Homeward Bound!

June 28 - This is our last post.  It's a bit more personal than usual, but sometimes reality intrudes.

About four weeks ago, we were in Turkey showing Michelle and Mike the ruins at Priene.  It's a bit of a climb, but we had been there before.  I had to stop about 5 times before we got to the top of the hill where the city had been.  My chest hurt from the exertion, but it quickly settled down when I rested.  This happened a few more times over the following weeks, mostly when going up and down our 40 set of stairs.  

When we left Greece, we flew directly to Munich, Germany.  Denita was understandably opposed to exiting through Germany because of the heart issue. We drove the entire length of the country, south to north, as seen in the previous posts.   Once we reached Hamburg in the north, we stayed with my buddy Roland and his family for two nights.  It was a delightful experience to stay outside the resorts and to see how real Germans lived.

Roland drove us to the airport early Sunday morning, and we flew to Dusseldorf, where we had a seven hour layover.  Then it was a 12 hour flight to LA.  We stayed with David and Jeanelle and had some precious moments with our two grandkids.  We intended to stay four days, and then drive back on Friday with our youngest son Brian.  However, on Monday my chest started to "burn" after just walking a block or two.  I felt my body was trying to tell me something, so we left on Wednesday.

On Friday, I saw a cardiac specialist in Eugene.  He felt the only way to definitively determine what was happening was to have an angiogram.  They can see where the blockage is, if any, and they can install, if that's the word, the stent right then and there.  So tomorrow morning, at 6:30, we head for Sacred Heart Hospital in Springfield.  

It has been an extraordinary experience for two quite ordinary people.  We lived amongst the Greek people for 11 months.  We got very close to our brethren on Samos, with whom we could not even communicate directly.  We got to see the Gospel of Jesus Christ being sown in human hearts in foreign lands.  And it was an opportunity for God to work within our own hearts, hopefully making us more like His Beloved Son in some small measure.

Karl & Denita 

PS.  They found major blockages in both of the smaller cardiac arteries that feed the heart.  Both were 95% occluded, I think is the term.  They ended up putting in three stents, two of them side-by-side in one artery.  The main artery was also mildly blocked, but not more than normal for an old geezer.  It appears I was a dead man walking this last month, and should have listened to my body and my wife.  Smile.

The Dancing Towers in the center of Hamburg

We had a 7 hour layover in Dusseldorf.  Denita went to the zoo and fed peanuts to the animals.  She said this one was particularly mean.

The skyline of Hamburg

David and Jeanelle's  house in Rancho Cucamonga, LA

Jeanelle, Brielle, Tiffany, Brian, Denita & Ayla

Rothenburg

June 18 - Our next stop on the Romantiche Strasse was Rothenburg on der Taube.  I have it on good authority that this means "Red Castle."  Rothenburg was certainly "beautiful for situation."  It is located just uphill from several loops in the Taube River, perhaps 200' above the water.  A plaque on the city wall next to our hotel said that this section of wall had been built in 1408.  Christopher Columbus was not even a twinkle in his father's eye when the city wall was constructed.

When you come to the fork in the road, take it.

There was a covered walkway along the top of the wall

A storks nest is visible atop the tower

This picture overlooks the lower section of city wall

The entrance to the lower garden

Some of the torture devices in the dungeon 

Dinkelsbuhl

June 17- We left the village of Hohenschwangau and headed north up Interstate-7.  We would stay on this highway all the way to Hamburg in the north.  The first 220 miles of this road is known as Der Romantiche Strasse, the Romantic Highway. It is the ancient road that connected southern Germany with the heartland.  It is sprinkled with castles and medieval cities that just exude Germanic charm.  The first one we stopped at was Dinkelsbuhl.

We spotted a storks nest on top of the building at the rear,

which turned out to be the old City Hall, complete with a 

dungeon in the basement.

