European Update

Well, as I said this morning, I have 1 Thessalonians 1, verses 5 -10 prepared, but Pradeep said, oh,

I'd love to hear an update on what was going on with the trip in Germany, and then in Austria, and the

Czech Republic. I thought, why don't we just have an update here with the folks, and instead of updating Pradeep, and then 50 other people one at a time,

I might as well do it all at once. And so, here's my purpose tonight. We, as a church, support

Christian and Cheryl Andreessen. He is the director of the EBTC, the European Bible Training.

So, you're all looking over there. That's why we don't do PowerPoint on Sunday morning, right? You're all looking over the Braveheart video.

He leads EBTC, and he is the...I'm trying to think of the

English word for it. He's just the leader. They have about 200 students now, which I'm very encouraged about. They have a master's level program, and they're working on a doctoral program as well.

And they have a place in Berlin, and then down in Bonn, and down in Zurich, and it's expanding.

So, I'm very encouraged by the ministry there. And so, Christian asked me to come over and teach a class on preaching, master's level class on preaching.

They've already had a preaching class, but now they'd like to have kind of a finishing touches class. And I loved it because it was in English.

So, now men who...we had men from Croatia, one guy from America, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, and the

Ukraine, all together, and they want to learn how to preach a little bit better for this master's class. And so,

I went over there for a week. Then, a master's seminary graduate, Lance Roberts, who was in the Czech Republic, found out that I was coming over, and he said, well, you must come over and have a seminar on preaching

Ephesians for two days. So, I said, okay, great. And so, what I did is you'll see pictures of EBTC, of some of the

Czech men, but also just a couple of things that I went and did touristy.

But when I do tourist things, I like to do biblical tourism, right? So, it's like going to Israel, like going to Greece.

Let's go find things that are interesting from a biblical perspective. And so, I just took a lot of pictures. You'll see that I'm not good at slideshows.

You'll see that these are all just from my iPhone 4S. I'm not a great picture taker, but we're going to talk a little bit about a couple of secular things of interest and some biblical things.

And we'll look at, tonight, Revelation chapter 2 with Pergamum. We'll look at Acts chapter 19 with Ephesus.

We'll look at a few other passages as well. So, for those of you that are dying for biblical exposition, hear my friend

John Boulders here. He's probably wanting biblical exposition. I'll give you a little exposition, and you can get a cassette of this morning's sermon, if you'd like.

And I trust that tonight will be encouraging. You can know the ministry a little bit more as we support them. And I think you'll learn a few things too, and you'll get to see a few things.

Here's my goal. What did Pergamum look like? So, when you read Revelation 2, you know. What did

Diana look like? And so, when people were bowing down for two hours shouting, great is Artemis, what'd she look like?

And so, I got to see a lot of those things in museums. And so, are there any questions?

And then, I thought we would have some chips and salsa at the end. Now, before I forget, I just looked at Cheryl Casey.

Cheryl has done a great job for us getting together and putting together the Christmas dinner for the adults at the manor.

We are short in terms of how many people we need to guarantee the room.

How many people are we short, Cheryl? Twenty -eight. So, if you would like to go, tonight is a good night to register and to pay.

If you can't afford it, then talk to Pastor Steve or myself, and we want to make sure that you can go for...

What's the date? Friday, November 30th.

So, Cheryl's right there. We'd love to have you register tonight. If you give me your social security number,

I might take an IOU. I don't know if Cheryl will take it, but I might take it.

Okay? So, let's start off, and this is kind of chronological order.

I was here for two weeks, taught about 60 hours, and in the meantime, I just would try to go see some interesting things.

So, I thought I would go first. Scott, I'll just tell you when to move it forward, okay? I thought I would go to Bonhoeffer's house.

Bonhoeffer lived in West Germany, and the reason why I went there is for two reasons.

One, he's a theologian that I think is respected even in evangelicalism, even though he shouldn't be.

I just read Eric Metaxas' new biography, and he basically wants you to think he's an evangelical.

I don't think Bonhoeffer was an evangelical at all, but he was a very historical figure, and you could go to his house, which

I did. Let me just give you a quote, and then you're going to think maybe all the slides are dumb after this, but here's what

Bonhoeffer said in his book, Christ the Sinter. The assertion of the sinlessness of Jesus fails if it has in mind observable acts of Jesus.

His deeds are done in the likeness of flesh. They are not sinless, but ambiguous.

One can and should see good and bad in them. So then you say to me,

Mike, why would you ever go to somebody's house like that? Why would you go do that? Well, Bonhoeffer was very famous as a

Lutheran pastor because he opposed Hitler. He opposed Hitler and wrote about it, and actually he was giving a speech on the radio two days after Hitler was installed as chancellor, and in the middle of this radio message when he is attacking

Hitler and warning the Germans about slipping into the cult of not the

Führer, the leader, but the Fährführer, which is the misleader, he was cut off in his radio address in the middle of a sentence.

