This morning our PRTS tour group flew from Thessaloniki to Athens. Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece with a population of 4+ million souls.
We first went up to the Acropolis which towers over the city (photo #1) and contains the famous Parthenon, the Erechtheion with its Porch of Maidens (photo #2) and the Temple of Athena Nike, all from the fifth century B.C. We then went to the Areopagus (Mars Hill) where Paul gave his famous Christ-centered address to Athenian city leaders (photo #3 of Mars Hill in the foreground, with the people listening to him in the Agora off to the right).
It was a moving and humbling experience to stand at this very impressive place with the idol-worshipping Acropolis in the background. You can almost feel Paul’s urgency in preaching the gospel to these needy people who were so accustomed to serving their unknown gods. From the top of this hill, we looked down on the Agora, where the people listened to Paul and which was also the political and economic center of the ancient city.
Rev. Casey Freswick and I had the privilege of giving short addresses at these places to buttress our guide’s informative comments. May God help us to assert and defend gospel truth in our needy day as Paul did in his own day.
