So yet
another ridiculously awesome gift from God is the opportunity that I had to go with my
team to the old city of 
Ephesus. We arrived and after fending off a sweet old man who was determind to be our
tour guide through the city for an amount of money that we did not have to
spare, we made it through the gates onto the old stone roads that Paul and John
walked on and beheld with our eyes the very buildings that they entered (insert
goose bumps here). My jaw was literally on
the ground as we saw these old stone
colums and walls, amphitheater seats, and archways all that now remains of one
of the most important cities of the old biblical world.
Ephesus was
a port city and the capital of Asia minor possessed by the Greeks, Romans,
Persians all in their turn and was the home of the temple of Artemis, one of
the greatest of the idle gods back in that time. All that remains of the
temple, one of the seven wonders of the world
, is a single pillar. It was
because of the preaching of Paul and his followers in Acts 19 that gods made by
hand are no gods at all, that two of Paul’s companions, Gaius and Aristarchus
were dragged to the great theater of Ephesus and there accused by the Ephesians
of blasphemy against their gods and Alexander, a Jew spoke in their defense and
they were spared.
that very theater and 2000 years later re
ad aloud to the people visiting theletter Paul himself wrote to the Ephesians which was received, whether they
understood our language or not, with applause from the visitors and a German
version of the song “Amen” from and old German man who came to see the sites
and got the scripture on top of it. This was not some grand thing of our own
but simply the power of God’s words working through the voices of His servants.
To be able to see and walk down the streets that the Apostles walked was humbling
and awe inspiring and I can only imagine what else God has in store.