The church at Dinkelsbuhl was old and very stately

This is a typical scene in the town

This picture was taken just outside the city walls

Just one of the many squares in Dinkelsbuhl

Neuschwanstein Castle

I June 16 - We stayed at Fussen last night, a picturesque town that nestles up against the Bavarian Alps.  It lies about 10 miles from the castle at Neuschwanstein.  We drove to the tourist town of Hohenschwangau that lies just below the castle.  There are at least six Alpine lakes in this immediate area due to runoff from the high mountains, all very scenic.  In the classic picture of Neuschwanstein, one of these lakes is usually placed to the left and another on the right.

Neuschwanstein is not that old by European standards. Young Ludwig grew up in the neighboring castle of Hohenschwangau, seen below.  He cleared an old castle off the dramatic outcropping, and in 1869 started to build Neuschwanstein.  Although he had acceded to the throne of Bavaria in 1864, he initially used his own funds.  After Bavaria joined the North German League headed by Bismarck, Ludwig neglected his royal duties and devoted himself to his dream castle.

But the fairy tale did not end well.  In a bloodless coup, he was declared legally insane in 1886 and his throne taken over by a regent.  Ludwig died under suspicious circumstances a few days later.

The ancestral castle of Hohenschwangau

Neuschwanstein as seen from Marienbrucke (Miriam Bridge), spanning a very deep gorge

This picture was taken in the town which sits between and below both castles. Neuschwanstein can be seen in the upper right. 

The lower gate and the court just inside

The lower court

Dachau

June 15 - OK, I admit it.  I have a fascination with all things World War II, including the Nazi concentration camps.  After landing in Munich, we immediately headed for Dachau.  It's only about a 25 minute drive from the airport, and what red-blooded American would not want to see it! 

As we were walking out, Denita and could not help but ask ourselves "Why."  How could this have happened in one of the most civilized and decent countries on the planet, leaders in science and philosophy, highly educated, wealthy and Christianized for centuries?  The atrocities committed here were on a scale that simply defies comprehension.  I do not believe the roots of this inhumanity lie in a certain people or race.  Nor do I think it was due to a unique set of historical circumstances.  I think what we see is a window into man's inner nature.

There have been many theories to explain man's intrinsic nature.  The modern, New Age view is that our Inner Self is pure and lovely, but it has been sullied by civilization and the socialization process.  If we want peace and enlightenment, we should look deep inside of us.  The Christian view is that man is inherently selfish and self-centered, and we need another nature, a spiritual one.  Jesus once told the Pharisees, "If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children ........" (Matt 7:11).  Paul weighs in on the issue in Galatians 5:19:  "Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these."

I subscribe to the Christian view.  The nature that was programmed into man, what Paul calls the flesh, was designed for survival and reproduction on this earth.  And it is well suited for that purpose, as witnessed by the 7 billion human beings now living.  But it is plastic, easily moulded, and people can be persuaded to do almost anything.  The Israelis were astounded to learn how normal and indeed bland Adolf Eichmann appeared!  They expected a monster, but in fact he was just a man.

At the entrance gate are the words, "Work makes you free."

The barracks held 54 men each

This was the crematoria

This was the "bathroom" in the Crematoria building where prisoners were sealed in and then gassed.

A view of the ovens

The Parting

June 15 - Yesterday was our last meeting with the friends on Samos.  It included the four who live at Pythagorio, Denita and I, and our two workers.  It has been a profitable year of growth for both Denita and I, seeing the work of God in a new land and perhaps in a new light.  We hope that others have benefited spiritually as much as we have.

A lot was said in the meeting about love, and we sang Hymn 216, a song that seems to symbolize our time here.  "May thy perfect love O Lord, burn strong within my heart."  Jesus said that love was the mark of his people.  It wasn't doctrine of any sort, but it was the love of God, the one thing that cannot be imitated or replicated by men.   Paul tells us in I Corinthians 13 that without love, we haven't attained anything spiritually.  I was thinking of John 17:12, which is the end game of loving God and our neighbor, the twin commandments.  "That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.  And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one......."  Love is what makes us one in Christ, and love is what merges us into Christ and the Godhead.

Many cities and towns have a sister city in another country, a program designed to promote cultural understanding and economic ties.  The town of Boring, Oregon, which most of us have been to, has such an arrangement with Dull, Scotland, no doubt a play on their names.  The Samosians and us decided we would become sister churches.  And why not?  We are bound by the strongest ties known to man, the love of God.

