Roman province

And they land in the province of Pamphylia.

Roman province of Pamphylia.

And their first stop is the city of Perga or Pergia.

Depending on how you see that rendered.

So a church was established.

Now, we have to understand, where is Antioch? Antioch's right there in central Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey.

Do you know what province, Roman province, Antioch is in? Galatia.

You know, when Paul had to write a letter to some people, he wrote to the Galatians.

In fact, the apostle Paul, who was a Pharisee who thought that this is not good news at all, became a Jesus follower and was like, oh my goodness, it's even better than I expected.

The apostle Paul writes a letter to Christians living in Galatia, the Roman province of Galatia, And in that letter, if you've read the book of Galatians, it's in your New Testament.

The entire book of Galatians, for the most part, is his defense of the goodness of the good news.

Because Paul understood better than anyone because of what he was and what he became.

And once upon a time, and I'm done, once upon a time, once upon a time.

That was the message that the church exported to the world.

That's why Christianity, the message of Jesus, survived the first century, the second century, and the third century before eventually Rome capitulated and declared our king the king of kings, which was no small feat for the Roman Empire.

That's what was exported to the world, the grace, the mercy, and the love of God for the entire world.

And by the way, this is not a controversial, this is a very, um, uh, mainstream historical take, uh, f- through secular, secular anthropology.

At the time of the destruction of the First Temple, uh, there was an exodus of Jews who'd, or, or Israelites I should say, who left, um, the, the Levant/Palestine, uh, to, i- because the, because of the Babylonian conquest, and they simply went west to, uh, cities that would had been constructed by the Phoenicians, such as Carthage, um, uh, what's it called? And then, and then also the, the Phoenicians had penetrated into what would b- later be known as Hispaniol or, um, Hispania, uh, w- the, uh, the, the Roman province.

They would eventually be taken over by the Romans.

But during this entire time, there was a m- migration of Semitic peoples, other Semitic peoples, 'cause again, the, uh, the Phoenicians also were Semitic.

But, uh, into that area, who maintained their, uh, Israelite Jewish, air quotes, uh, identity.

Now, what is interesting is that, uh, when he moved both to, uh, Portugal first and then Spain in order to pursue, uh, his, uh, goal of exploring westward from Europe, uh, he immediately took on the name, the name Colon.

Now, Colon is an inco- extremely common Morano Converso name in Spain and Portugal, and is also just a straight up Italian Jewish name in Italy.

Um, so just for guys, if you didn't know this, the city of Cologne, C-O-L-O-G-N-E, in Germany, southern Germany, was originally called, uh, in the first century AD was called, uh, Colonia Agrippina, uh, which is in Latin, of course, and it was the Jer- uh, the Roman Empire's, um, city of Colo- uh, Co- the Co- Colonia.