An altar in the catacombs
At Paphos, where Paul first confronted sorcery and a Roman ruler believed, we went down into the rock-cut tombs and declared that the land belongs to Jesus Christ.
Paphos was the Roman capital of Cyprus. There the sorcerer Elymas withstood Barnabas and Saul, and Saul, “who also is called Paul”, filled with the Holy Spirit, rebuked him. The sorcerer was struck blind for a season, and the proconsul Sergius Paulus believed.
The other altar on Cyprus is older than the gospel. The Greeks said Aphrodite came ashore near Paphos, and the island still sells itself as hers. In ordinary tourist shops we saw obscene souvenirs openly on the shelves. We have never seen such travesty in any land.
The land belongs to Jesus Christ. Wherever the soles of our feet step on, it is Yours.
On the edge of the town by the sea lie 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, in the cool of the catacombs, we prayed.
“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, and the other brothers known and unknown to us, on this land; so there is an intention: 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.”
“Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses.” Joshua 1:3
