coming to pass. Hopefully we all understand that God is a master planner. His Feast of Tabernacles and his Holy Days teach us about his master plan for working for all of humanity.

God doesn't do things just randomly. He works things out carefully according to a specific timetable. And this was true with two particularly important aspects of his plan. And that was the coming of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, and the establishing of his church. And I'd like to look at a particular phrase out of a verse, Galatians 4.4. It's easy to read over and pass over this and not really think about it, but we'll dig into this a little bit. Galatians 4.4, But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his Son.

Now, what did Paul mean when he talked about this, the fullness of the time? What does that mean? Well, obviously it's talking about the fulfillment of Daniel's 70 weeks prophecy, which foretold the year that the Messiah would appear. But conditions had to be just right for the Messiah to appear and for the church to be established.

It couldn't happen at just any random time in human history. It had to happen under very specific conditions that existed at a very specific time.

Let's consider some of those factors here.

We understand reading through the Gospels, we see that the Jewish people of that time were expecting the Messiah to appear. Again, they knew the timing of Daniel's 70 weeks prophecy.

So they were expecting a Messiah to appear on the scene at any time. You can read through the Gospels, and that's pretty obvious.

But what were some of the other factors that would play into this?

Let's consider what would have happened had Jesus come 100 years earlier than he did.

What was happening at that time?

Well, the Greek Empire had collapsed pretty much, and the Roman Empire is consolidating its hold on the eastern Mediterranean region that includes Turkey.

It was a period of upheaval.

Kingdoms, Empire cities were rising and falling in that period of turmoil.

What about 100 years after Jesus Christ appeared?

At that time, there was a major Jewish war going on, the Jewish revolt of 132 to 135 AD. There was a massive, bloody war between the Jews and the Romans at that time. So had Christ arrived a century earlier or before, the church could not have been established.

Those times were just in so much upheaval, the church could not have established and existed and begun to carry out the work that had been given to do.

So I think that is a major factor of what Paul is referring to here. There had to be a very specific time for the Messiah to appear and the church to begin.

There had to be very specific conditions that existed for the Messiah to appear, for the church to begin, and for the church to carry out its work, which has continued on into our lives today.

How many of you have heard this term before? Pax Romana.

Okay, a little over half it looks like. Pax Romana.

Latin term, Pax, is not something you catch. It means peace.

Well, hopefully it is catching. We heard that in Mr. Frank Fish's sermon earlier today.

Pax's piece, Romana of Rome. So the Peace of Rome.

It's a very famous term. If you read anything about the history of the Roman Empire, you'll come across this term here. And it referred to the Roman Empire enforcing a level of peace and security and stability in this world, this land, that had never existed before.

That had never existed before. And to understand the alternative, you might think about what's taking place over in Iran right now, the Persian Gulf and the chaos, the missiles, the rockets, the attacks going back and forth. And you go back not that many years ago. There was the Iraqi war and the Iran-Iraq war.

And this part of the world has just seen all kinds of unrest almost without ceasing. And that's what happens when there isn't a major government strong enough to enforce a kind of peace over the area. And the Romans were able to do that.

So there's just generally been this pattern of chaos and unrest and constant warfare without a strong authority to maintain order.

And when the Roman Empire rose up in spite of its failings, it was cruel, it was brutal, but it needed to be to enforce this level of peace. But one of the major blessings, you might say, for the entire Mediterranean region was the Pax Romana, the peace that Rome established through force. And this was a window of peace and stability that lasted throughout much of the first century, the period in which Jesus was born and the church was established and began its work as we read about in the books of the New Testament.

So what did the peace of Rome mean in practical circumstances?

Well, you might think about just a minute here. Think about, for instance, robbers, parable of the Good Samaritan. What happens in that parable?

Man is traveling the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, significant cities in the first century, and he gets set upon by robbers who beat him up to within an inch of his life.

And it's a parable, but it's also a very real story that happened on a pretty regular basis, so much so that if you travel along that road today, you can actually see the remains of a Roman hesitate to say a fort, but a well, a small fort, you might say, to try to keep a lid on the robbers and the bandits in that area there. You might think about who Jesus was crucified between to robbers or insurrectionists. The term could apply to both.

