Turkey, Part 2

There we go. And today we will be picking up where we left off last time with our look at Turkey, the other holy land. This is part two of a two-part series on that. Today what we'll do is look at the remaining churches that are mentioned in Revelation 2 and 3. There, the last time we talked about the, just a very brief recap, last time we talked about the connection, the historical connections between the land of Turkey and the Bible, going all the way back to the time of Abraham, who lived in what is today Turkey. We discussed some of the prophecies of the image that Nebuchadnezzar saw of the different empires, the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire, the Greek Empire, and the Roman Empire, and how all of those control all or parts of Asia Minor.

And then we also went through how most of the books of the New Testament, more than half of them, were written either to or from individuals and congregations there in Asia Minor or today's Turkey. So there are some some very strong links between the Bible and Turkey. And last time we also covered the city of Ephesus, which is the first of the seven churches mentioned there in Revelation 2 and 3.

And we spent quite a bit of time on that for two reasons. One, because there's more written about Ephesus than any other city in the New Testament. There's more mentions of it, other than possibly Jerusalem in the Gospels. Paul spent a lot of time there. And also we covered a lot of ground there because there's more to see in Ephesus in terms of the ruins than any of the other remains of the cities there. So what I want to do today is to give you a to continue with a theme of giving you a better idea of what life was like for the early church members who lived in these cities.

These were very real people. I call them our spiritual ancestors or our spiritual brothers and sisters who lived there 2,000 years ago. And what life was like for them then and the kind of challenges that they faced living in the Roman Empire at that time. So today I'll be going through these other churches fairly quickly. There's not nearly as much to see at these sites as there is at Ephesus. But there is some interesting things to learn about that that we'll be talking about today. And I'll bring out some of that as we go through this as well.

So today what we'll do is we'll begin with the second church that is mentioned there in Revelation 2. And that is the city of Smyrna or modern-day Izmir. And to orient ourselves, we're talking about basically the western coast of modern-day Turkey or Asia Minor.

And here's the lineup of the seven churches. We started with Ephesus last time. And then Smyrna is about an hour or two to the north of that. Smyrna, like Ephesus, was a major port during that period. Today the city of Izmir, as it's called, is Turkey's second largest port after the capital of Istanbul. And here's what it looks like today. It has a very nice sheltered bay there, a very deep bay. So it made a very good port during ancient times as well as today. Today it is quite a modern city. You would feel almost at home there except for the language.

A lot of modern construction, modern vehicles, that type of thing. Modern advertising signs you see all over some of the names. You'll recognize there like SHARP and some of the other technology companies. Quite modern in terms of dress. Here's one of the more interesting displays of, I call them, the marching pants there out in front of a men's clothing store there. And there's not a whole lot to see of the ancient city of Smyrna because it's one of the sites that was built up on by the modern city.

Consequently, there's only an area which you can see right here in the center of the city where the ancient Roman Forum, or the big marketplace covering several acres, is basically all that's been excavated. It is surrounded on four sides with the modern city all around it. Here's a better view of what it looks like almost at ground level.

This was a large square, a large plaza, again the marketplace. We talked about that in Ephesus last time because everybody would come to the marketplace virtually every day because you didn't have refrigeration. You could keep your vegetables, your fruits, your bread, things like that in your house for several days. But in terms of meat, fish, things like that, you basically had to buy that every day. Nearly everybody in the town would come to the marketplace every day to purchase food for their families. This is why Paul, when he goes to different cities, goes to one of two places. He goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath. Other days of the week, he goes to the marketplace because that's where the people are. That's where he's able to reach people with his message there. So Smyrna, I'll give you a little bit of background about the city. It existed long before the Roman Empire came on the scene. It was already an ancient city by the time Rome took over this area. It had been built, it had been destroyed, it had been rebuilt again in the 300s BC by Alexander the Great. The city also became a center of what is called scholarly the Imperial Cult. What that means is that it was a center for worship of the Roman Emperors. Keep in mind that term, Emperor Worship, because we'll talk about that quite a bit later on in today's message. So in contrast to Ephesus, which basically was abandoned as a city because the harbors we talked about last time, silt it in over a period of several centuries and it destroyed the economy of the city. So people basically just walked away and left the city intact. But Smyrna was not like that at all. Smyrna was built on, destroyed by earthquakes, built on again, this sort of thing. So there's just not a whole lot to see in terms of the ruins. Here are some of the colonnades, the columns that surrounded the big marketplace, the forum there, that have been erected again. Nearby is something rather interesting because space is at a premium, this being the heart of the city. They actually built a lot of their shops underground, shops and warehouses, storage rooms. That's what you see right here, these chambered rooms. This is what it looks like down there, looking through them with a light coming in from above. So this this kind of surrounded the marketplace. These have been excavated out. And it's interesting, you can see the little shop areas there where people were selling their goods. You can see graffiti scratched in the walls or painted on the walls around a lot of those shops as well.

Here are some of the other columns and the pieces that went across the tops of the columns that have been excavated there. But it's like putting together a 3D jigsaw puzzle to try to re-erect a lot of that. So there's a lot of stonework there that's been excavated, but they just have no idea how and where all these various pieces go. You might notice the hillside up above that, somewhere buried up on that hillside, is a theater. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. Keep in mind, we were within probably a half a mile or so of that theater. And something very significant took place there that we'll talk about a little bit later in the sermon. So just file it away in the back of your mind for right now. The next city that we visited is the city of Pergamos, also known as Pergamum or Pergamon as well. It's spelled several different ways there. And it also, like Smyrna, was an ancient city by the time the Roman Empire came into place there. It had been earlier the capital of a kingdom that covered a large part of Western Asia Minor. And here's Pergamos, where we're talking about right now. So it was the center of a kingdom here, going back before the Greeks, before the Romans there. Quite an ancient city there.

As you approach Pergamos, you can actually tell where the city is, if you know what to look for. You'll see a high hill off in the distance. And if you look closely, you can see some different towers and white marble structures up there. And that is the what is what is called you can actually see the theater right there, slightly different color spot built into the hillside there. A lot of ancient cities had what's called an acropolis, the upper city. Acra, Greek for high or upper. Somebody who has acrophobia suffers from fear of heights. So Acra is high, Polis is city. So it's called the acropolis or the upper city. And this is significant in a lot of ancient cities. It's true in biblical history. It's true in a lot of ancient cities. It's true in biblical times as well. Jerusalem had its acropolis, you might say. The highest part of the city is where the royalty would live, the rulers nobility of the city. It would also be where temples would be erected.

It would also be where the priests or priesthood would live, that sort of thing. And we'll see that in several of the cities as we go along today. On the Acropolis. Well, a couple of reasons. One is defense.

Because typically the Acropolis was fortified. It would be turned into a fortress or a citadel. Have walls protecting it. And it was the most easily defended because as the armies are invaded, we have a whole lot harder time invading if they're having a climb up hill, especially against a city that has walls there. So a lot of these were virtually impregnable there. So the upper crust, the royalty, the nobility, the wealthy of the city would live on the Acropolis behind these sheltered walls. And that is also because that is typically where people gathered to worship their gods. That's typically where the temples would be built as well. And here's an artist's conception of what the Acropolis of Pergamos would have looked like. It had several very large temples up there. It's a very steep hill getting up there. It's so steep that actually they've installed a gondola to take visitors up there because the road is so steep there. I guess they got tired of terrifying tourists on these hairpin turns on the buses. They used to drive them up there and have erected a gondola to take people up there. Now here's another computer-generated illustration of what the city looks like at that time based on what they have found there. And again you'll notice the most prominent thing there is this huge theater which you can still see today. And the various temples, structures, palaces, and so on up there. One other structure I'll draw your attention to, we'll talk about that in just a minute, is this right here. This was a temple to Zeus, the Greek god, the chief god, to the Romans who would be known as Jupiter. But this was his temple. It's one of the oldest structures there and very, very prominent. And we'll talk about that in just a minute here.