Jesus' Mission Statement

Most organizations and companies have a Mission Statement, a couple of sentences that lays out the objectives and purposes they hope to accomplish. There were several of these plaques in the office where I worked most of my career.  A friend of mine recently sent me several verses in the Gospels where Jesus said, "I am come" or "I have come."  These seem like mission statements to me.

John 10:10  "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."  He was drawing a contrast between himself, as the true shepherd, and hirelings, those who were "thieves and robbers."  The false Messiahs, like "robbers and thieves," have come to "steal and to kill and to destroy."  Jesus came to give life, abundant and eternal life.

John 12:46   "I am come to be a light to the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not remain in darkness."  To enlighten just means to give understanding.  In our natural state, we cannot figure out why we were placed on this earth, what is expected of us, how we should live, and we do not know what happens after death.  Jesus answered these existential questions.  "For judgement I am come I to this world, that they which see not might see, and they which see might be made blind" (John 9:39).  He came that we might understand the purpose of life, and that those who think they get it will realize they are actually lost and wandering in darkness.

John 18:37.  Jesus told Pilate that he was the truth.  "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth." Pilate's response is perhaps the common response of all thinking men:  "What, really, is true."  At some point in our life, most of us realize that much of what we have been taught is not true.  What can we possible put our trust and confidence in?  

Mark 2:17  "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."  Luke 19:10. "For the Son of Man came to seek and save that which was lost."  The Lord understood that it was not the "good" people who would respond to his message;  the rich, the talented, the popular.  No, it was the childlike and the needy who would love the simple truth as it is in Jesus. "Blessed are the poor in spirit," "Blessed are the meek," and "Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness."  They are the ones who will obtain the blessing of God. 

The Home Stretch

June 5 - We have had a steady barrage of company the last six weeks.  Our daughter Michelle, her husband Mike, and Kaitlyn Weiweck flew in on April 29.  One of Denita's co-workers at Fred Meyer also came while she was back in the States.  The five of us - Mike, Michelle, Kaitlyn, myself, and Judy Lawson - took a day ferry over to Patmos.  We split up, and they took a taxi up the hill to the castle monastery and did the usual touristy stuff.  I hired another taxi, and over the course of three hours explored every nook and cranny on the island.

Denita flew back to Samos on May 8, and Judy left the following day, so they had one evening together.  The next day, we all flew to Cappadocia.  We had six glorious days in the center of Anatolia.  Kaitlyn left us and flew to Israel.  The rest of us trekked across half of Turkey by car, stopping to see Konya, Antioch of Pisidia, the pools of Pamukkale, the Colossian mound and the sparkling ruins of Laodicea.

After getting home, Denita's mother Marlys Enge, and her great niece Anna Rutherford, came on May 25, and our son Brian and Tiffany Anderson a couple of days later.  We made a quick trip across the waters to Turkey so everyone could see Ephesus.  We spent the night on the shores of Lake Bafa, which was like stepping back 200 years in time.  It was a primitive village with cows in the road, chickens everywhere, and Turkish women in their traditional pajama-like pantaloons.  The kids love it!  The next day we visited the ancient cities of Didymus, Melitus, and Priene in rapid succession.  Mike and Michelle left the following morning and drove down the coast to scuba dive.  The rest of us returned to Samos, where we learned how to cram six people into one tiny car for meetings and beach days.  Brian and Tiffany flew out the morning of June 4th, and Marlys and Anna took off later that night.  

Whew!

It looks like we will have a quiet week or so until we exit.  There is a couple coming to the Gospel meeting here, and we have been invited to their house tomorrow night along with Vasili, Irene, and the workers.  We leave Samos on June 14, immediately after Sunday morning meeting.  I am not looking forward to our last days as our hearts have become knit together in love.

We plan to fly to Munich, Germany, rent a car, and take the Romantic Highway north from the Alps.  We will start at the castle of Mad Ludwig - Neuschwanstein - and take in the medieval walled towns of Dinkelsbuhl and Rothenburg.  We will stay with my German buddy Roland and his family for a day near Hamburg, and then it's off to LA to see the grandkids and home!