Paul talks about how one of the perils that he faced in his travels was robbers there. So this tells us something of the conditions when Judea was unoccupied territory under Roman control. Think how bad it would have been had the Romans not been in control there.

It would have been pretty much every man for himself is the story there. So again, this Pax Romana, the piece of Rome, created this window of peace and stability during which the Messiah could appear, the Gospel could be preached, and the church could be established.

But that wasn't the only factor in which Rome had a hand in creating the conditions for these things to happen. What were some of the other things that we read about other than the Roman military establishing this force, this level of peace? One of our great blessings in the United States, and we saw this actually, what good roads exist in Turkey right now.

We created our interstate highway system back in the 50s, I believe is when it started.

Why was the interstate highway established? If you know your history from that time, it was established to move military forces back and forth across the United States. This was in the aftermath of World War II, and the federal government saw a need to build a system to move troops and military equipment across the country in short order to protect the nation for its defense. Now it's expanded on and is a great tool for commerce and travel, which we are the recipients of that blessing. In fact, when the Roman army occupied this whole area, one of their major jobs, they weren't like our army today where they basically just sit around and train for war.

One of the Roman military's jobs was road building. They were much smarter than we are in using resources. They put their military forces to work building roads, building aqueducts, draining swamps, building canals, building cities, buildings, foundations, constructing bridges, that sort of thing. They're generally doing engineering work, major engineering infrastructure projects, and they constructed roads throughout the Roman Empire, some of which we'll see over the course of this week. That Roman road system allowed travel quickly and fairly comfortably and easily throughout the Roman Empire. There are places where, like the Sophotei took in Ephesus years ago on a previous trip, where you can see the Roman road. This is the main drag through Ephesus, and you can see the ruts in the stone from the wagon wheels, the cart wheels, wearing ruts in the roads there over the years. So we'll see some of these things there. But because of these advances in the Roman transportation system, we see many places in the Book of Acts where the Apostle Paul is walking along these roads. He and his companions walking from place to place using this Roman highway system. Without that highway system and without the level of peace, it would have been much more difficult for Paul and the other apostles to carry out their work there. Another mode of transportation we see mentioned quite a bit in the Book of Acts is ship travel. Ship travel around the Mediterranean. As a matter of fact, the Romans didn't call the Mediterranean the Mediterranean Sea. They called it Marinusstrum, which is our sea or our lake because the Roman Empire encompassed all the borders around the Mediterranean.

So they had large networks of ship, military ships, cargo ships traveling back and forth through all the corners of the Mediterranean. So in the Book of Acts we read about Paul regularly catching rides on commercial cargo ships from one port to the next, traveling back and forth from Jerusalem and other cities around the Roman Empire. We'll visit some of those ports like Ephesus and Miletus during this coming week. So this was another great benefit of the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome, because again, what happened before the Pax Romana? The Mediterranean was filled with pirates.

You know, not the ones wearing the black caps with the skull and crossbones, but they were pirates. They preyed on the cargo ships, the passenger ships, the others, and it was very, very dangerous to travel before Rome cleaned the pirates out of the Mediterranean. As a matter of fact, there's an interesting story about Julius Caesar, probably the most famous Roman in history.

When he was a young man, he was captured by pirates and taken to their lair and held for ransom there. Well, Julius Caesar was a little bit of an arrogant man, but he said, you're making two big mistakes here. One, you're asking too low of a ransom for me. I'm worth a lot more money than that. And the other thing he said was, when I am released, I'm going to come back here and I'm going to kill every one of you. And he did. He was released. They paid the ransom or the ransom was paid to the pirates from his family. He went back to Rome, raised a fleet, built a fleet, and came back and fought the pirates and destroyed their hangout, destroyed their ships, and crucified or killed every single man who was there. And after that, that was the foundation of the Roman navy. And it went on to become bigger and more powerful and took over the entire Mediterranean by force. So it created the conditions under which Paul and the other apostles could travel by ship around the Mediterranean there. And you might, so again, we see Paul regularly traveling by ship and catching rides. So this was a great blessing of the Pax Romana after Rome cleaned out the pirates. We can even read in Paul's writings about such things as him taking up a collection of food from church members in Macedonia north of Greece and arranging it for it to be reliably shipped down to Jerusalem where there was a famine going on. So we see Paul making plans and writing in his letters that he wants to be in such and such a place by this day or that day, working a schedule around God's holy days and so on.