I want to show you another illustration here showing the theater over here on the side and the different temples to different gods, goddesses, as well as to the Roman emperors as well. So here's what that hilltop acropolis looks like today. And this helps you to get a really good perspective of what it meant to live in the acropolis, in the upper city. It goes down below is the modern city, which overlays the ancient city of Pergamos down there. Most of the people, 90-95% of the people, live down there. But the upper crust, the wealthy, lived up here. And that's where all the temples were. That's where you would come to worship.

And this theater is actually incredibly steep. If you didn't want to go to that theater after you'd had more than a couple of glasses of wine because all the take is one tumble and you'd stop at the bottom a quarter mile below. You wouldn't live through the experience. But that quite dramatically illustrates what it was like to live on the acropolis. I mentioned this was a center of emperor worship as well. These are the remains of the most striking remains to the emperor Trajan.

Some of you may have heard of him before. He reigned as Roman emperor from 98-117 AD. And this temple was dedicated to him. And again, this emperor worship. That's a theme we'll mention quite a few times and I'll come back to it later on. Let's talk a little bit about this other structure I mentioned, the Temple to Zeus, right here. This is apparently actually referred to in the book of Revelation because John or Jesus Christ through John refers to Pergamos as a place where Satan dwells or where Satan's seat is. And a lot of scholars believe, and I do as well, that this structure is actually what is being specifically referred to. Here's a view of what it, an artist's conception of what it would have looked like back in the first century times.

And the structure actually looks like a giant throne or seat where Satan's seat is. And who was Zeus? Well, he was the chief of the Greek gods and goddesses. Well, who were the Greek gods and goddesses? Well, Paul calls them demons. So when you worship idols, you're worshiping demons.

So the chief of the demons is who? Satan. So it stands to reason that this is the seat of Satan that is being referred to then. I'll actually show you some photos of what this looks like today in just a few minutes here. But let's just notice a few things here. Here's some cattle or oxen being brought here to be sacrificed. Here at Zeus, you can see some of the smoke from the altars rising up. You can see statues, brightly painted statues here on the side and on the tops of this. We see these white marble statues in the museums and so on. And actually, that's not what they look like in ancient times. They were colored. They were painted with bright reds and greens and purples and golds and flesh color to look like real human beings. Even their eyes were painted blue or brown. We know this because they've in recent years gone through and examined these statues with microscopes and can actually detect the little in the cracks and pitted areas of the statues, fragments of the paint that are still there that indicate how those statues were colored in ancient times. So it looked very different from these ghostly white marble statues that we see today. Here is what that site looks like today. See this level area right here? That's where this Satan's throne or temple to Zeus sat. Here's Patty Harms and Jackie Malire walking across here. Back up there is the Acropolis, the theater, the temple of Trajan that we looked at earlier. And right here is the platform where that sat. If you want to see it, you can actually go visit it today, but you'll have to go to Berlin to do that. Here's what it looks like. This was excavated by German archaeologists back in the 1800s. They excavated the area and they basically created up the remains of this temple and shipped them to Berlin and built a museum called the Pergamum Museum after the city there in the heart of Berlin. So it's actually one of the very top archaeological museums in the world. You can go there and see this and get an idea of the scale of it too. You can see the people around there. Again, you can see the throne shape. It's shaped like a giant throne or chair there where somebody would lean back and have the armrests there on the side. Here's another straight-on view of it there. And you can see the statuary along the sides. These depict battles between the great gods and goddesses and mythological creatures and giants and things like that. Here are a few close-ups showing some of this fight there. Battles, there's mythological creatures that are part human, part serpent, and so on there. Some of the most magnificent statuary from the ancient world. And this temple was just covered with it all around there. Moving on, we next come to the city of Thyatira.

And it's about halfway between Pergamos and Sardis right here along a valley.

Like most of the cities we've visited, there's not a lot to see there. Actually, there's only an area maybe twice the size of this room, three times maybe, that's been excavated there. And this is what it looks like. Again, you can see the modern city built all around it. This is one of the main roads right there. You can see the city is not very deep, maybe only four to six feet below the current street level of the city. And here's another view. There's some of the pieces that capped the columns lining the street that we just looked at. Very beautiful stonework there.

And this is looking back toward the long end of the area that's been excavated. That's about as far as it goes. It's back there to that other modern apartment buildings and businesses in the background. I want you to notice something here about this photo. Here's that street we just looked at. And I'm actually standing on a column here. Here's a column that rested beside that street. Here's another one. Here's another one. And notice something about the orientation of those columns. What do you notice about the orientation? See that they're all parallel. They all lie one...

they're all laying down in the same area, in the same orientation, the same direction.

When archaeologists find that, that's a dead giveaway that the city was destroyed by an earthquake. How do they know that? Well, to help you visualize this, let's just imagine that I've got a tablecloth up here and I've got three or four candlesticks standing up on it. If I take that tablecloth and give it a jerk, which direction are those candlesticks going to fall? They're going to fall flat out that way, opposite of the direction that I jerked. Well, when the ground shifts in a major earthquake, there's a sudden movement like that. What happens to a bunch of columns that are standing up? They all fall down opposite of the direction that the ground moves. So we can tell that this level of the city, going back to first few centuries A.D., was destroyed by an earthquake. And you can actually see this in a number of ancient ruins around Turkey, which is a very, very earthquake-prone area. Several cities in Israel, you'll see this as well if you know where to look. So if, on the other hand, if the columns are just kind of willy-nilly fallen down, that may have been due to warfare, fires, other types of destructions, or an earthquake that just jumbled with no discernible immediate direction as well. But in this case, archeologists can tell very clearly that this was destroyed by an earthquake at that time. Here's a photograph of our group there. We had two separate buses. This is a group from Colorado, probably most of us at least. We actually weren't able to get everybody together at one time because we were divided over two separate buses. And this is one of the places we're able to get most people there for a photo at one time. But again, not a whole lot to see in Thyatira because the city was destroyed and rebuilt over again and again. The next of the seven churches that we visited was Sardis, and it's located down from Thyatira right here. Sardis also was yet another city that was already ancient by the time of the Roman Empire and the New Testament. It also was a capital of what was called the Lydian Empire. And we might remember Lydia, who was a fabric seller who's mentioned in the Book of Acts, who hosted Paul and his traveling party. And she's named after the ancient Lydian Empire there. This city also had an Acropolis, and it was up on this hilltop up there. If you look very carefully, you can see, probably not in this photo, but in person you can see fragments of foundations and walls and a few towers and things like that. Unfortunately, that hill is on very soft rock and soil. It's very unstable, and over the course of the last two, three thousand years with earthquakes and erosion and so on, a lot of the city has fallen off the mountainside and been buried there at the foot of the city. But that was another example of an Acropolis. Again, these are very common and existed in Jerusalem, too. Where did David and Solomon build their palaces in Jerusalem? They built it on the upper part of the city. Where's the temple built? On the upper part of the city. There, that was very common everywhere. Athens, Rome. Rome's the city of seven hills. One was dedicated to the palaces of the rulers. The other hills, generally, were where they built the temple. So that was very common in that period.

What we're looking at right here is the ruins of a temple. Earlier, when we talked about Ephesus, we talked about how Ephesus was a center for the worship of Diana or Artemis. There, the goddess of fertility and goddess of the hunt. And before... and actually, there... this also was a temple of Diana or Artemis there. And the local merchants have actually played off that, making a little money off it, because we... as we're driving by there, we went by the Artemis cafe or a restaurant there. So they know what it was about, too. Here's a better view of this ancient temple.

