Perga-licious

written by Audra Metz & Caleb Howard

Hello hello! Today marked our first day in Turkey! We woke up to coffee and breakfast by the Mediterranean sea and then headed out to Attalia where Matt presented his case for why Paul was the ideal person to deliver the Gospel during the 1st century. We sat alongside the coastline as Matt continued his case with more background on Paul (and dodged some stray cats and dogs along the way). We also stopped in Attalia's museum where we learned about Roman emperors and gods and got to see statues that were taken from our final stop of the day in Perga (more on that in a sec). We studied one Roman god in more depth at our second stop, which was Aspendos, the most well-preserved theater in antiquity. Here Jared taught on both our and the Romans addiction to entertainment and the ability to be distracted by messages the world is trying to distract us with. We capped the site off by singing the Doxology and moved on to our last site: Perga. At Perga, we walked through a Roman bathhouse and then down their main street, ending by overlooking the city and learning about Paul's first missionary journey. We're headed to Pamukkale to start another day of learning tomorrow!

The biggest takeaway from today's teaching was recognizing the significance of little phrases in the Bible that confirm Paul's identity as the perfect candidate for the work God called him. Matt showed us how Paul was culturally trilingual, allowing him to understand the Law as a Jew, appeal to the Hellenists as a Roman, and spread the Gospel to all as a Christian. Understanding this gave weight to the fact that Paul was uniquely designed for this, and the same is true of us! What an identity to be spoken over us on the first day!

Today we learned a lot about Greco-Roman culture, and it was extremely convicting to see how much of our culture today lines up with Rome's. While their idols came from their lords and gods, ours today are materialism, nationalism, wealth, and things like these. This shows that regardless of the time or age, there will always be a need for people like Paul to spread the Gospel—and more importantly—stand firm in the faith. We saw today the extreme need for people to stand against the idols that our culture sells us. We learned that the only way worth living life is the way that is described in the Gospel.