And again, we'll see some of those ports like Ephesus and Miletus later on. So the Pax Romana wasn't just confined to land. It affected the sea and traveled there as well. Another big factor that was made possible under the conditions of the Roman Empire is a major reason that we have the New Testament today. And what do you think that is? It's the reason that you have this book sitting on your lap today. And that is, there was a mail system that the Romans instituted there.

And what is the New Testament? It's largely a combination of letters, personal letters, to individuals like Paul writing to Titus, Timothy, and so on. A collection of memoirs in the Gospels. A history of the early church in the Book of Acts. But they're generally writings from one person to another individual or to specific churches or groups of churches, some of which we'll visit this coming week. So yes, there were letters, but for letters to be effective, you had to have a mail system. And the Romans established that. We don't have much record at all, but we do know it existed because that's what Paul utilized to send his letters. Sometimes he would send them by a personal message, another church member from one area to another. But there was a Roman mail system there where letters could be sent from one city, one person in one city, to another person in another city. And we see that Paul sending his letters back and forth across this end of the Mediterranean here. Again, most of the New Testament writings we have today were either written to or from Turkey to other areas around the Mediterranean there.

So one other factor I want to talk about here that contributed to the spread of the Gospel and the establishment of the church. And this was important in furthering God's plan, and that is the Greek language. The Greek language. And here's an illustration of a public monument. Those who were on the Pergamum trip yesterday saw some of that, these massive marble blocks with Greek inscriptions. You may be thinking to yourself, well, I thought the Romans spoke Latin. Well, they did in Rome. But everywhere else, they spoke and wrote in Greek. There are a few scattered Latin inscriptions here and there, but the vast majority of them around the Mediterranean world are written and recorded in Greek. And that's what the New Testament, as we have it today, was written in, was in Greek. There were many languages spoken in the Roman Empire, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Babylonian, Egyptian, and more. But Greek was much like the English languages today. You can go pretty much in the world and find people who speak English.

Or at least, is my wife and I joke, who think they speak English.

And don't quite. Something gets lost in the translation there. But that's the way it was with the Greek language in the first century. Nearly everywhere you could go, you could find people who could read and write and speak Greek. So that is why Paul wrote his letters in Greek. And the Gospels were recorded in Greek and so on. And that's why the New Testament was written and recorded for us in Greek. It was the universal language of the Roman Empire.

So, to sum up what we've covered so far, there were these four factors at work in God's timing. And that was the Pax Romana, which enforced this peace and stability and a level of law enforcement, you might say, as Mr. Fish was talking about in his sermon earlier today.

There were the transportation systems, the great roads for the people to travel on, for commerce, and military use, and so on. And there was the mail system that existed that allowed these letters to be spread. And there was also the universal use of the Greek language. So, second theme I want to talk about on this theme of why the Greco-Roman world is so important. I want to talk a bit about four things that we'll see. So, I mentioned there was a past aspect of this and then a past and present and future aspect. So, now we'll move into the present and the future. But four things we'll see. Four things to look for as we go through the ruins of these great cities of the ancient world.

And these four things are stadiums, schools, temples, and theaters. Stadium, schools, temples, and theaters. And these four things are some combination of the four existed in virtually any sizable city of the Greco-Roman world. But where did they come from? What was behind these four types of structures? And why were they so important? Yesterday at Pergamum we saw this enormous theater there. Truly huge theater seats. I read 10,000 people at once. And above the hill, on the Acropolis above that, were many, many temples up there to various gods and goddesses and so on. So we've already seen a few of these. We'll see more. This is not saying that every city had all four, but the bigger cities did. Doesn't mean you can see them today because some, like at Ephesus, right by the famous theater that we will be visiting, was a stadium. It just hasn't been excavated and restored, so you can't really see that. We will talk about that a little bit more here. So to understand why these four things, stadium, schools, temples, and theaters, were so important, we need to go back several centuries before the Roman Empire to the 300s BC, and one of history's most famous figures, a man by the name of Alexander the Great.