Bonhoeffer, has anybody here read much Bonhoeffer? Some have. Bonhoeffer did not like the

Jewish persecution, and so that was a good thing. He said in 1932, the blood of martyrs might once again be demanded, but this blood, if we really have the courage and loyalty to shed it, will not be innocent, shining like that of the first witnesses for the faith.

And so they picked up Bonhoeffer, not because of his conspiracy against Hitler, but for other reasons, and then they found documents related to Hitler and his plot to overcome and overthrow

Hitler. They arrested him. Let's go to the next slide there. And this is the house where the

Gestapo went to. This was his father's house. His father was a neurologist in Berlin, and this is not the house where Bonhoeffer grew up.

This would be the new house in Berlin, and he would be there on summer vacation, and he was upstairs in his study when the

Gestapo came to arrest him and take him to, first they took him to Tegel prison camp, and then to Buchenwald concentration camp.

Go ahead and turn to the next one. This is just Bonhoeffer house. Next one, that's his desk where he would write books.

He wrote ethics there. Some of you probably know Letters from Prison. It's an interesting book. Some of you probably know

The Cost of Discipleship. Grace isn't free. Grace isn't cheap. He says some things are good, but he was definitely a liberal pastor.

He was executed by hanging April 9th, 1945, two weeks before the 97th

Infantry Division rescued the rest of the people. Go ahead and turn the slide. That was his original house.

These two houses were owned by the father, and the Gestapo came in here. This is the other house owned by the father, and right along here is the railroad tracks, which the famous railroad track 17 is found, and that's the famous one where they take everybody to the concentration camps.

So why did I put this in here? Just pastorally, you ought not to look up to Bonhoeffer's theology.

You might be glad that he stood against Hitler, but Bonhoeffer was a liberal influenced by Barth.

I'm not sure he believed in the sinlessness of Jesus. I know he didn't believe in the virgin birth. Let me just give you a quote, 1933.

Bonhoeffer, the biblical witness is uncertain with regard to the virgin birth. So if you want to study theologians,

I have about 50 that I'd love to have you study, Barnhouse. Well, Barnhouse might be one of them, but Bonhoeffer isn't one of those.

So I just thought it was interesting. I went to the house, and then when the guy gave me the tour, it was a private tour,

I asked him, I said, did Bonhoeffer believe in the resurrection? And then this

German young man said, well, who could know? I hope if someone asks you, does your pastor believe in the resurrection?

I hope you say, he talks about it so much, it sounds like he's preaching about two different gods, Jesus and the resurrection.

Okay, next. Now, for whatever reason, these aren't coming out too well, obviously.

You can't see that. This is Christian with some Halloween makeup on. No, just kidding. That is, pardon me?

Maybe this final light over here. I have my flashlight. Let's see what it's like. This is just Christian, no.

The computer looks good, but it doesn't look good here. It's probably the iPhone.

Is there any way we can make it brighter? Probably not. I have to have my flashlight. That's Christian.

Christian is our missionary along with Cheryl at the EBTC. He's taking me to some place where they eat mussels by the thousands.

And I really love what the Lord has done through Christian, Andreessen, and the EBTC. Next slide. There is a parchment museum in Vienna, and so I thought, you know what?

Who likes to go to parchment museums? I do. So off we went to the parchment museum. And remember, when you're writing down biblical things, you've got two options back in the day.

You can write on animal skin, or you can write on leaves that are pressed out very thinly, and you can write on them.

And so we have a variety of materials for parchments. Next slide. You can see some ancient

Hebrew here, writings, more parchment. Slides, OK, next one. Variety of slides.

You're like, OK, this is really exciting. They look better in my study. OK, keep going. It's fascinating to me that this, of course, isn't a

New Testament one, but we have about 5 ,000 manuscripts or parts of manuscripts in the New Testament. And just what people go through to keep

God's Word and how God has kept His Word. Next slide. Oh, that one's not going to come out too well, so let's just go ahead and do the next one.

That last thing was a little piece of an ephod. And so if you ever want to know what an ephod is, if I was a kid about that age right there,

I'd think, what's an ephod? So an ephod is kind of a vest, and here was an ancient ephod.

Again, that's kind of bright red normally, but not through the projector. So let's just keep going. There's an ephod there.

Bad picture, but you can get an idea of the ephod. So far, you're thinking, I haven't learned one Bible verse yet.

Let's keep going. OK, let's keep going. Isn't that amazing? There's just one more piece of parchment. All right, there we go.

There's another one. Lots of parchment. Oh, yeah, next one. This is interesting. The last one that we saw.

The flooding of the Nile was observed with great accuracy. That's what the last one said. This papyrus is addressed to Flavius Strategius.

It reports that the water of the Nile increased 28 lengths of fingers during four days in August because of the omnipotence of Christ compared to the rise in water level the year before.

This is an increase of eight lengths of fingers. Isn't that fascinating? I think that's

Tobit chapter 3. Next slide. Let's do the next one. Then I went to a museum.