Two Artemis and Diana. And before her, Kibola was the mother earth goddess, who was the predecessor of Diana and Artemis. And these are the remains of this huge, huge temple. You can get some idea of the scale out by looking at the people standing there. These columns are probably 60-70 feet high and about 8 feet in diameter. They're just enormous. And I'm not sure how many there were, at least 30-40 columns of that size. Just huge, a huge site there. It was also quite interesting, because when the Christian Byzantine Empire took over that area, it was very common for them to build churches on top of the ancient temples, where the people used to worship their pagan gods. And you see this actually here at this temple to Diana and Artemis here. This is actually a small Byzantine church that's built pretty much in one corner of this giant temple to the ancient goddess of fertility. So that's... there are actually two sections to the city. This is the really ancient part, going back to 1000 BC, thereabouts. We had a short bus ride to go to the more modern, the New Testament city of Sardis. And this is... we'll talk about that for a few minutes here. This is probably... this is the most prominent thing remains that you see there of the city from the New Testament era. This is the facade of the gymnasium and bath complex.

Earlier we talked about the four things that you see in any Greco-Roman city. You see temples to all the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses and the emperors. You see stadiums, the sports stadiums for chariot racing, gladiatorial contests, that sort of thing. You see the theaters, which is where people went to the plays, the musicals, that sort of thing. And then last of all, the fourth thing that you see in any significant size city is the gymnasium or the school.

Gymnos, I don't remember whether I mentioned this earlier or not, gymnos is the Greek word for naked.

Gymnasium, in the Greek concept, everything was focused around the the perfection and the glory of the human body. That's why they were so into sports like the Olympics and so on, which were performed in the nude. That's where gymnos, meaning naked, comes from. And an integral part of their schooling was to have athletic competitions and wrestling and discus and running and racing and all of this in the nude. So, as I mentioned there in Turkey, you know, you get a bunch of teenage boys together, all of them nude, what could possibly go wrong? But that was the culture. That was what went on in that period.

Now you'll never pass by a high school gymnasium without thinking about that.

But anyway, this was the entrance to the gymnasium and directly behind it the bath complex. This is the facade over here on this side. And as you went in, you immediately came to a large bath complex about as long as this room and maybe two-thirds is wide. And I talked earlier in Ephesus about the different... they would have a hot bath, a medium bath, and a cold bath.

The frigidarium. Frigid meaning cold. So this is the frigidarium here. And it's a shallow pool where you could hang out with 300 of your closest friends and take a bath together there. But this was very common. People did not have their own bathrooms in their houses unless you were quite wealthy there. So the whole city would basically come and enjoy these huge bath complexes and bathe there. But it was also a social venue, too. You didn't get together for lunch with somebody. No, you met somebody at the baths. And that's where you caught up on all the gossip. And you did your business and you worked on your business contracts and all that kind of thing. That took place at the baths there. So I guess it gives new meaning to not having a whole lot to hide in your business transactions when you're when you're bathing together there. So... But that's just the the way it was done. And in any major significant size Roman city, you would have these these bath complexes and you can find them if you know what you're looking for. Now what's really interesting about Sardis, and this is the synagogue that is actually right next door to the gymnasium where all these people are running around naked.

So I want you to think about that. Here's a synagogue. And this synagogue is huge. It's probably about twice the size of this room. It was obviously a very wealthy synagogue.

It had a lot of beautiful mosaics built into the floor from these low-colored stones about the size of your fingernail there. Beautiful geometric designs.

It also, a number of the walls, had these even more expensive designs. These are made out of stone. They're about four foot square. Approximately these are made of colored sheets of stone that are maybe a quarter to a half inch thick that have actually been sawn into thin sheets and then glued with cement there in place. Again, this is a synagogue, so that's why there are these geometric designs there like that. Here are a few more beautiful designs there set in the marble and yet some more of them as well. Just very, very, very beautiful.

Let me show you something else. Here's in the background is the facade of the gymnasium that we talked about earlier. So this shows the synagogue is literally right next door to the gymnasium. But notice something. Here's a synagogue. Here's the curved seating area where the elders of the synagogue would have sat, the chief seats, as it's called in the Gospels. But notice this table here.

What do you see on the side of it?

It's an eagle. It's an eagle. To either side of the table are two statues. Two statues with two creatures each. Let's look at it a little more close up. What are those? They're actually lions. Two lions back to back. They've been weathered, so it's kind of hard to make out the lion face on them. But it's clearly a lion. You can see the mane and the curled tail and so on. What did the eagle symbolize in that period? The symbol of Rome. Eagles were what the legionnaires carried on their standards as they marched into battle. What did the lion symbolize in the city of Sardis? It symbolized the goddess Kibola, the forerunner of Diana and Artemis. Her symbol was a lion. Later it became to be symbolized by a deer, but in ancient times, Kibola was symbolized by the lion.

So what's wrong with this picture? I gave a little lecture there on site. What's wrong with this picture? Let's see. The only person who guessed it isn't here today. That was Micola.

What's the problem? Anybody?

You've got graven images in the middle of a synagogue.

Clear violation of the commandment against graven images. You've got idols set right there in the most prominent part of the synagogue. What's going on? Now granted, this synagogue doesn't date back to the first century. This one, as near as I can tell, was built in the 300s, 400s AD. Or in this incarnation, it was actually probably built on top of an earlier synagogue that did go back much earlier. But what's going on here?

Before I answer that, I want to show you a few other things. This is the floor of a synagogue in Tiberius on the Sea of Galilee. It's about eight or ten miles from Capernaum, where Jesus had his ministry. Tiberius was the center of the local Roman government, you might say, for the Sea of Galilee area. It's where Herod Antipas had his palace and his headquarters. We know it's a synagogue. You can go there and look at it today. But notice up here you've got the the menorahs for the temple, which is very typically found in first-century synagogues in Galilee. You've got this box-like thing with doors on it. In the synagogues of that day, they kept the Torah scrolls. You didn't have books. You didn't have Bibles. You had scrolls. You'd have a scroll for Genesis, a scroll, a separate scroll, for Exodus, a separate one for Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Daniel, and so on. So you'd have this cabinet that would be built into the end of the synagogue. Within that would be all of the scrolls. So when people would read from the Bible at Sabbath services, they would go to this cabinet, pull out the scrolls, and read from them. There you find reference to that in the Gospels and in the book of Acts as well. I see a few other odds and ends. There's some incense. These little things with a rectangle with a handle. That's an incense shovel for scooping incense and putting it on the incense altars to burn.

And let's see. You see a shofar right there. And I'm not quite sure what these other objects are, but it's clear, clearly symbols of the temple and Judaism. But what about this big, big circular design here? You can ignore this wall here. This is actually a wall that was built later after this synagogue was destroyed. But just imagine that this wall is up here. What do you see on this big circle? What is it? What kind of design is it? Anybody recognize what it is?

A zodiac! Right! It's a zodiac. How do we know? Well, here's a lion. There's Leo.

Let's see. Here's Taurus the Bull. There's Pisces, the fish. I'm not up on my zodiac. Here's here's Scorpio, the scorpion right there in the shade. So here's a zodiac in the floor of a Jewish synagogue, dating to probably 300 AD. And over here is the goddess...let me think. What's her name?