Alexander is known for being a military genius, which he was. He basically conquered the known world of his time, but he was much more than that. Alexander was a missionary. He was a missionary.

Alexander the Great had a mission. He wanted the whole world to become Greek in its thinking, in its religion, in its outlook, in its worship, in its practices, in its culture, in its philosophy, in its political structure, in its values. He died at a young age—30, I believe it was—in Babylon before he could finish his conquest of the world.

But his successors, the Roman Empire, largely accomplished what Alexander started. It started with Alexander. Much of the known world of that day, including all the lands of the New Testament, adopted Greek ways and Greek culture and Greek thinking. This is a concept called Hellenism.

This is another term if you read much about history of this period. You'll come across Hellenism. It's a term you may hear from our guide several times on this trip.

It's talking about this Greek culture. Their thinking, their outlook, their values, their religion, their culture, their worship—everything. Because a number of these cities, like Pergamum, we visited yesterday, were Greek cities before they were Roman cities. Again, the Greek Empire collapsed, pretty much, and was kind of absorbed, you might say, by the Roman. It wasn't. The Romans came along and defeated all the Greeks. The Greek Empire had gotten so big and unwieldy it collapsed internally, and the Romans took it over. So let's talk about the importance and the thinking behind these four types of structures. Let's talk about stadiums first, because the Greco-Roman cities, many of them had stadiums for the public display of athletic games. We've probably all seen movies about the chariot races that are so famous. If you were in Istanbul—I don't know whether you heard this or not, but between the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, there's a big open park-like area. Do you want to know what that was originally?

It was one of these. It was a stadium. If you look at it in aerial photos, you can see the oval structure of the old stadium that used to be there, dating back to 300s approximately. I'm not sure exactly when it was built. But there was a famous hippodrome for chariot racing there in the heart of Constantinople.

I'm trying to remember. Well, I'll show you an illustration of another one. This is from a previous trip in an area called Aphrodivis that we visited on some previous trips, not on this particular trip because it's out of the way. But this is one of those stadiums that has been restored for racing. This one was not used for chariot racing but for foot racing. So here's pretty much what it would have looked like in the first century. The Greeks were the originators of the Olympic Games and the Corinthian Games and other regional athletic contests and games like that. But yeah, it would hold thousands and thousands of spectators. Again, there's one of these at Ephesus. It just hasn't been excavated and restored. So you might think of it as, for those of you from from America, NASCAR. The NASCAR races and so on. That was kind of very popular entertainment. And the Romans had their favorite athletes who were well known like our sports stars these days and so on. Another type of structure that we will see on this trip.

This is the famous gymnasium. When I say gymnasium, we have a different meaning to that word today. In the ancient world, that meant school.

Now it applies to a sports facility at a school. Generally, this is the famous gymnasium at Sardis.

But it did not look like that. Let's see. Sardis, is that where we're going tomorrow?

Is that right? Okay, yeah, we'll visit and see this tomorrow. It's been reconstructed, but here's pretty much what it would have looked like in the first century. All those niches that you see would have held statues for gods and goddesses and emperors and things like that.

The teaching, you know, you've probably heard of the great Greek philosophers.

Alexander the Great was taught by Plato, I believe it was. So that was the model for teaching and education under the Greek system. They would have students, their pupils.

So yeah, this kind of gives us an idea of what that would have looked like back in those days. So in these gymnasium, again, think schools, the Greek ideal was to train people's bodies and minds in, again, Greek culture, Greek thought, Greek philosophy. So students at these schools would study the philosophers of ancient Greek, like Plato, Socrates, and others. They would receive athletic training because, again, the games were very important, the sporting competitions and so on. Incidentally, anybody know what gymnos means? This is a gymnasium from the root of gymnos. Gymnos is Greek for naked because students did their athletic competitions in the nude. What can possibly go wrong with a bunch of teenagers practicing sports in the nude? Well, that's the way it was done. The Greeks loved the human body and didn't mind showing it off. That was ingrained in Greek culture. They thought the human body was the ideal of beauty. So that's why you see so much statuary that is nude, or very nearly so here. The Greek educational system was remarkably effective at instilling these Greek values in the minds of generation after generation of students there. Again, they worship the human form. That's why their gods and goddesses are often depicted in the nude here. So the students read the Greek writers Homer, Homer's Odyssey, Euripides, Plato, and people like that to absorb that value or those values, I should say. They learned about Greek mythology, the Greek gods and goddesses, and all of that. You'll hear more about that on our on our trip here this week.