Anna Economides and Anna Rutherford, 

an old Greek sister and a worker-to-be

Mike Robinson and Brian Oakes,

holding up the Temple at Didymus

The pillars at Didymus are massive

I got to the Ephesus Museum for the first time, 

and met Dianna of the Ephesians.  In my

humble opinion, she was not all that great!

Mike and Michelle above the amphitheater at Melitus

Dinner at Lake Bafa in Turkey.  Notice the cute

little island in the background

The cascading pools of Pamukkale.

The ladies at Kokkari

Catal Huyuk

May 17 - We left Goreme this morning and headed west toward Konya.  This was the Iconium of Paul and Barnabas' day.  Just south of Konya, not all that far from the village of Lystra which the two apostles Paul also visited, lies the archaeological mound of Catal Huyuk.

Catal Huyuk is one of the oldest and largest Neolithic cities ever unearthed.  It is roughly the same age as the lower levels of Jericho.  It captures the time when man was just transitioning from hunting and gathering to farming with livestock.  These people planted wheat and barley for sustenance, but they also hunted wild game.  The city is estimated to contain in its heyday about 5,000 people living in 1,000 houses.  Back then, the town lie on the banks of a vast marsh populated with ducks and other wild life.

The city must have looked a bit like the Zuni pueblos of the American southwest.  The square mud-brick houses were built hard up against each other.  Curiously, the houses had no doors, with only small windows place high on the walls.  They all take access from a hole in the rooftop.  Each house in Catal Huyuk has its own oven for baking bread, placed just underneath the ladders leading to the rooftop, allowing the smoke to escape.  The walls and the floors were covered in plaster, and the walls decorated with panels of red.  Rush mats were used on the floors.   The furniture was built-in, with brick platforms for sitting on, working on and sleeping on.  They buried their dead under these platforms.

Many houses have religious shrines, and it is clear that bulls were sacred.  Bulls' heads and horns project from the walls and altars of their temples.  I have always wondered if the bull worship of early man didn't derive from the zodiac.  The earth moved through the constellation Taurus from about BC 4100 to BC 2200, and the ancients believed the planets and stars were gods.  Catal Huyuk has been carbon dated from roughly BC 7400 to BC 6200, so this theory would greatly compress the conventional C14 dating.

The Catal Huyukians were a fierce and bloodthirsty lot, as you can see. The oven to bake bread lie just below the ladder, and the smoke exited through the same hole in the roof.

This picture shows the excavations at the southern part of the mound

This picture shows the northern excavations.

This wall shows some of the artwork found at the settlement.

This beautifully worked flint knife reminded me of Abraham and his son.

Colossae

May 19 - We drove from Egirdir, in the Turkish Lake District, to Pamukkale, the gleaming white cliffs with the blue pools of water cascading down.  Last August, when we were here, we visited the newly excavated ruins of Laodicea, which are located near the freeway interchange.  This time, we decided to hunt up what remained of Colossae.

The ancient city of Colossae is located just east of the modern town of Honaz, about 10 miles south of Laodicea.  It rests at the foot of 8,000' Mt. Cadmus, the highest mountain in western Turkey.  The Lycus River, little more than a creek by our standards, runs to the north.  The old Greek city has never been excavated, so all we see today is a huge 100' high mound with a dirt road along one side and small vineyards and cherry orchards on the other.  It is a very fertile nook of this valley due to the abundant water.  We bought a kilo of cherries from a roadside farmer for 6 Turkish lira, or about $2.00 US.

Colossae was the preeminent city in the upper Lycus Valley throughout the Persian era, 600 BC to 350 BC.  Xerxes stopped here for several days in BC 480 on his way to the Greek settlements along the Aegean coast.  After Alexander the Great conquered the region around BC 330, the Greeks started constructing cities further up the river valleys of western Anatolia, including the cities of Laodicea and Hierapolis.  They soon eclipsed Colossae, and by the time Paul was preaching in Ephesus, Colossae was a cultural backwater.  

