Thessaloniki

5/23/24

Dear Family and Friends!

Paul’s journey continues

Because of the trouble in Philippi, Paul, Silas and Timothy journeyed on the paved Roman road to Thessaloniki.

Entering into the gates through the walls surrounding this metropolitan city, Paul finds a synagogue and spends three weeks speaking daily to the Jews about Jesus as their resurrected messiah.

The missionary work was successful. Many prominent Jews and Gentiles, including Jason, and many women became Christians. The Jews, who did not accept the message of Paul about Jesus organized a riot in the marketplace. They wanted Paul to be arrested again.

An unsuccessful city wide search was made for Paul. Jason and other Christians were taken instead before the city magistrates and questioned.

Jason posted Bond and that evening the Christians secretly helped Paul, Silas and Timothy to leave Thessaloniki.

The mission team went south to Berea where the Jewish community was more accepting as the Bereans were noted for searching the scriptures daily.

Jewish leaders in Thessalonica heard that Paul was in Berea.

They came to town and started trouble again for the missionaries. It was decided that Paul should leave and go by the sea to Athens while Timothy and Silas stayed in Berea to continue their work.

We have now come full circle in our trip in our Journey with Paul around the Aegean Sea as he comes to Athens (our first destination). I am writing this on the bus, (on my phone) as we travel back to Athens for our flight back to JFK.

Some reflections about the trip and about this journey withPaul

1. I did not realize until coming here the geography and how difficult it would’ve been for Paul to travel from one place to another. The miles of coastline back up to very tall mountains that had to be crossed or walked around to get from one place to another using trails as there were few roads.

2. What takes us a day of travel at 60 miles an hour on new highways in our luxury bus would have taken weeks and weeks to reach other towns with the gospel. Yet these men were setting the world upside down!

3. Yet the gospel did spread rapidly as every new Christian became a missionary! We need to follow their example!

Thanks for your comments and for taking this journey with me.

Ellen

PS.

This is not the end of my blog for this trip. We have visited islands in the Aegean and other sites on land and I want to share with you.

There is more to come, but mostly photos with captions.