So let's move on to another category. We've talked about stadiums and schools. Let's talk about one we'll see a lot of on this trip, and that is temples. Temples to the various gods and goddesses. They were built in every Greek and every Roman city to honor the various gods and goddesses, and festivals would take place at these. This is an AI reconstruction of the famous temple at Ephesus to the goddess Diana, who is kind of the the most important goddess for the city of of Ephesus there. And her temple was so vast, so magnificent, it was viewed as one of the wonders of the ancient world. Here's a conception of what the interior would have looked like with Diana. The Parthenon, if you've seen that in Athens, was another temple to Diana or Artemis.

There, so it truly was one of the wonders of the ancient world. However, two thousand years later, after earthquakes, wars, and so on, this is really all that's left of of the temple in Ephesus. You can go out. I've actually never made the effort to go out to see it, but it's a swampy marshy area, and they've reconstructed one of the columns there. So, went from that to this. You can see it if you want to, but that's not a whole lot to see there. This year, there are much better ones to see.

Let's talk about the fourth item, fourth type of structure we'll see on the strip, and that is theaters. Theaters, again Pergamon, we saw a magnificent theater there that's been largely reconstructed. This is an illustration of the theater at Ephesus, which is one of the best preserved of the ancient world. I think it also seated 10 to 12,000 people, if I remember correctly. This is what it looks like currently. I'll give you an idea there. Here is what it would have looked like in the first century there. Ephesus was a port city. Just to draw the contrast, there are harbor. I'll flip back and forth between these. The harbor used to come up quite close to the theater, and there was a main street that ran toward, from the theater down to the harbor.

The harbor silted up, and that's why Ephesus is so well-preserved these days, because the harbor silted up over several centuries, and the people just basically abandoned the city.

Without the commerce from the ships coming in and out and all of that, the city's economic base just dried up. It went from this to this, as you'll see it today. What was so important about the theaters? What role did it play in their culture there? Theaters were quite common. We'll see a number of those. There's a really good one at, well, we'll see one at Laodicea tomorrow. I'm not sure if we're going to Hierapolis, which is very nearby, but there's a beautifully reconstructed theater there as well. But why would they say it was so common? Well, it was their popular entertainment for the people in those cities there. Many of the theatrical productions had, frankly, pornographic themes, a lot of sex, a lot of violence between the gods, the goddesses, the rulers, the people depicted in the plays there. And that was very common in the Greco-Roman culture there. Here's another theater. This is the one at Hierapolis near Laodicea, where we'll visit the hot springs there. This is what it looks like today. It would have looked something like this in the first century. So these were very, very common. But they also considered the theater, although its primary purpose was for entertainment. It was also propaganda, you might say, programming, brainwashing, because it was all to convey the ideals of Greek culture and Roman culture and Roman thought. And their ideals of what a person should be, who the ideal Greek citizen should be, what the ideal Roman citizen should be. This is summed up in a quote from, well, yeah, this kind of sums up the whole purpose of the theaters, was to convey the idea of this is who we are and this is who we should become.

So the theatrical productions displayed their ideals, their values, that sort of thing.

Not just in what we are, what we value, but what we should become, what kind of people we should be.

And an underlying thought of that, this is expressed by the Greek philosopher Protagora, 400 BC. He wrote that man is the measure of all things of what is and what is not.

Man is the measure of all things of what is and what is not.

So what was the prevalent worldview then when the apostles come into these Greco-Roman cities with the Gospel? So it was this. This was the prevalent worldview of that time.

This is what Paul had to contend with. He was faced with this culture, not just a culture of rampant idolatry, but also the Greco-Roman culture of Hellenism and this kind of philosophy.

What was Hellenism based on? It was based on the idea, kind of boil it down, human beings are the ultimate source of truth and authority in the universe. Does that sound familiar?