Who knows what this is? Who knows who did this? Did somebody just say

Picasso? No. That's Rembrandt, and that's Rembrandt's version of what? Who? Paul.

It's this majestic, super large painting in the Vienna Museum, and that's his version of Paul.

Here he's got the scriptures. I don't know what Paul looked like, but I don't think he probably looked that good.

Remember how many times he was stoned and shipwrecked and everything else? But when I see something biblical,

I think Rembrandt's Paul. Now remember in the, what's the name of the museum here in Boston, Kim, the one we just went to?

Isabella Gardner? Isabella Stewart Garden? Is that what it's called? They had

Rembrandt's picture there of Jesus calming the storm, except it was stolen, I believe, in 1990ish, 95, 97.

Okay, next one. There's all kinds of huge pictures in this museum. You can't get the gravity of it there.

Next one. Now this one, I'm sorry we can't see very well.

I don't know. It seemed like it was better early. This is by Cranach the Elder, and Cranach the

Elder was Luther's painter, Luther's PR guy, essentially. And you'll see even at this

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, some Cranach. This is Lot, and those are the two daughters.

You can't tell it, but right up in that area right there is the fire coming down, Sodom and Gomorrah.

Let's go to the next slide. This is some of the fire coming down, and up here, that's

Lot's wife, and here they're fleeing. And if you go back one, I just think, this is bad.

This is Sodom and Gomorrah. Here's Lot and the two daughters. Okay, forward ahead two. Anybody know who this is?

Well, practically, it could be John the Baptist's head, except this is from the Roman Catholic Apographa, some of the books of the

Bible that we don't think are in the canon, but could be historical. That's Judith. Judith.

Oh yeah, Judith back here is like, oh wow, that's a picture of me. All right, this one here, all that to say, sometimes the way they paint is there are going to be time lapses if you go in certain circles, and I did just find this so fascinating.

There's the crucifixion of Jesus, and what do you see over here, Steve Cooley, John 3, verse what?

15, just here we have the serpent raised up. Can you see that?

This one right here? Okay, that's a snake. See that in Greek, can't you tell? Okay, keep going, let's go.

This is why, there it is. All right, so okay, right from Numbers. See, this is why I don't do this on Sunday morning.

So even if tonight is a total bomb, you'll see. Okay, that's why he doesn't do it. Next slide, please. Now here we come to some of my favorite things.

These are little idols. Here's Aphrodite. And so, can you imagine idols everywhere, like in Acts 17 this morning, underwater with idols.

There's idols everywhere, and by the way, there's usually big idols. But if you travel, you can't go with your big idols, so what do you need?

You need a little pocket idol. And so you have a little pocket votive idol, and then you can bring your idol with you.

I don't know what they see when you've got them in your little fanny pack or something, I'm not sure. But here we have different idols.

I'm always fascinated by idols. That's Aphrodite. Okay, next. These are little lamps. Doesn't this remind you of Matthew chapter 5?

It did me. You don't hide your lamp, right, in a secret thing.

I think of always the kids' song, hide it under a bushel. What? No, of course not. Okay, keep going. This is some

Christian descriptions here. You can't see it, but this little letter here in Greek is short for Christ.

Okay, next one. When I think of that, what do I think of? Why would a Bible pastor on kind of a mini little vacation in town for a day, getting ready to preach for two days straight, why would

I take a picture of gold rings? That's a lot of gold rings. Because gold has high value?

What must I be thinking? Pardon me? Monarchy? Okay, I like that.

Signet rings? Okay, I like that. With Daniel? You know what I was thinking? Pardon me?

Seal? Okay, I like that. What do you do when a rich man comes walking into your church,

James chapter 3, and literally the Greek says, he is gold fingered. He's got nuggets on every knuckle.

And what do you do? Where do you set him? You set him in the front.

That's James 2, is gold fingered. Sometimes people think gold finger is a

James Bond character. The real gold finger is found in James chapter 3.

Next one. You can see my head there in the camera. Isn't that amazing? Okay, he needs a haircut.

More gold fingers. Next. That is really nothing.

Just reminded me of an old elder we had here, so I thought I'd have it. Okay, sorry. Next. Now, these are helmets.

So when I see helmets like this, I think what? Roman soldiers, okay.

I think about the helmet of salvation, don't you, in Ephesians chapter 6. What did helmets look like? They looked exactly like that, except there was a little more light to them.

All right, next. There's Lance Roberts. He is in the Czech Republic, and he is north of Brno, B -N -R -O.

And he was the contact there. He's a master seminary graduate. And this is just a neat kind of castle thing in Vienna behind the scenes.

Next slide. Who's that? Sigmund Schlomo Freud.

Let's talk about Freud for a second. That is kind of an ominous picture. I have a few notes here of Freud, this

Austrian neurologist. Let's turn to the page here, the next one. This is the plaque outside of his house.

And he lived here for about 35 years until the Nazis came and ran him out.

And then he flew. He fled, rather. He flew. Hey, by the way,

I know why I teach the Bible now, because it's so much easier to teach the Bible than do some slideshows.