Cherries, the goddess of grain and the harvest for the Romans. Down in this corner, a little harder to make up because of the shade, is you can tell who he is because of the grapes, the god of wine, Dionysus, god of wine and parties. So, and man, a couple of other gods and goddesses up here. And in the center is with the halo and the sun rays is the god Helios, the god of the sun, in great mythology. What in the world is this doing in a Jewish synagogue of all places? I'll show you another thing or two. Back in the two or three decades ago in Jerusalem, they excavated the tomb of a priestly family, dating to the first century AD, shortly before Jerusalem was destroyed. In this mausoleum, we would call it today, a tomb because it had several chambers where various family members were entombed. One of them was a female skeleton and in her mouth was a coin.

And they find these in various parts of the Roman Empire, all over the place. In the first century AD, what was the significance of a coin being placed in the mouth of a dead person?

Again, Mickela picked it up when I was giving this lecture. If you're familiar with your Greek mythology, you put a coin in the mouth of a dead person to pay Sharon to ferry you across the river Styx in the underworld. And this is what is depicted here. Here's Sharon, the boatman. Here's the river Styx, and he's reaching in and pulling a coin out of this deceased woman's mouth to pay her crossing to ferry her into the afterlife in the underworld. And here you thought Styx was just the name of a band. No, it's not. It's from Greek mythology. Again, this is a woman who is a member of a priestly Jewish family in Jerusalem just before the city is destroyed in 70 AD. Let me show you another one. How many of you recognize this?

Recognize where this is, what it is. It's from the Arch of Titus in Rome. It's the arch that commemorates Titus' victory, his capture of Jerusalem in 70 AD. And these are some of the Roman soldiers hauling the booty away from the temple that they captured in Jerusalem. They're taking the silver trumpets from the temple. This is interpreted as the table of the showbread, and of course the golden menorah that stood in the temple with its seven branches. They're hauling this away. What I want to draw your attention to is the menorah. Notice that it's heavily decorated with little symbols on the base. Let's get in a little bit closer. What in the heck are these things? What is it? Well, it's quite eroded these days because of automobile emissions and all of that. It's corroded the marble over the last 2,000 years. But let's look back at an illustration from about 100 years earlier. You start to see what these things are around the base of the menorah.

They are mythological creatures. There are griffins over here. It's kind of a combination of an eagle, and it's got the wings of an eagle, and the head of an eagle, and the body of a lion there. You've got these mythological creatures that are kind of like a cross between a dragon, and an eel, and a fish on here. This is the menorah that was taken out of the temple in 70 AD. The Jews today know that this is utterly pagan. That's why if you see the menorah that they built for putting in the temple today, notice the base of it. It just has geometric designs, floral designs. They're not copying the artwork of the menorah that was taken from the temple in 70 AD. So they recognize that this is pagan, utterly pagan, and come up with a new design for the base of their menorah. So what's going on here? That's a question I pose to the people here looking at this synagogue in Sardis with the table with an eagle on it representing Rome, and the lions beside it representing the goddess Kebelon. Well, what's going on? Well, I've actually asked every scholar that I think might know the answer, and nobody's been able to come up with an explanation for it.

Again, this starts before the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD with a coin in the priestly wife's mouth, or priestly woman's mouth, because Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD. There is no more priesthood. The tomb was abandoned and buried in the rubble of the destruction of Jerusalem. So what's going on? My theory, and I think it's accurate, is that the same thing that we see taking place in Christianity, nominal Christianity, was taking place in Judaism in that same time frame, starting in the first century and continuing on up through the 300s and 400s like the zodiac in Tiberius on the temple floor and like the synagogue there in Sardis. So we just looked at that there was this infiltration of paganism into Judaism, just as there was in Christianity. We see it in Christianity with the abandonment of the Holy Days, then being replaced by Christmas and Easter. We see it in the Sabbath, with the Sabbath being replaced by Sunday. We see it in the Kingdom of God being replaced by the idea that the Kingdom is on earth now in the form of the Catholic Church and all of that. So I think what is going on is that basically Satan's goal is to stamp out or substitute his own truth, his own religion, anywhere he comes across it, whether it's in the Church, whether it's in the Bible, whether it's in Judaism. And the reason that it did not continue on in today's Judaism is because what happened in Judaism? Well, destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. Jerusalem is destroyed. There's another revolt and Jerusalem is destroyed again in 132 to 135 AD. The Jews are dispersed and scattered and Judaism becomes fragmented. And in their diaspora and in their fragmentation, the only thing they had to go on was the scriptures.

So by the trials and the trauma that Judaism experienced over the last 2000 years, they learned to stick to the scriptures, the scriptures only. And consequently, the Judaism basically reflects that the paganism of Judaism was largely eliminated by what Judaism has gone through over the last 2000 years. Whereas Christianity did not have that same level of persecution and so on. It became part of the official Roman religion. And Christmas and Easter and all this other things that came out of earlier paganism was accepted and became part of the mainstream religion. So that's a sidebar, but this is something I've been studying for a number of years. And hopefully we'll find some more answers on it. We can find the right scholars who've looked into this and know more about it than I do. But I did find that quite interesting that you do see these threads in the Holy Land, there in Jerusalem, up into Turkey, and other areas as well. So with that sidebar out of the way, let's continue with our study to Philadelphia, the next city after Sardis. And Philadelphia, there's not a whole lot to see because it also has been built over by the modern town overlooking it. There's actually only an area about the size of this room, maybe even smaller than that, that's been excavated. And even it has not been excavated back to the period of the first century. What you see there, these big stone pillars, there are actually four of them. Actually only three of them come to think of it. One of them is gone.

And those are actually the big supporting pillars for a Byzantine church, constructed probably 300s, 400s, 500s AD, and probably destroyed in the 600s AD, either by earthquake or by the Muslim takeover of that area. And what they did when they took over a lot of areas is they either destroyed the churches or they converted them into mosques there. That's very typical in Islam. So there are some excavations that really haven't been changed since I was last there nine years ago. So there's really nothing to see of the first century from that period. There are a few Roman coffins, sarcophagus there that you can see, but that's really it. One thing I might draw your attention to here briefly on these columns is these were plastered and painted. The interior of these churches didn't look like this bare brick. They were plastered just like the walls we would see here, and then with different scenes painted on them. And if you look very carefully, you can actually see some of the smooth areas that are plastered and fragments of paint, but not enough to tell what's going on there. Now, while we were in this area, the next city we would come to is Laodicea. But before we went there, we did see several other notable sites in the area that are very well preserved. One of these is Aphrodysius, named after the goddess Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual love for the Romans. That's located down here, not far at all, from Laodicea. It was also a center of beautiful stonework. The stonemasons who worked there, the sculptors, were just outstanding in their work. This is a kind of a monument erected at a city gate there. It served no real functional purpose. It was just there, more or less, to show off how good their craftsmen were and what they could create.

Here's some more of their stonework. These would have been beams that they weren't originally arranged like that. These would have been the cross pieces that sat atop the columns of some of the buildings there. Here's some of the sarcophagus, sarcophagi, incidentally, that comes from in Greek. It means flesh eaters. Sarcosarx is flesh in Greek. S-A-R-X.

Faegei is referring to your mouth or eating. So it's flesh eaters. You put a body in this coffin and it decomposes and it's gone. So these coffins, that's where the word sarcophagus comes from. It's flesh eaters. You put a body in the coffin and a year later it's decayed and there's nothing but bones in there. These coffins are very large. They're about four feet across, maybe five feet high and about seven or eight feet long. This is one of a couple. A husband and wife. You can see the husband's portrait over here, the wife's portrait here, and then an inscription in Greek describing who they are and what they had accomplished and so on. Then the little Roman gods that became cupid as in our Valentine's Day and all of that. Another remnant of the paganism that continues to our day. Another one, here's an interesting coffin here. Can anybody tell us what this guy's occupation was? Look at the symbols on the coffin. What are those? Anybody. If you won a race, what did you get?