What is our dominant philosophy in the world today? The exact same thing. Human beings are the ultimate authority. We can decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. We see Paul regularly contending against this false and worldly wisdom as it's phrased in the Bible. Human accomplishments in the arts, in sculpture, in singing, in theatrics, in athletics, in architecture, and all of that. Again, the human body was considered the ideal of beauty and perfection. That was reflected in how they presented their gods and goddesses, even their educational system and all of this. What were some of the dominant things that grew out of this? Well, the most common pursuit, very much like today, is to accumulate as much material wealth as you can. Life's goal was to become the best, to become the best athlete, the best engineer, the best performer, the best artist, whatever. So who did the Hellenists, the Greco-Roman people worship? Well, they worship their gods, but they also worship themselves.

If you think about it, by this philosophy of all authority lies in ourselves, that we are the ultimate source of truth and authority. We can decide for ourselves good and evil, going back to the Garden of Eden, and the choice that Satan presented to Adam and Eve there. So where did this ultimately lead? Well, it led to the ruins that we'll be exploring. It led to cities that collapsed, civilizations, cultures that collapsed because they had nothing greater than themselves at the heart and core of their foundation. No society can exist for very long when it creates its own view of the truth and sees it itself as the ideal that above all other worlds, above all other truth and authority. Today, Hellenism has another term. It's called humanism, or secular humanism. Secular humanism. And why is it called that? Well, it still promotes the idea of the human being as the ultimate source of authority in the universe. So truth then becomes whatever the human mind can conceive and discover and demonstrate and understand. And humanism is obviously very pervasive in our educational systems today. So truth is defined as whatever the majority sees as being right or whatever we feel is right. Now it's got to the point where emotions are for many young adults. The arbiter of what truth is. It's whatever I feel is right. That's what my truth is. And you see this kind of phraseology and so on. It's not what God says is right in his words, but whatever I feel is right is what's going to dominate my life.

So again, it all goes back to Satan and influencing Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. So we act as though we are the ultimate source in the universe and in determining truth.

So these are some of the things, some of the thoughts, the philosophies that Paul and Barnabas and Silas and John and the other apostles had to contend with. And it's really not all that different today. I worked at our church's media efforts for 30 years, and that's constantly what we're having to contend with, to break through the clutter and the programming that people have been used to reading and seeing and hearing for many, many years. And this cultural aspect is so powerful because, to boil it down, Satan uses what works. That's the bottom line. He used it back then, 2,000 years ago, because it worked. He uses it today because it works, because it appeals to human vanity and human thought that we can decide for ourselves what is right and wrong. We don't need a higher authority to tell us that. I can determine that for myself. So again, it's worked for thousands of years, and it continues to work today. So, to carry this forward to the future a little bit, these aspects of what we've talked about of the stadiums, the schools, the temples, in the theaters, what dominates our culture today? Stadiums still around? You bet they are! Everywhere. Every major city has two or three or four. One for their basketball team, one for their football team, one for their soccer team, and all of this. What about the schools? What do we see today? Dominating the thought there. I asked AEI to come up with an illustration of today's schools, and this summed it up pretty well. Yeah, if you can read the banners, there's Black Lives Matter over on the left. Abolish systemic racism, protect trans kids, diversity, equity, inclusion, your voice matters, climate action now, no human is illegal, the future is feminist, resist Trump, and so on and so forth. You could take that photo on any university in the United States today, virtually. What about religion? What are today's temples? And what do they promote?

Frankly, a lot of recycled paganism that dates back to the Greeks and the Romans, and before them the Babylonians and the Egyptians. And what about entertainment?

I go to maybe two or three movies a year these days, and you sit there for a half hour to watch the previews of coming attractions, and it's astonishing how many of them are demonic, frankly demonic, the movies that are presented these days. So, again, presenting anti-godly, anti-biblical values. So, what has changed from the Greco-Roman world to our day? Really, very little.