Okay, next one. Sigmund Freud Museum. Now, wouldn't you go there if you were in Vienna, and you can go any place?

Wouldn't you go to see Sigmund Freud Museum? Sit there? How about lay down on his couch?

Well, I guess that's in the British Museum. The people in London stole that. But everything else is there. Go ahead, next one.

There's the Freud sign out front. That's me. There I stand in the big house.

And he would live there for over 30 -some years, upstairs. Next slide. Check it out.

Sigmund Freud, doctor of law from where? Clark University.

See how everything is related? Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as free association in which patients report their thoughts without reservation, and in whichever order they spontaneously occur.

I learned that Freud's mother knew he was special because he was one of the few people who was born with a call on his head.

Now, we have a call on our life sometimes. What's a call? If you're born with a call on your head, what are you born with?

C -A -U -L. It's a portion of the birth membrane that still stays on the head.

And a lot of famous people are born with calls. And it used to be a sign back in the day that if your child was born with a call on its head, they were something special.

And Sigmund Freud was born with a call. He visited the United States in 1909 at the invitation of Stanley Hall, president of Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts.

And he gave five lectures on psychoanalysis. When the ocean liner

George Washington arrived in New York, Freud is rumored to have remarked to Carl Jung, they don't realize that we are bringing them the plague.

They don't realize we're bringing them the plague. Freud didn't have the right view of sin.

He didn't have the right view of the Savior. I tried to see if it was true or not. I couldn't find it. Steve, maybe you know, did

Freud in fact open his practice on Easter Sunday to say God is in fact dead? I couldn't prove it.

The Nazis started burning Freud's books. He said, what progress we are making.

In the Middle Ages, they would have burned me. Now they're just content with burning my books. Freud thought that God, monotheistic

God, is an illusion based on infantile emotional needs for a powerful father.

He said that religious belief is a neurotic obsession. He described the

Roman Catholic rite of Holy Communion as killing and devouring the sacred father.

He said religion was man's universal obsession, neurosis. He also said religion was an illusion.

It provided the defense, quote, against crushingly superior force of nature and the urge to rectify the shortcomings of civilization which made themselves painfully felt.

And to this day, we have Freud's psychotherapy used actually in churches and in secular places all around.

How do we affect behavioral change? By talking to patients about their difficulties.

Next slide. There's his hat and his cane and his coat. Sorry, it's not very bright.

Bright, it's bright on the computer. Next one. I got my little office hours there for Sigmund Freud.

There I am. Okay, next one. Oh, there's a better shot of his cane, his hat. Okay, next.

This is a picture, I wish it would turn out more. It's a picture of Moses with the Ten Commandments in Freud's office.

And that's the way Moses is, that's the way Freud thinks of God, this angry God. Remember Moses coming down from the mountain and he throws down the tablets and they break again?

He's got a wrong view of God. He tries to blame everything on our fathers, yet he doesn't blame anything on Adam, our real father.

Let me say this to the congregation. I think you know it. Three main kinds of counseling in the

U .S., psychological counseling, biblical counseling, and integration.

And so we here at this church, at Bethlehem Bible Church, run from Freud like no other, because we think if you have the wrong view of sin and the wrong view of the

Savior, it's hard to help people. Maybe you can help unbelievers, but integration with Freud, who basically hates

God, hates religion, hates all this stuff, is not the way to go. Next slide.

He loved to use cocaine for his patients, and if you were addicted to morphine, he could cure you, and he would cure you by getting you hooked on cocaine.

True. Next. There is his couch that you would lay on so you could freely associate and talk about things.

Next one. There's Freud. When he was older, he smoked so much tobacco, he had an ulcer in his mouth, and that's pretty much what he was going to die from, is cancer in his mouth.

Next slide. There's Lance sitting next to Freud's seat, and so Lance is on the phone, and there's

Freud's office, that's his desk there. Next one. And look at Freud looking down at the pastor in a condescending fashion.

So there's the battle of Freud and the pastor. Next one.

This was just fun. Only people who like the English language or grammar could like this.

This is a quote from Freud's dream work. From the optative to the indicative mood.

And I love the indicative mood so much. I remember Machen called it the triumphal indicative. Instead of going around telling

Christians what to do all the time, to tell them what Christ has done in the place. And I just thought, here's this huge poster with indicative mood.

It was so good I had to take another picture, Scott. The indicative mood. Preaching the gospel, what

God has done. Facts. Next one. It's so good I took another one. The indicative mood. You know what

I love to do on vacation is I just love to find grammar where it says the indicative mood. Next one. Okay, turn your

Bibles to Acts chapter 19, please. Ephesus. We're going to go to Ephesus right now.

I'm in Vienna and they said we've got a special Ephesians display.

I guess we do need lights for that. And we've got all kinds of artifacts from Turkey, from Ephesus, that hopefully they'll put back before we get there in April.

And I thought, how great is this? I'm in Vienna with Lance Roberts and now they have an Ephesus display. Let's go see what

Ephesus is like during the biblical time period. So Acts chapter 19.