Get what? A wreath! A laurel wreath! That's what these are. This guy is a very notable athlete and he's got a record of all the athletic competitions that he's won. There, I guess you can't take it with you, but you can sure put it on your on your casket there. So he couldn't take his wreaths with him, but he made sure everybody would know what a great athlete he was when he went to the afterlife. So yeah, this is just all around the all four sides of his coffin. He's got a memorial there of his athletic accomplishments. So he did him a lot of good. As you can tell, he ended up in the same place as the slower guys. Another, let's see, this is the city of Aphrodisias. This is the temple to the goddess Aphrodite, there in the middle of town. A temple about the size of this room here, quite large. Here's part of the city council chamber there, and this is Charles and Jackie Mollire. Jackie's a little bit tired out after at the pace of our tour there. What is really notable about this city is it does have the best preserved stadium of any of the ancient cities. Very few of the stadiums have been excavated, and this is one of the few that has. And this stadium is actually enormous. Here standing at one end and capturing the entire length of it. This stadium, however, is probably too narrow for chariot races. It's about the width of this hall here. So it would have had a center aisle or divider down the middle of it. So you really couldn't get...they wanted to have at least four chariots racing abreast in a in a hippodrome there. So this was probably more just for human races. They are running running races. Based on the the width of it here, also you might notice there's actually a little kind of a wall or barrier at this end. Part of the stadium could be walled off for gladiator contests. There you'd have a much more intimate setting there. This would have been an area about half the size of this room where gladiators would get there and fight to the death for the entertainment of the people. That's how you entertained yourself and the Roman Empire at that time. And this stadium is so huge it would seat, I believe, 33,000 people there, which is about half the capacity of of Mile High Stadium down here. So as we...the Apostle Paul makes many references to athletic contests in his writings. For instance, he talks about not striving for the perishable crown, the the laurel reach like we saw in the athletes sarcophagus there. He talks about training to win the prize. He talks about beating his body into subjection in his training.

He talks about boxing. I'm not as warned that that beats the air. Talking about a boxer training.

He talks about obeying the rules of the competition that there is. He talks about having near the end of his life in Second Timothy. He talks about how I have finished the race.

And there's laid up for me a crown of righteousness, the victor's laurel there. So he uses many sports metaphors in his writings. And when you go through and you see the remains of these cities and how virtually any decent sized city would have had a stadium like this where these athletic competitions took place, you realize he's writing about things that people walked by every day in these cities. Things they were very, very familiar with. For instance, Hebrews 12 in verse 1.

He says, therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, you know, think back, here you are in the stadium. You're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses there. Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. So again, these sports metaphors that he uses quite regularly in there. Another site that we visited there is a site of Colossae to which the letter to the Colossians was written. It is an unexcavated city, or a tell as it's called, and here's what it looks like today. It looks like a big pile of dirt out there on the plane because it's a big pile of dirt out there on the plane. The city is buried underneath here, has not been excavated. However, archaeologists can find a site like that, and by looking around they can identify some of the features of it. For instance, notice this big dished shaped gouge taken out of the side of it.

That's a theater. It's an amphitheater. See this big curved area? It's a little more evident looking from the other side. You can see the curve. You can actually see a few stones from some of the seats poking out of the ground there. So if they went down and excavated that, they would find probably all of the seats still intact there. This city also had an acropolis, an upper city, which is very, very small in this case. No more than a few times the size of this of this room. But that's where the city ruler, the mayor, the king, whatever his title would have been, would have lived. His palace, several of the temples to the local gods and goddesses would have been located up here as well. Very, very nearby. This is from the tell looking down. It had a river that ran right by here. You can see all the vegetation from this.

The river ran down from the mountains. The view from Colossae is about what we would see if we looked out to the west and saw the foothills and the mountains up there. Some of these mountains are quite high. Here's one that doesn't have any trees growing on it because it's above tree line in that area. You can see the lower part of the tell that I'm standing on there.

So Colossae, actually its water source, was this river that ran right by the city there with this nice snow melt. Kind of like our rivers, the Platte, the Clear Creek, and so on that run through Denver and our areas here. They had real nice snow melt water running beside the city.

Nearby Colossae is another city that plays into the Bible, the city of Heropolis.

It's actually mentioned, you can find it referenced in the book of Colossians.

Paul mentions Epaphras, who is apparently the pastor of three cities.

In Colossae, he tells the Colossians to have this letter to Colossians read in Laodicea and be sure that you read the letter that I sent to Laodicea here in Colossae. He also mentions Heropolis. These three cities were all just near Laodicea. Colossae is down about eight miles south here, and Heropolis is kind of northwest here, again about eight or ten miles. So you've got these cities in a triangle. And Epaphras is apparently the pastor of those three congregations there.

So we did take the opportunity to visit all three of these cities while we're in the area. So I want to cover these before we get to Laodicea and a lesson from that. But this is the main street of the city of Heropolis. What it looks like. Quite well preserved. It has a beautifully preserved theater there. One of the best you'll see anywhere with a lot of the stage that has been restored, put back in place. You can see the the seating very clearly. And it looked out over this valley. And the city of Laodicea and Colossae are out on the other side of this valley off in the distance. Can't make them out because of the haze there. There's another side view of the theater showing the the chief seats here. The luxury box seats there right in front of the stage.

And so on. Here's several other things from the museum there that give us some insights into life in that city. These are probably taken from the theater. These are gladiators fighting.

I can see here's a guy with a spear it looks like. Here's maybe a couple of guys boxing or fighting. Here's a couple of them. One of them's got a guy down on the ground. There's two more hand-to-hand fighting. Over here is interesting. Here's a guy on the on the ground with a lion on top of him.

And they would have man-to-man combat. They would have there were female gladiators too.

And they would have people fighting animals. It wasn't much of a fight. Usually those were condemned criminals sentenced to die in the arena for the amusement of the crowd by being ripped to shreds and eaten by a lion or a bear or a tiger or something like that. We also see, let's see, these cities were also filled with statuary of the various gods and goddesses. Here's an interesting statue that's in the museum. This is identified as a priestess of Isis. Now, who is Isis? You've probably never heard about her in the Greek and Roman gods. And that's true. You haven't because she's an Egyptian goddess. She's an Egyptian goddess. Isis is the wife of Osiris and the mother of Horus, the Egyptian Trinity. Isis, Osiris, and Horus, the Trinity, just like Nimrod, Cimaramas, and Temos and Bamelot. The Trinity goes back 4,000 years, not 2,000 years. Well, what's really interesting, and you find this in Pompeii, this is where I first came across this concept, is suddenly in the middle of the first century in the Roman Empire, you find worship of Isis popping up kind of out of nowhere. I'll give you an example of this. Pompeii was destroyed in 79 AD when it was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, but it had suffered a major earthquake in, I believe, it was 61 AD. It destroyed or heavily damaged a lot of the temples to the various gods and goddesses there in Pompeii. But one, and only one, of the temples in Pompeii was restored and rebuilt fully before it was buried by the volcanic eruption. It wasn't the temple to Jupiter, the chief god. It wasn't the temple to Minerva or the other gods and goddesses, the god of grain, the god of love, the god of sex, the god of all of these. The temple that was rebuilt was the god, the temple to the goddess Isis.

What does it tell you? It tells you that that was viewed as the most important god or goddess in Pompeii in the 60s AD. Why? And why do we see these statues of Isis popping up in all kinds of places in the Roman Empire in the middle of the first century AD?

Anybody have any thoughts about that? Well, what was she the goddess of and what is she associated with?

She's actually associated with the resurrection because her husband Osiris was supposedly killed, murdered, dismembered, and she brought him back to life in a resurrection.