Very little. The four things that dominated the culture of those days still dominates our culture today. So, kind of sum up here as we go through this week, and we go through and visit these cities, we see these types of structures there. Think about these things. Think about their underlying philosophy, what the apostles, what the early church members, our spiritual forefathers had to contend with there. And those same things are existing in our world today, even making it come back perhaps stronger than ever before in our culture today. And we can't let that affect us and brainwash us and distract us, as it did for millions of people back during those centuries and in the centuries since. And this is why we have so much hope in the message of the Feast of Tambernacles, the overall message that we heard about in our morning's messages here that Jesus Christ is going to return, and he's going to establish the kingdom of God. And what is he going to do? He's going to have to tear down all of this. You know, Christ isn't going to come back and just adapt all of this to his kingdom. Now he's going to tear it all down, down to the very foundations, and start all over again. Because it has to be rebuilt totally from scratch and built on the right foundations.

So that is all for today's study. So Mr. Mollier had a few announcements here to make. You want to take two or three questions? Yeah. We'll take two or three questions. Okay. Yeah, if we have any questions from anybody about this, or if this sparks any thoughts, come up anytime during this week. Yes? Is wokeism a form of Hellenization?

What? Is wokeism? Yeah. Question is, is wokeism a form of Hellenization? Yeah, yeah, I would have to say so. Yeah, because I didn't touch on this, but homosexuality was extremely common in the Greco-Roman cultures. Basic, a large number, the Roman emperors, were bisexual, had their boy toys to be to be to be blunt about it. The Greeks, yeah, were notorious for that particular sin and lust.

Well, think about it, even the trans movement, there were...

that was a common part of their religion as well. Let's see in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

Unfortunately, the section of artifacts from Israel and Syria, Lebanon, was closed down, but in the temples, and you find this in the Bible, although the language has been toned down, but you could go to a temple. The way you worship the gods in the Old Testament period and in the New in Corinth, for instance, the main feature of Corinth was a... how many of you have been to Corinth, by the way? Okay, all right, good, quite a few. So there was the big Acropolis up there with a temple that had a thousand prostitutes in it. That's the way you worship the gods in that day.

You went to the temple. You had your choice of sexes, male or female. You could take your pick, you would have sex with them, and you would leave an offering at the temple, a monetary offering.

So it was lucrative business. So yeah, transgenderism priests and priestesses would dress as the opposite sex, portray themselves as the opposite sex as well. So yeah, all of this perversion we're seeing recycled today can be traced back to that, and even further back to Babylon and Egypt and so on. So yeah, pretty hideous stuff. Any other questions from anybody?

Oh, Philip, Philip of Macedon? Okay, I've read a lot of stuff to that effect.

My thought was that first slide you had up there, the one in the background, shows what Rome actually... The map.

Oh, the map, yeah.

Yeah, Islam well, the whole of North Africa, then there to the south.

Turkey, in previous years, Islam advanced all through Spain, up in France.

Throughout much of Eastern Europe, this whole region.

And we're beaten back, but yeah, the whole of North... Yeah, this whole southern lower half of the map is all Islamic today.

Where some of the sins we just talked about are quite common in that, in those cultures today as well.

So, yes, yes.

Concentrations of what? Edomites. I don't know the Turks. I know from previous trips.

I've traveled... Yeah, this is my third time to Turkey. I've been to Jordan twice, Egypt twice, Israel, Greece. The Turks, ethnically, they look different from any of those other peoples.

They themselves teach that they came out of more Central Asia, the areas to the north, and further east of there, and migrated down in here. There were major migrations, and it's very hard to sort through that. Exactly who was where at what time. The Gauls, for instance, who, during the period of the Roman Empire, Julius Caesar is fighting the Gauls, which is France. You can see it labeled Gallia up there for the Gauls. The Gauls were originally in Turkey, and migrated over to there. There's a famous statue that's in one of the big museums in Rome of the dying Gaul, and a very famous statue of a warrior who's dying. That statue, even though it's on display in Rome, was actually built and carved in Turkey and was taken to Rome there.

Hard to say. I hesitate to get too dogmatic about which peoples are where and so on, because of the migrations at different times. I've read the Babylonians. A lot of them migrated over and settled in Italy. Not sure. That's what some historians indicate. I generally don't get into that unless it's very provable, and a lot of it is very hard to prove. Maybe so, maybe not. Just hard to get dogmatic about it.

Okay, thanks for the questions.

All right, thank you, Scott. Appreciate that. Also, Brian, was that you that asked that last question? Yeah, so one of our guides, his name is Ali. So ask him that same question, because he won't take it from you.