Next slide, please. That one is a weird slide. Just go to the next one.

All kinds of gods and goddesses lined up in this hall. You can just see the outline. Next one.

Different altars. This is actually an altar for Diana. We'll see another slide about that in a second.

Go ahead. Here is the king's seat in the amphitheater where he would sit.

This is the box seat for kings, basically. Next one. There is Diana.

I just want you to get a good look at Diana because she is sick. She is gross.

Do the next slide. There is Diana. She was in one of the seven wonders of the world at Ephesus.

She is obviously a fertility goddess. She pretty much ruled the roost at Ephesus.

Next slide. How would you like to bring your kids to go worship there? It's as bad as it gets.

I'll never forget the time I took the kids. We were driving up to the Twin City School. So I said, okay, kids, we're a little bit early.

We pulled into a parking lot of this place. And I saw a statue over there.

And I said to the kids, all right, everybody out of the car. Okay, dad. Really? Yeah, out of the car. Walk over to the statue.

I said, all you have to do is bow down to the statue one time and sing, she is exalted, she is exalted on high, and I will praise you.

And then hop back in the car. We're good to go. Now, my kids are looking at me like you're looking at me right now.

Going to these statues, fertility statues, and bowing down to worship.

It's pretty common over the East, but it's not so common here now. Acts 19 .21

says, follow along with me. This is good to have in the background. After these events,

Paul resolved in the spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia and go to Jerusalem, saying, after I have been there,

I must also see Rome. And having sent into Macedonia two of his helpers,

Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while. About that time, there arose no little disturbance concerning the way.

What's the way, by the way? Christianity. Chapter 19, chapter 22, chapter 24, the way.

There is opposition. When you see this understatement here, there arose no little disturbance.

What's the writer trying to tell you? What's Luke saying? There's a great disturbance. This is volcanic, is what it is.

For a man named Demetrius, he tells us now what's going on in verse 24, a silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis.

Diana is another word for Artemis. I don't know why when I was a kid

I thought Artemis was like Artemis Gordon. It was a man's name or something, and he was on the wild, wild west. No, this is

Artemis her. It's a she. Brought no little business to the craftsman.

Same kind of language here. No little disturbance, no little business. A lot of business in your affairs.

Silversmith, guess what you're going to make out of the silver? Little Dianas to put in your pockets to take all around.

Silver shrines of Artemis. Household idols. These he gathered together with the workmen in similar trades and said, men, you know that from this business we have our wealth.

This is our moneymaker. And you see verse 26, and here not only in Ephesus, but also in almost all of Asia, this

Paul, you can hear the disdain. This Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods.

That's fascinating. And there's danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess

Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be disposed from her magnificence, she whom

Asia and the world worship. They had major feast days.

One time they'd have a whole week where one week was devoted to worshiping this thing.

This is causing problems. And basically what they're saying is true.

When they heard this, they were enraged, verse 28, and were crying out, great is

Artemis of the Ephesians. Isn't it nice to have false idolatry?

Just bring the whole congregation together in one uniform statement. Great is, I think about sometimes going to the

Celtics game in between. You've got a timeout and everybody's chanting, Celtic power, Celtic power,

Celtic power. Is that what they say? Something like that. What do they say? Luke, what do they say?

What would you know? By the way, every time I'm able to take Luke to a

Celtics game, it's usually once a year, they have cameras that they zoom in on people, and then they play them up on the big screen, and it's weird because every single time

Luke gets on the main screen and he does some kind of dance thing going on, and I think he says

Celtic power, and then they film him. Any other comments from the peanut gallery?

We are going to be ruined financially. If there's no such thing as a

God, then we can't make money selling gods that don't exist. Civic pride, religious pride.

So the city was filled with the confusion. Isn't that interesting the way the ESV says that? The city wasn't filled with confusion.

With the confusion. They rushed together into the theater, dragging with them

Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul's companions in travel. This assembly had 10 ,000 people.

It was like going to TD Bank Garden. When Paul wished to go in among the crowd, 10 ,000, 12 ,000, 13 ,000 people, the disciples would not let him.

Can you imagine? Paul's just like, I'm going in. Send me into the center. And even verse 31, some of the

Asiarchs, who were friends of his, these were high -ranking officials in this Roman cult, sent to him and were urging him not to venture into the theater.

It's like you've got the false teachers telling Paul, don't go in there or you're going to get killed. Some cried out one thing.

This is mob mentality. They don't even know why they're doing it. Some another, for assembly was in confusion, and most of them did not know why they had come together.

But that's no big deal. Whose side are you on? I don't know. I'm against you. Some of the crowd prompted

Alexander, whom the Jews had put forward. And Alexander, motioning with his hand, wanted to make a defense to the crowd.

When they recognized that he was a Jew, hey, Jews, they're not into idolatry, by the way. We've got this one pegged.

