Two weeks ago I returned from a weeklong trip to Turkey where we visited numerous historical sites. One of the most memorable was visiting Ephesus, which is one of the places where the Apostle Paul preached the Gospel. He preached in Ephesus while returning home during his second mission and preached the gospel there for two years during his third mission. These cities are beautifully built and show a Greco-Roman architecture. In fact while on our journey along the Western coast of Turkey we could see islands that belong to Greece as they nestled themselves close to the Turkish coast in the Aegean Sea.
Istanbul, the former Constantinople, is a very populous city with about 9 million people. As I flew into Istanbul I had a beautiful view of the city, and I could see four to five story buildings as far as the eye could see. After we arrived in the evening we went to dinner and found that there is a thriving nightlife in Istanbul. We had a guide during the trip from Istanbul and he said that like New York City, Istanbul never sleeps.
When the Roman Emperor Constantine headed the council of Nicaea in 325 AD (we visited Nicaea, and were near Constantine’s supposed summer palace where the council of Nicaea took place), he soon thereafter made Christianity the state religion and made Constantinople the headquarters. This was the main center from which Christianity at the time became widely adopted. It was not until 1453 that the Ottoman Empire took over. We visited Topkapi Palace, a beautiful palace where the rulers of the Ottoman Empire lived with their families. In the museum at Topkapi Palace I saw an 86-carat diamond, which was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The Ottoman Empire ended shortly after WWI, and Turkey was established as a state in the early 20’s. Since then there have been multiple coups that have tried to take over the government, the most recent one in 1997.
