From Paphos to Laodicea

This journey had been before us for months. Like all our missions, it was paid for out of our own wages, and it came in a hard season: Ekaba's third child was not yet two months old.

We went for two reasons. Cyprus is the land of Barnabas, and it was to Cyprus that the Holy Spirit first sent Barnabas and Saul when the church at Antioch laid hands on them. And across the water lies Asia, where the risen Christ walked among seven golden lampstands and wrote to seven churches, and where, one after another, those lampstands have gone out.

We left on Thursday 13 August, Ekaba from Calgary and Chidera from Winnipeg, and met in Montréal. From there it was a night flight of some nine hours across the Atlantic to Athens.

After a wait in Athens, a short flight across the eastern Mediterranean brought us to Larnaca. We arrived in Cyprus on Friday 14 August, collected a hired car, and drove west along the south coast to Limassol, our base on the island and our starting point for the work.

On the Lord's day we drove up from Limassol to Nicosia, the capital. We went out at Eleftheria Square, Liberty Square, beside the great Venetian walls, a stone's throw from the line that has cut the city in two for more than half a century.

We had printed invitations headed “Looking for a fresh start?”, and we went to the people sitting at the café tables along the street and in the shade of the square. We gave out the paper, and where anyone would stop, we spoke to them about Jesus Christ.

In the afternoon we drove east to Ayia Napa, a few kilometres from the Green Line, and went down to the rocks above the sea. Chidera recorded the moment: “This is what, when you see in Scripture the Great Sea, it is referring to. We are right here, and we are doing evangelism, furnishing the people with the word of life. We give God the praise.”

Over our days in Cyprus we went out on the streets of the towns where we stayed and through which we passed, Limassol and Larnaca as well as Nicosia, Ayia Napa and Paphos, giving out the word and speaking to those who would listen; and in every place we prayed over the land.

We drove west to Paphos, the city of Sergius Paulus and of Elymas the sorcerer, the city where Saul first became Paul. There the proconsul believed, “being astonished at the teaching of the Lord” (Acts 13:12).

In the lower town lies a field of ruins: one of the largest early Christian basilicas on the island, built in the fourth century, and standing within it the small stone church of Agia Kyriaki Chrysopolitissa, built in the thirteenth century and still in use.

In the atrium stands a single short column of white marble where, by local tradition, the people of Paphos tied Paul and whipped him thirty-nine times. That is a tradition, not a record of Scripture. We stood at the pillar and prayed for the island that first received the gospel from his mouth, that the God who opened the eyes of the proconsul would open theirs.

We went to the rock-cut tombs on the edge of Paphos by the sea, the great necropolis called the Tombs of the Kings, chambers and courts carved deep into the rock. Christians of the early centuries are said to have hidden and worshipped in places like these.

Down in the rock we prayed, and Chidera recorded it: “The land belongs to Jesus Christ. Wherever the soles of our feet step on, it is Yours. You brought Your servant Paul, and Barnabas, Joseph of Cyprus, and John Mark on this land; it belongs to You. He must reign in the lives of men and women. He must reign in the land, forever and ever. So we raise an altar in the catacombs, in the name of Jesus, for the glory of our God and of our King.”

We saw the two altars of the island: the altar of Aphrodite, older than the gospel and still honoured on its shelves, and the altar raised by the apostles, which no one has been able to pull down. The division of the island kept us from Salamis, where the apostles first landed.

Early on Wednesday we flew out of Larnaca, changed planes at Athens, and in the afternoon came down over the Sea of Marmara into Istanbul.

That first night Ekaba was given a dream. He was among a company of people he came to understand were saints, singing over and over one song: “Jesus, all I want is to suffer for You, and I lay down my life at the altar for You.” He woke with the song still on him. The understanding he received was this: this is the cry of the saints in this land, the cry that led the brethren of Asia Minor and Constantinople to bear persecution and lay down their lives for the gospel.

We went to Sultanahmet, the old heart of the city, and into Hagia Sophia. High in the upper galleries the mosaics have been uncovered, and Christ still looks out from them: in the Deesis, between His mother and John the Baptist; enthroned between Constantine IX and the empress Zoe; and over the doors, the Virgin and child receiving the city from Constantine and the church from Justinian.

We walked through it slowly, and grieved. Here the creed was confessed; here the light of the gospel shone over the whole east; and here, now, the name of Christ may not be preached. We prayed there, quietly, for the land and for its people.

We passed to the Imperial Gate of the Topkapı Palace, within which stands Hagia Irene, where the council of 381 met, and prayed over Sultanahmet, where the Sultan Ahmed Mosque faces Hagia Sophia. In the evening we crossed the Golden Horn to the Galata Tower.

Because the streets were closed to us, we gave ourselves to people. Over our days in Istanbul we sat with two individuals at coffee shops and spoke with them of Christ and of the burden of the Lord for Türkiye. We parted with the hope of returning for quieter work, and of seeing an underground church raised in Türkiye.

We left Istanbul early and drove some four hundred kilometres south to Bergama. On the way Ekaba recorded a few words: “I'm praying over them for the restoration, because the God who came and took their candlesticks can build it, plant it back again.”

At Pergamum, “where Satan's throne is”, we climbed to the temple of Trajan, its white columns standing against the sky, and looked down the face of the theatre to the plain. We prayed that the name which Antipas would not deny would be confessed there again.

At Akhisar, ancient Thyatira, what remains lies in a small park around a stretch of colonnaded road. At Sardis, to which the Lord wrote “you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead”, the Marble Court of the bath and gymnasium stands against the hills.

We came to Alaşehir, ancient Philadelphia, in the last light. Philadelphia was the one church of which the Lord said nothing against, and it held out longer than any other Christian city of Asia, until 1390. We prayed there for an open door into Türkiye that no one can shut.

We went to Smyrna, beneath modern İzmir, and prayed over the city where Polycarp stood faithful unto death.

On the Lord's day we were at Ephesus soon after eight in the morning, walking down the marble street in the low sun, past the Library of Celsus to the great theatre where the city once shouted for two hours, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” Here, of all the seven, the warning of the removed lampstand was first spoken; and here it has been most completely fulfilled.

In the afternoon we came to Laodicea in the heat of the day. In the middle of the city stands a large church of the early fourth century, uncovered from 2010, now under a modern roof: not a ruin scattered in a field, but the walls and floor of a church of Laodicea. There Ekaba had the opportunity to pray at the altar, for Türkiye, and for the seven lampstands and the land to which they once gave their light.

We made our way back to Istanbul, and on Wednesday 26 August we flew home, Ekaba to Calgary and Chidera to Winnipeg, each to his family.

We had seen an island that honours its old goddess on its shelves, and is divided in two; a city whose greatest church is a mosque; and a nation in which the name of Christ is almost unknown and may not be preached. We had seen seven fields where the light once burned. And we came home, not discouraged, but with a burden and a certainty.