For about two hours, they cried out with one voice, Great is

Artemis of the Ephesians. Now, if you ever go to a church and the pastor says, look to the neighbor on your left and say,

Great is Artemis of Ephesians. What do you usually think when people do that? I don't know, but I don't really like churches that say that.

Look to your person to the right and say, Jesus is Lord. How about Great is

Artemis of Ephesians? Two hours. You ever shout for two hours?

You kind of get hoarse? Great is

Artemis of Ephesians. Verse 35, And when the town clerk had quieted the crowd, that would make your voice hoarse too, he said,

Men of Ephesians, or Ephesus rather, who is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple keeper of the great

Artemis and of the sacred stone that fell from the sky? That meteorite that came down is associated now with worship of Artemis.

Things are coming out of the sky confirming her work and who she is. Now, the town clerk is pretty smart.

He goes on to say, verse 36, Seeing then that these things cannot be denied, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rash.

For you have brought these men here who are neither sacrilegious nor blasphemers of our goddess. If therefore

Demetrius and the craftsmen with him have a complaint against anyone, the courts are open.

They're pro -councils. Let them bring charges against one another. But if you seek anything further, it shall be settled in the regular assembly.

There's courts for this, by the way. In other words, For we really are in danger of being charged with rioting today since there is no cause that we can give to justify this commotion.

And when he had said these things, he dismissed the assembly. So now when you read,

Great is Artemis of Ephesians, you know exactly how gross she looks.

Okay, next slide. This is an altar for Artemis. Just a description or a drawing.

Part of the altar is seen on the next slide. You offer things to Diana. Gods must be placated.

That's the way things work. You want the god not to be mad at you, so you offer. Can you imagine offering things to Diana?

Right there. Okay, next slide. That's some more of the altar.

Next slide. Artemis altar. There's another version of Artemis.

She's found everywhere. Who here can read German? Okay, nobody.

Next slide then. Can you use your fingers and open that up a little bit, Scott? There's one of the seven wonders of the world.

That is what contained Artemis, the great

Diana. Pretty impressive. All right, next.

Another part of the altar where they sacrifice things to Artemis. You've got all kinds of other things.

Look it. You've got coins. You've got little pocket gods. They have a thing in Germany called pocket coffee, and it's chocolate, and on the inside is a little espresso.

And so you're on the go, and you just take a bite of this. It's dark chocolate, and there's espresso on the inside. Pocket coffee.

It's pretty good. So you have pocket gods, too, right here perfectly. Five -hour energy.

That's right, in Deutschland. Next. Here are coins. You can see there's

Diana in the center, and here it is, Ephesus. Coins from the Bible age. Next. There's Artemis decapitated.

Knock the head off. Everything's this fertility -like structure.

Next. Signet rings. Talking about signet rings. There is a signet ring for Artemis.

Next. Another little Artemis here and Artemis there and Artemis. Next. There is the temple for Diana at Ephesus.

By the way, if you go with us in April, there's only one of these remaining.

Who's been to Ephesus? Fred Maxine, have you been? There's just one of these things left, right? Okay. Sounds like I know what

I'm doing. There's one left. More. Yeah, go ahead to the next one.

Okay, next. This is actually in a German bathroom, and this is the thing that you put your hands underneath.

You touch this button, and you put your hand underneath, and it dries your hands. Actually, it's in Austria, but it doesn't work.

So I don't know if you know much German, but I think you can figure out that word. I just thought that was interesting.

They had those back in the temple in Artemis' day. But actually, this summarizes idolatry.

There's a defect. Remember I said this morning, idolatry says God, you can see

Him, but He can't talk, but the God of the Scriptures, you can't see Him, but He talks. All right, next one.

Go to Psalm 150 for a moment. Psalm 150, and I just, we have a little bit of time.

I'm going to try to be done at 10 after, so we're almost done for those of you who are hankering for some hot salsa.

Did anybody bring uber hot salsa? Summed it, wunderball.

All right, that's excellent. Psalm 150, praise the

Lord. Praise God in His sanctuary. Praise Him in His mighty heavens. Praise Him for His mighty deeds.

Praise Him according to His excellent greatness. And then look at all the musical instruments they used to praise

God. Praise Him with trumpet sound. Praise Him with lute and harp. Praise Him with tambourine and dance.

Praise Him with strings and pipe. Praise Him with sounding cymbals. Praise Him with loud clashing cymbals.

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. They have a section here in the Vienna Museum that has some

Schubert pianos, Wagner pianos, and I thought musical instruments. I just thought

I like musical instruments because God has given man so much creativity to praise Him. I just wanted to have a few pictures of some.

Next. Sorry, you can't see these that well. Next. I mean, they are ornate.

This is Schubert. That's a picture of Schubert. Can't you recognize him? It's a younger version of Schubert, but it's still

Schubert. Next. Okay, next. Okay, these aren't going to work. Next.

That is Wagner's piano right there. That's a picture of Richard Wagner, and that's his piano. I thought that was kind of cool.