Paul wrote to the Colossian saints from his imprisonment in Rome shortly after AD 60.  Tacitus records in the Annals that Laodicea had been destroyed by an earthquake in the 7th year of Nero, who reigned from AD 54 to AD 68 (Chapter 14).  This would be approximately AD 61 by our reckoning.  It appears that the neighboring city of Colossae was also toppled by the same earthquake but, unlike Laodicea, it was never rebuilt.  When John received his revelation in the later years of the 60's, he lists Laodicea among the seven Christian churches in Roman Asia but he did not mention Colossae, which no longer existed.

We read about a church in Colossae, which met in the home of Philemon, and another in nearby Laodicea (Col. 2:1, 4:16, Phil. 1). There were also a few believers in Hieropolis, the holy city that lies directly above the travertine pools of Pamukkale (Col. 4:13).  These Christians had been exposed to the Judaizing of the Galatians who lived less than 100 miles to the east.  "Let no man therefore judge you in meat , or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath day ........." (Col. 2:16).  They also had been influenced by the angelology of Jewish mysticism. "Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind ....." (Col. 2:18).

Denita photographed the only ancient artifact to be found on the surface

The ruins of Colossae lie under the green mound in center right. 

Mt. Cadmus is the snowy mountain in the background.

The mound of Colossae as viewed from the vineyard directly east.

The top of the mound with Mt. Cadmus in the background.

The town of Honaz can be seen at the base just above my hat.

This picture views north and west from the top of the mound.

Cappadocia Part 6 Antioch

TMay 15 - The first cities Paul visited on the Anatolian plateau were Antioch and Iconium.  One of the objectives of this mission was to tell the Jewish community that the Messiah, the hope of Israel, had come.  Paul and Barnabas therefore visited the synagogues in each city, where they got a hearing after the reading of the Law and Prophets on Shabbat.  But it was immediately clear that the Jews did not accept the Good News, and so they turned to the God-fearing Gentiles.  They responded enthusiastically, and on their trip home Paul and Barnabas organized the believers into little home-churches and appointed elders.

Iconium is now called Konya, a city of about one million people.  It is the center of the Mevlevi Order, the sect of the whirling dervishes.  Antioch, on the other hand, is a heap of ruins.  The pictures below are from Antioch near modern Yalvac, Turkey.

I was surprised at the size of Antioch.  In Paul's day, it must have had 50,000 or 60,000 inhabitants.  The amphitheater itself held 15,000 spectators.  The city is built on a gentle hill which faces the south.  There is a high, snow-covered mountain to the southwest.  It had two main streets which still have the original paving stones.  At the top of the city, overlooking everything, was a Roman temple.  The main square was just below it, and the temple was accessed by 12 steps.  One of the early excavators believed the synagogue Paul preached in lay at the bottom of this square.  There are remains of a Catholic Church at that location, and they found several Jewish artifacts there.  The amphitheater was cut into the natural hillside just below the synagogue.  Antioch had a large Jewish population and the Romans had encouraged soldiers to settle there as well.

Acts 13:14  "But when they departed from Perga, they came to Antioch in Pisidia, and went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and sat down.  And after the reading of the law and the prophets the rulers of the synagogue sent unto them, saying, Ye men and brethren, if ye have any word of exhortation for the people, say on.  Then Paul stood up, and beckoning with his hand said, Men of Israel, and ye that fear God, give audience.  The God of this people of Israel chose our fathers, and exalted the people when they dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt, and with an high arm brought he them out of it................  And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue, the Gentiles besought that these words might be preached to them the next sabbath.  Now when the congregation was broken up, many of the Jews and religious proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas: who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.  And the next sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God.  But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming.  Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.  For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth.  And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed."

William Ramsey thought the synagogue of Paul's day lie beneath the ruins of this Catholic Church.

This picture was taken just above the 12 steps that led to the Temple of Zeus.  The broad area beyond is the main public square, and the synagogue lie at the far end.

This picture shows the public pool where people went every day for water.

The amphitheater stood in the center of Antioch

This was the plumbing supply shop of Antioch.  Smile.

The aquaduct leading to the city