Why would the idea of a resurrection suddenly pop up in various places in the Roman Empire in the first century AD? Middle of the first century AD? Might it have something to do with another religion that pops up in Judea that is built around what? The idea of a savior who was resurrected from the dead and who is now offering a resurrection, a means for life after death, which the Romans did not have in their religion. Thus the popularity of this goddess Isis who can resurrect people. So something to think about. Is that a reaction to Christianity emerging in the middle of the first century? Yes, I believe it probably is. That's something scholars are looking into right now. So something to think about there. A few other things. Pieces of culture from around the city of Heropolis there. Here's an altar. Here on the left you can see a bowl there with garlands of fruit and flowers, things like that, grapes around it. This altar is smaller than this lecture. It's about this big in diameter, maybe this hall. A lot of their altars weren't 10 foot high, 10 foot square cubes, and so on. They weren't huge. They were rather small. And beside it is the Falcon God of Egypt, Horus, the son of Isis. Again, showing the popularity of the Egyptian gods and goddesses and the idea of the resurrection that it reached up into here.

Here's a tombstone of a Roman husband and wife there, fairly common in that area.

Here's another tombstone. This is quite interesting because you can actually read the Greek fairly clearly there. I'd like to read this to you because it may have a tie-in with the Apostle John. The inscription on this tombstone is Papias Cleisos, pastor.

This may be the only tombstone I've ever seen from that period with pastor on it because pastor meant what? Pastor meant shepherd in there. So shepherds were not all that highly regarded. You would not put on your tombstone that you were a shepherd because it's a look-down on occupation. So it apparently means a pastor, a church pastor, a highly regarded Christian. You also would not identify yourself as a Christian on your tombstone very often there.

And he says, farewell to those who pass by. It's rather interesting that some of the early church historians say that there was a Papias who lived in this area and who was a disciple of the Apostle John. So it's possible this might be the tombstone of that very same Papias who was an Apostle of John. A few other things to show for me there. This again shows some of the Egyptian influence here. This is the top of a column. And notice the sphinx motif here. The head of a human and the body of the lion and the wings of an eagle there. It's clearly adopted from Egypt iconography.

We talked about crowns a little bit earlier in the Laurel wreaths. We see the word crown mentioned a lot in the New Testament. These are crowns. They're actually thin bands of gold taken from a tomb near there about this tall and just long enough to wrap around your head. This is when we think of a giant crown with jewels and all this kind of stuff on it that weighs 15 pounds and so on on your head. No, the type of crowns it's described in the Bible is this. Sometimes it's translated diadem. And that's actually a more accurate meaning of the word like this.

This is what they look like. These are flattened out, but they would have been curved originally to where on the head or wrap around the head. Here's another one of the gods here. This is Pluto, the god of the underworld. And he had a temple there at Heropolis because there was a cave there that emitted poisonous gases. And that was thought to be an entrance to the underworld. So he had his temple enshrined there in Heropolis. And here's another statue of Artemis, or Diana, that was excavated there in Heropolis as well. Heropolis is actually was a resort area back in the Roman times. How many of you have been up to Mammoth Hot Springs and Yellowstone National Park? Is that all? Go there sometimes! Beautiful, beautiful place. But yeah, this is a terrace of mineral-laden hot water that comes out of the hillside there. And it's laden with calcium and other other minerals forming what are called travertine terraces. And either they're brilliant white there. And this is another view of what they look like. As the hot water comes out and cools and runs downhill, it leaves these mineral deposits creating these beautiful hot pools that you can walk among there. So this is a very famous national park there in Turkey to this day. And you can see the exact same thing at Mammoth Hot Springs on the north side of Yellowstone.

Go there if you haven't done that already. But this was also a resort back in Roman times with their hot springs there. We talked earlier about the hot baths and how popular that was among the Romans. And they're actually... this is one of the coolest things in the world. You can do is actually go there and and wave and swim around in the remains of this natural hot spring resort dating back to Roman times. And it even has the old columns there that were collapsed in an earthquake and fell down in the pool. And here are a couple of people there. I don't know who they just... some rather rather pale looking Turks, I think, swimming around there in the water.

And you can see some of the column bases. Actually, just joking. That's Scott and Collette Lockwood with Kirsten behind them. And Jackie Melere over here to the side. And another one of Jackie and Patty Harms there enjoying the hot pools there. So it's a little tour of that. Now we come to the last of the seven cities of Revelation. The last city we'll talk about today. And that is Laodicea at the end of the line here. Laodicea, when I visited there nine years ago, very little, had been excavated. Actually, only an area about the size of this room here. And they have actually done a huge amount of excavation there in the nine years since then. And this is what the city looks like today. And here's one of the main streets there. Here's a temple. There's another side street going off over there. Some other temples and so on. Actually, off here in the distance is Heropolis. Those white terraces that I showed you a minute ago, that's them. You can actually see them from Laodicea over there. So that's how close the cities were. About eight, nine miles, something like that.

Laodicea is a huge city, quite wealthy. It's about 10 times the size of Colossae. Colossae is about eight miles away in the other direction. Earlier at Colossae, we talked about how Colossae got its nice snow melt. Cold water is coming down out of the mountains. Very cool, very refreshing, in a warm climate like that. Heropolis was noted for its hot water, its hot mineral springs there.

As near as we can tell, there was water piped to Laodicea, both cold water from the area of the river running past Colossae, and hot water from Heropolis. Because what does Jesus tell the Laodiceans? He says, I wish that you were either cold or hot, but because you are neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. Another feature of the water there in Laodicea was that it was very heavily mineral laden. These are actually some of the water pipes from Laodicea. You can see the about an inch buildup of mineral deposits in the water. It was very bad tasting. You would want to spit it out of your mouth. You can actually see off of the mountain some snow on the peaks there. So there was cold water in the distance at Colossae, and there was hot water across the valley at Heropolis. But the water in Laodicea was neither hot nor cold. By the time the cold water got there being piped from the area of Colossae, it had become lukewarm. By the time the hot water from Heropolis was piped there, it also had become lukewarm. It was no longer hot.

Jesus doesn't say we've misunderstood that to think that you have to be hot. Well, no.

Hot is good because think how good a sauna feels or a jacuzzi or a nice hot bath.

It's very relaxing, very invigorating. In the same way, cold water on a hot day is very invigorating, very rejuvenating there to have a nice glass of ice cold water. So both of those are good. Hot and cold can be good. It's the lukewarm. It's in the middle that doesn't do anything for anybody. That is what Jesus Christ is condemning there. So that's a lesson to draw from Heropolis. And it's very graphically illustrated if you go there and know what these references are talking about. Now, there is one other structure in particular I want to show you in Laodicea. We saw this as we walked by. This is actually an earlier photo of it. Today it's covered up by a big metal roof over it. But this is the remains of a church there, a Byzantine church, probably dating to 400, somewhere along in there. Let me catch up with my notes here. I want to talk about this one other structure because of something that historically was very important that took place at Laodicea and probably took place in this very church. Now, we're familiar with...we've heard the term of different church councils over the years. The Council of Nicaea, all of these things back in the 300s and 400s AD. And the church at that time, the official state church, was what would become known as the Catholic Church or the universal church, which is what Catholic means. So these councils were when the bishops, the overseers of the different areas of the Catholic Church, would meet together in a central location and they would decide matters of doctrine. So that's what these councils were. And a very notable council was held in Laodicea in the year 365 AD. And since it was a Catholic Church meeting, it probably took place in this very building. I said 400-500 AD. That's actually probably when this was destroyed by earthquake, not when it was built. It's probably built in the early 300s AD. So in 365 AD, the reason we can tell is when this council of Laodicea took place. And what is significant about it is when they had these councils, they again issued doctrinal decrees called canons. C-O-N-O-N.