Dun, dun, dun, dun, da -dun, dun, da -dun. Okay, next. That's Wagner's again, and all kinds of really cool, not biblically old, but still three-, four-, five -hundred -year -old musical instruments, all designed to please man, used to please

God in worship. Next. All kinds of brass. Go ahead. Throw in a

Napoleon picture here and there. Next. All right, go ahead.

More saxophone kind of things. Who knows the King James version of a saxophone? Who knows the name of it?

That's not quite one of these things, but I just have to say it once out loud and never say it again in my life. Sack butts.

Okay, next. Marie Antoinette, Let Them Eat Cake. Go ahead.

There it is. Next. Oh, yeah, of course. Next. Who's that?

In the middle of Vienna. Who did a lot of playing, wonderful things in Vienna?

Mozart. There you go. Okay, next. There he is again. They dig up these dirt things and make them into musical signs.

Next. Just Vienna, keep going. Next. Sorry, can't see these.

Next. Same thing next. Okay, now we come to Czech Republic, and this is right outside the church that I was at.

About 45 people go there. And if you go to the next one, this is the man who's part of the city, and they move this...

Kamerantz was his name. They moved him when the communists took over because he's got a Bible in his hand next to a child, and they moved him because he was kind of pointing his hand to the church, like this is where you get education, so the communists moved it.

But then I went around to the other side. That's the church building there, and I took a picture in such a way that his hand is restored back to, if you want real education, it's found in this

Czech church. So actually Cotton Mather was instrumental in trying to get this guy to be the president of Harvard University.

He did not come. Next. There's his name in Czech. Kaminski. It looks different when it's anglicized.

Next. It's nighttime. Okay. These are some of the guys in Germany.

This is Christian Andresen's son -in -law, a Czech guy, Polish guy,

Czech guy, Croatian guy, American guy living in Poland, and a

Czech guy, and so I try to teach them how to preach the Bible, and the good place to start, next slide, is preaching to a fresh grave.

So I took them out to the graveyard in Germany. This person was just buried two hours earlier.

You can see all the fresh dirt, and they had to stand up and preach a sermon to that actual gravesite there, illustrating the fact that unless God the

Spirit activates the word of God, it's like you're preaching to dead people. So they all liked that.

I thought that was fun. I just thought I'd put a little, the word, here's

Apfel, and I thought we'd have to have a little schrudel up there, and so, doesn't that kind of look good?

So here's what happened. The guys did such a good job of preaching to the tombstones, I said, Christian, you've got to give these guys a little bit of treat, and so he said, okay, it's a schrudel treat, and so there we go.

There's another little treat there, too. Next slide. This is some kind of, I don't know, something kitchen, some kind of, no, cake.

Okay, some kind of streusel cake. Next. And then, of course, you have the wonderful tasting windbag up here.

So that's always a family favorite when you get the windbag. Okay, next. These are the guys preaching from the, preaching the pulpit right to the right of that.

Next. For those of you that don't like TJ Maxx, they've got a new thing now. It's called

TK Maxx. It's extra discount for the Euros in your life. Okay, next.

This is Miletus. We've got a little, I've got five minutes to go, so I better hurry. If you look at Acts chapter 20,

Miletus with Paul. 2 Timothy chapter 4, he left

Trophimus sick at Miletus. Ephesus is here. Miletus is down here.

It's close. The Germans here in Berlin at the Pergamon Museum have restored, they started doing this five years ago when

I was there. It's completed, walking through the marketplace of Miletus. So I thought, you know what, that's kind of cool.

Next slide. There's Miletus. The gate. Next. This is back a little bit farther where you've got

Trajan, the nasty Roman emperor's head back there, and you walk into the market at Miletus.

I'm not kidding you. Paul would have walked through there I don't know how many times. Next. Same thing.

This is a view down under the floor, and you can see every one of these things is made with tiny little pieces. Next one.

That's the port where Paul would have come in in Acts chapter 20, and he would have made his way over here.

There's the South Agora. There's the North Agora, and here is that facade we just saw. Okay, next.

Okay, keep going. Trajan's head. Next. Kind of didn't really have a nose.

Next. Okay, next. There's what we just saw there.

Okay. Next. Augustus. An honorific inscription for Emperor Augustus.

And now the next slide shows, you're not going to see it very well, I know, ahead of time on this one.

Next one. Inscription here of Augustus. Anybody recognize

Augustus from the Bible? Next one. Okay, same thing, Augustus. Okay, now here we come to the best of all.

What does this slide show us? Well, it's a lion, right?

If you were going to say liger, I was going to smack you. Well, it's actually just a lion.

Here's what would happen. If you were a king, if you were Nebuchadnezzar, this is on the wall of Nebuchadnezzar's judgment throne hall where you would come in to be judged by Nebuchadnezzar the king.

That is Daniel chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. This is the wall right next to Nebuchadnezzar's throne.

Next one. Facade of the throne room. Next. There's a bunch of them all leading.

His throne would have been down here. And you're walking down the throne room to get judged by Nebuchadnezzar, and he is fierce as a lion.

