Antioch

And this is going to fit right in with our missions conference, what we just experienced, and what we're going to look at here today.

If you look in Acts 13, we have been looking at the church at Antioch.

And what a wonderful church at Antioch.

And how that God went there when there was nothing.

Much like where Brother Kenneth has gone there in Bolivia where there was nothing.

And the Bible says here in 13 verse, but really what you're looking at is a church should duplicate a church, should duplicate a church, should duplicate a church.

That's really what we're talking about here.

And so in Acts 13 verse 1, the Bible says there was in the church that was at Antioch.

But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.

And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch.

These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.

And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.

And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch.

These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.

And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

And that in particular is interesting to me.

Because leaving the religious aspect aside and the fact that it was the target of the First Crusade and all of those symbolic things, if you had to look at the cities that were the centers of these polities at the end of the First Crusade and for the first half of the 12th century, Antioch, Edessa, Tripoli, and Jerusalem,

There's no question that Antioch is the most important of those cities, but it is

frittered away, I think, partly by Bohemond, but also there are other dynamics of play that make Jerusalem emerge as the, it's not quite a vassal relationship, but really the center of all these other states.

So Antioch is a larger city at the time.

Its walls are more...

It has better defenses.

It's the most important city to most of Europe and part of the Levant.

And, uh, they are like everybody else here, like the Zengids, uh, you know, and everybody else who's ruling these cities, they get a, a disposition from the Seljuks, uh, to rule, uh, particular city and they turn it into, if you are able to kind of turn that into an inherited governorship, then this becomes a family business and you become a little petty dynasty and you have your own fiefdom.

We talked about Dukak last season, who was the ruler of Damascus at the time, who participated in the aborted attempt to relieve Antioch and, you know, didn't get along with any of the other Muslim rulers of these cities in the region, Aleppo and so forth.

So it's similar to that.

I mean, Dukak, when Dukak died, it was, in fact, that was the point at which Tog Tekin was appointed by the Seljuks to replace him.

For 98% of all people, the choice is going to be to survive over a fundamentalist extremist doctrine of all versus all.

And that's why...

I mean, that's why Antioch is working with various Muslim factions and they didn't steal all the land from the Muslims and kick them out when they got there because those Muslims are the ones who bring in the grain or they cobble the shoes or whatever it

is.

And that in particular is interesting to me.

Because leaving the religious aspect aside and the fact that it was the target of the First Crusade and all of those symbolic things, if you had to look at the cities that were the centers of these polities at the end of the First Crusade and for the first half of the 12th century, Antioch, Edessa, Tripoli, and Jerusalem,

There's no question that Antioch is the most important of those cities, but it is

frittered away, I think, partly by Bohemond, but also, you know, there are other dynamics of play that make Jerusalem emerge as the, it's not quite a vassal relationship, but really the center of all these other states.

So Antioch is a larger city at the time.

Its walls are more...

It has better defenses.

It's the most important city to most of Europe and part of the Levant.

Silas doesn't work alone.

He has another brother who works with him, who goes to Antioch from Jerusalem.

And then when you have the men that Paul trained, they're in co-working relationships.

And so it's a principle that does not break.

Who trained them? Jesus.

Paul of Tarsus was called, trained, and sent.

He was trained by Barnabas and the believing community in Antioch.

He rose up to leadership.

Alexandria, Egypt, where the Coptic church originated and continues to thrive.

Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople, and Antioch of Syria.

Exactly.

So it was one of those major centers from the very, very beginning.