Not C-O-N-N-O-N, which is what you use to blow people up, although these canons did have the same effect at various times. It's not a laughing matter. But in this particular case, there were some 60-odd decrees that were issued by this church council. But I want to draw our attention to four of them. A lot of them are very arcane issues, but there are four that are very significant for us. Again, this is the year 365 AD. This is about 30 years, 34 years after the Emperor Constantine has supposedly been converted to Christianity, although he was baptized on his deathbed. And he was a sun worshiper up until the time that he died. And he murdered his wife and his son in the year or two before he died. But hey, good Christian! Who's counting? So you can tell when I think of Constantine's conversion. But these are four of the decrees that were issued. One of these is Canon 7. And let's read it together. A person's converted from heresies, that is, of the Novatians, Photenians, and I have no idea what those were. I couldn't find any information on them. And quarto decimans. A quarto decimans may be a term you've heard before.

Quarto for decimans, tit, 14th. It's referring to people who kept the Passover on the 14th day of the month of the Hebrew calendar, which is what we do. So quarto decimans, those who believed in keeping Passover on the 14th of the first month of the Hebrew calendar, shall not be received, received into the fellowship of the Catholic Church until they shall have anathematized, that's a big word. It means basically cast out, utterly repudiated, utterly rejected in the strongest forms, every heresy, and particularly that in which they were held. So what this is saying is that if you wanted to be a part of the official church and you believed in keeping Passover on the 14th of the month, you had to renounce that heresy, totally repudiated, and call it a heresy, or you were not allowed to be a part of the church. So here's a very clear dividing line. If you keep the Passover, you cannot be a part of the church. Another canon, 29. Christians must not judaize, that means act like the Jews, by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honoring the Lord's Day, Sunday, and if they can, and if they can, resting then on the Lord's Day as Christians. But if any shall be found to be judaizers, Sabbath keepers, let them be anathema from Christ. In other words, if anybody keeps the Sabbath, you are cut off from the church. You have no part in it. And further, you're not allowed just to rest on the Sabbath, but you have to work. It was issued as an official church edict that you must work on the seventh day. Again, this is 365 AD. There are still people keeping the Passover on the 14th, still people keeping the Sabbath. But because a Catholic church by this point is so anti-Semitic that they're calling it Judaism to have anything in common with the Jews.

And now they've got the backing of the Roman Empire's government because of Constantine's conversion about 30 years earlier. Two other instant canons here. There's no explanation given, so I'll just read these and give you what I think is being said here. Canon 37. It is not lawful to receive portioned sin from the feasts of the Jews or heretics, nor to feast together with them.

Face value. The only thing I can get from this is that there are Christians who are keeping the Holy Days with the Jews because it's banning feasting with the Jews. Well, when did the Jews feast? Well, they feasted on the Holy Days of the Bible.

And there are Christians obviously doing it because here they outlawed it.

Canon 38 I think supports this. This is the very next one. It is not lawful to receive unleavened bread from the Jews, nor to be partakers of their impiety. Well, what's this saying? Well, face value.

Not everybody is baking their own bread. Now you've got cities, you've got people who are bakers, so you don't have to bake your bread every day for your house. So what do you do if you're a Christian keeping the days of unleavened bread? Well, you go down to the local Jewish bakery and buy unleavened bread from them. That seems to be what it's saying here. So you're not allowed to do that or to be partakers of their impiety. Obviously, in reference to keeping the days of unleavened bread or eating unleavened bread during that time. So what do we see here? We see four things that are specifically outlawed here. Keeping Passover on the 14th. You have to work on the Sabbath. You can't rest on it anymore. You can't feast with the Jews. And you can't buy your unleavened bread from the Jews. So this is showing us how much Christianity has changed from the time of the Apostles, where we see the church keeping the Sabbath, keeping the Passover, keeping the holidays, and all of this. And now these things are officially outlawed with the backing of the Roman Empire, the Caesars, the governors. What were the consequences of that? Well, if you were cut off, considered an enemy of the state, you could have your house confiscated, your business confiscated, your children confiscated, your spouse confiscated. You could find yourself without a job, without a house, without a family, without anything, and burned at the stake as a heretic. That was the reality. That was the reality when the Catholic Church got the power and the backing of the Roman Empire to do this. So what this means is that true Christians were systematically forced out of the official church and had to go underground for centuries. And it really wasn't until the freedom to the pilgrims and others who came to the United States seeking religious freedom and setting up a government based on freedom of religion that people had that kind of freedom to keep freedom of conscience, to practice their religious beliefs according to the Bible, without being persecuted, without being locked up, without having everything they own confiscated, and perhaps even being killed. But that again is 300s to 400s. Let's go back earlier to a term I mentioned emperor worship, back during the first century, because that's when it started in the late first century, emperor worship there. And several of the cities we talked about were centers of emperor worship, where they would have their temples to Jupiter and Minerva and Apollo and all of these other gods and goddesses, but they would also have temples to the emperors, and in some cases the emperors as well. And here we actually see a statue of an emperor and his wife being deified, being taken into heaven to become a god and a goddess, being born on the back of this what we would call an angel today there with the Roman eagles that we talked about earlier accompanying them. They're deified after death. If you're a good enough emperor and your wife is good enough, the Roman Senate would declare you a god, as they did with Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar and various other emperors and their wives. So you became a god, just like Jupiter and Minerva and Athena and the various others. So what this meant, in practical terms, for a Christian in the first century, is that you had to every year give an offering to the emperor and acknowledge that he is your lord and master and divine.

And we actually see a sculptor of this. So let me tell you a little bit of what's going on here. This is the way it would have been done. You've got a small portable altar here. This is a bronze, we call it an incense burner. It's a little tripod stand with a bowl on it with hot coals. And what you do is you would take a little bit of incense and you would...it didn't have to be a big offering, just a little incense would do. You'd drop a spoonful of incense and it would send up the smoke and all of that. And you would acknowledge the emperor as your lord and master.

And that was your obligation as somebody who lived in the Roman Empire at that time. And in the background there's also a bowl that's about to be sacrificed. And offerings were also done with music. So you've got a little flute or clarinet player there with it as well. These people are doing that. They're offering incense and in the background is a temple back there as well, showing this is a scene of offering to a god. So this is what it looked like, emperor worship. But you had to do that once a year. And depending on the account you read, you would be issued a certificate that said that, yes, you had performed your annual duty of paying homage and acknowledging the emperor as divine. And you had to keep that certificate with you to prove that you had done your civic duty there. So what were the implications of that? Earlier I talked about the city of Smyrna or Ismutter there. And we saw this photo there in the big marketplace. I mentioned that nearby was a theater up on the hillside buried under modern, under more recent housing that's taken place here. I'd like to tell you the story of a church member who lived in the city of Ismutter, not in the first century but in the second century. His name was Polycarp, and this took place in the year 160 AD.

Polycarp had been a disciple of the apostle John. John was the last of Christ's original apostles to live, died probably around 100 AD. Polycarp had been a disciple, and at this point 160 AD, he's an old man. He's at least 86 years old. And he's probably the last surviving person who knew any of the original 12 apostles of Jesus Christ. And because he had been taught by John, he was highly regarded as a minister, as a pastor, and as a teacher and church leader.

What I'd like to read you now are some excerpts of his death, his martyrdom. This is written in the form of a letter by an eyewitness to his death to other churches in that general area of Asia Meijer. It is the earliest written account that we have of a martyrdom outside of the Book of Acts in the New Testament, and Josephus. But this shows what it meant, the consequences, the price you might pay to be a Christian at that time.

So it reads, We are writing to you, brothers, with an account of the martyrs, especially the blessed Polycarp, whose death brought the persecution to a close.

All the martyrdoms which God allowed to happen, so there were more than one, were blessed and noble.

Who could not admire their honor, their patience, their love for the Lord?

They were whipped to shreds until their veins and arteries were exposed, and still endured patiently.

While even those that stood by cried for them. They had such courage that none of them let out a sigh or a groan, proving, when they suffered such torments, that they were absent from their bodies, or rather that the Lord then stood by them and talked with them.

They fixed their eyes on their escape from the eternal, unquenchable fire, and the good things promised to those who endure. Things, and then quoting from Romans, which ear has not heard, nor eyes seen, nor the human heart imagined, but were revealed to them by the Lord.

In all that the devil attempted, he failed, thanks be to God. The heroic Germanicus, and this is apparently a younger male church member who was martyred before Polycarp, encouraged the weak by his own endurance, and fought bravely with wild animals.

When the proconsul, who is the Roman governing official in the area, tried to persuade Germanicus to cooperate for the sake of his own youth, he drew the wild beast towards himself and provoked it, in order to escape more quickly from this wicked world. Seeing all this, the amazed crowd of spectators cried out, Get Polycarp, too! When Polycarp heard about this, and heard for them calling for his death, he was not in the least upset, and was happy to stay in the city, but eventually he was persuaded to leave. He went to friends in the nearby countryside, where as usual he spent the whole time, day and night, in prayer for all people and for the churches throughout the world. The authorities came for him, and with their usual weapons, as if coming out against a robber.

That evening they found Polycarp lying down in the upper room of a cottage. He could have escaped, but he refused, saying, God's will be done.

When he heard that the authorities had come for him, he went down and spoke with them. They were amazed at his age, he's eighty-six years old, and steadfastness, and some of them said, Why did we go to so much trouble to capture a man like this, an old man? Polycarp called for food and drink for them. These are the soldiers who came to arrest him, and he served them dinner.

And asked for an hour to pray uninterrupted. The men were astounded, and many of them regretted coming to arrest such a godly and venerable old man. When he finished praying, they put him on a donkey and took him into the city. As Polycarp was being taken into the arena, a voice came to him from heaven. Be strong, Polycarp, and play the man. No one saw who had spoken, but our brothers who were there heard the voice. When the crowd heard that Polycarp had been captured, there was an uproar. The pro-counsel asked him whether he was Polycarp. On hearing that he was, the pro-counsel tried to persuade Polycarp to apostasize to leave the faith, saying, Have respect for your old age. Swear by the fortune of Caesar. Repent and deny Christ, and I will set you free.

Polycarp replied, and I have the words up here on screen, 86 years I have served him, and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my king and my savior? The pro-counsel said, I have wild animals here. I will throw you to them if you do not repent. Call them, Polycarp replied. It is unthinkable for me to repent from what is good and turn to what is evil. The pro-counsel said, if you despise the animals, I will have you burned alive. Polycarp replied, You threaten me with fire which burns for an hour and is then extinguished, but you know nothing of the fire, of the coming judgment and eternal punishment reserved for the ungodly.

Why are you waiting? Bring on whatever you want.

The crowd collected wood and bundles of sticks from the shops and public bats.

They bound him with his hands behind him like a ram chosen for sacrifice.

Ready to be an acceptable burn offering to God, he looked up to heaven and said, O Lord God Almighty, the Father of your beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the knowledge of you, the God of angels, powers, and every creature, and of all the righteous who live before you, I give you thanks that you count me worthy to be numbered among your martyrs, sharing the cup of Christ. May I be received this day as an acceptable sacrifice. I praise you for all these things. I bless you and glorify you, along with the everlasting Jesus Christ, your beloved Son. To you be glory both now and forever.

And Polycarp was then burned alive at the stake in the theater there in Smyrna.

For good measure, he was stabbed to death as he was being burned alive. He was one of thousands of early Christians put to death for their beliefs and for their refusal to acknowledge Caesar as their Lord and Master. At Heropolis, another city that we visited that I talked about, that's the city of the hot springs there, the Apostle Philip. This Philip was one of the original 12 followers of Jesus Christ that Christ chose. He was put to death at this city.

They're varying conflicting contradictory accounts in some of the details, but all of the accounts agree on a few things, a few key particulars. One was that he was living in the city with his family and they refused to acknowledge the Emperor as God. The accounts all say that one by one, Philip's children were brought out and killed before him. That was the last thing that he saw was his children being put to death in front of him. Philip was then crucified, hanging up there to die as Jesus Christ had. So they stood fast in their belief that there is one Lord and one God, Jesus Christ and God the Father, and the Emperor is not God, and the Emperor is not Lord, and the Emperor is not my Master. And they paid the ultimate price for that. And just within the last few years, archaeologists have found this tomb that they believe is probably the tomb of the Apostle Philip there on the mountain side overlooking the city of Heropolis.

And this is the reality of what our spiritual ancestors faced in the early centuries of the Church. It was a very deadly serious matter to believe what we believe. The basis of Emperor worship was that you went along with whatever the government told you was right and good to do. And if you didn't, you were the problem. You were the problem. Today we have it easy. We have religious freedom. Freedom to meet and peace and safety, freedom to proclaim the truths of God's Word and so on, but it won't always be that way. There are a number of prophecies that talk about a very different world that's going to come on us sooner rather than later. A time when God's people will be persecuted and will be martyred, as they were back in the first and second century.

Today we are seeing—and this is one reason why I send you these updates every Friday night—we're seeing a fundamental change in our culture, a dramatic change just within the last year or two, with gay rights. One of the incredible articles I sent you last night in New York City.

You can be fined up to a quarter million dollars for calling a transgender person by the wrong pronoun. Calling a man who thinks he's a woman, calling him a he, or a woman who thinks he's a man, calling him a her, calling her, or calling it a her, whatever. You can be fined a quarter million dollars for that in New York City. It's the insanity of this world. In the last year, we've seen Bible believers sent to jail for not issuing marriage licenses to homosexuals. We've seen wedding photographers, cake makers, including one here in the Denver area, people who rent out facilities for weddings. We've seen them sued out of existence.

Ordered to undergo government reprogramming to teach them to agree that gay marriage is right and good. Instead of what the Bible says, we've seen their businesses sued out of existence and shut down because their opposition to something the Bible calls an abomination.

Because they refuse to go along with government-enforced, politically correct standards that violate Scripture directly.

What we're seeing in culture today is a dramatic shift. We're seeing new gods, gods of political correctness and secular humanism being set up. We're told we have to bow down to them.

We have to worship and we have to honor them. But they're really not new gods at all. In reality, it's just the same old Greco-Roman paganism that we've been talking about coming back into power today. The same old things being recycled. People are expected to bow down and accept that as truth. A time is coming when Christians will again have to make the same choices that our spiritual ancestors had to make. Who is Lord? Is it Caesar?

Or is it Jesus Christ? Do we obey the Emperor? Or do we obey God?

And I hope that the examples that we've talked about today, well, of those who have gone before us, will help us to strengthen our faith, to realize there is really nothing new under the sun. That God set before us these examples of the slaves that have gone before us. People who totally dedicated and gave their lives over to their master, Jesus Christ. And that these examples will help us to stand strong for whatever the future holds.

I did...this is not part of the sermon, but I did overlook a couple of announcements here. The Denver Choir will practice immediately after services back there in the classroom.

And then 20 minutes after services today, the kids will have their Sabbath class.

There is well in the same classroom there. So Choir meeting immediately after services. And then Sabbath school 20 minutes after services.