Okay, I'm fascinated with lions. Nebuchadnezzar, the second building inscription of the king.

Next one. This is what Nebuchadnezzar wrote on the side of the gate to his palace called the

Ishtar Gate. Next. Those are some of the inscriptions of King Nebuchadnezzar, the man who lost his senses and regained them by God's grace.

Next. That is the whole inscription that goes up like that, Nebuchadnezzar on his wall.

Go ahead. And there is the gate that goes into his great room, and it's called the

Ishtar Gate. And that is the gate that Daniel would walk through all the time in Daniel chapters 1 and following, the

Ishtar Gate. Next. Okay, Ishtar Gate. Tells you a little bit of stuff.

Marduk. Keep going. This is the interesting, by the way, you walk through the

Ishtar Gate in the Pergamon Museum, and you end up in Miletus. You walk through Miletus, and you end up in Babylon.

It's kind of interesting. Next one. All these great, tall, high facades for the throne room.

Next. You can see some of those bit by bit taken back. You can kind of get a little idea back in Babylon, the color scheme, and then you can kind of understand some of the color schemes of the

Arabs now and the Muslims now. Okay, next. Like lions.

Next. Open that up a little bit. There's Nebuchadnezzar. Okay, next.

More lions. More lions. Okay, do the next one. This is the

Ishtar Gate right up here, and so you're in Babylon. You'd walk up through there, in through the Ishtar Gate, in to get to Nebuchadnezzar.

That's where he would be. Next. You can see a little bit of what it would look like back in those days.

There's Nebuchadnezzar looking at all his stuff that he's made. Okay, next. Marduk Temple in Babylon.

Next. This is like a little model that you can see what it would look like. It doesn't come through.

Next. Okay, next. Now, I've got to stop here just for a second. Here's the king, and where are his feet?

Let me just read these. Exalt the Lord our God. Worship at his holy footstool.

Holy is he. Psalm 99. Psalm 110. The Lord says to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

Psalm 132. Let us go to his dwelling place. Let us worship at his footstool. Now, this is maybe my favorite.

Isaiah 66. Think of this footstool. Thus says the Lord, Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.

What is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? Okay, next. More footstools.

Go. Look at that. Aren't you glad you came tonight? The footstool. Next. Another footstool.

Okay, next. Probably a footstool. Next. This is walking in the

Ishtar Gate with all this kind of blue stuff there. Next. A little model of it.

Okay, go ahead. There's another model of it. You can't see. Okay, this is something really cool. What is this? It's an archer.

He's a bodyguard, and he's a bodyguard for Darius. You know

Darius? Didn't want to put Daniel in the lion's den, but had to. That's from his throne room, and that's a picture of one of Darius' bodyguards.

It's not a picture. It's made out of tile. Do another one. Okay, Palace of Darius. Next one.

And there's three more of his bodyguards. You'd like to read about Darius?

We're not sure about which Darius is which one, but this is a pretty good guess. You can read Daniel chapter 6. Next one.

Those are cool, aren't they? Man, how'd you like to have them after you?

Next. Oh, I don't know what that is. That's a special black obelisk that contains

Marduk's memories. Okay, keep going. Okay, look at these guys.

Who are they? Do the next one. Who are these people? Oh, this is, this is, you're going to be glad I told you.

Let me read you something about these particular people. I don't know if you've got some kind of braided beard that makes you really tough or not, but these are, any guesses?

Ninevites. These are Ninevites. The word of the

Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up from before me.

The Assyrian armies. One author said some of the, here's what they did to people.

This is why Jonah didn't want to go, for other reasons as well. Some of the victims were held down, while one of the band of torturers, who are portrayed upon the monuments, gloating fiendishly over their fearful work, inserts his hand into the victim's mouth, grips his tongue, and wrenches it out by the roots.

In another spot, pegs are driven into the ground. The victim's wrists with cords are fixed.

Ankles are similarly made fast. The man is stretched out, unable to move a muscle. The executioner then applies himself to his task.

I won't read to you what they do. Pyramids of human heads marked with the path of the conqueror.

Boys and girls burnt alive are reserved for worse fate. Men impaled, flailed alive, blinded or deprived of their hands and feet, our ears and nose, while women and children carried into slavery.

These are the people that God told Jonah to go preach the gospel to, and when you would arrive there in the city, you would see along the walls of their city, skin as wallpaper.

Go to Nineveh. Somehow the

Veggie Tales Jonah story doesn't quite convey the seriousness of the

Assyrians. Next. Nineveh. Okay, next. Okay, next.

Chariots, Ninevites, go ahead. Kind of cool, there's my lion theme again.

Actually, you know, in England, you send out the royalty and they go hunt what? Foxes. You send out

Assyrian kings, where do they go hunt? Lions. Next. Jonah and the whale, doesn't work.

Go ahead. Next. Next. Quiver, there's a quiver. You want a lot of kids, your quiver full?

I'd ask you the question, is it a personal quiver like this one that could hold six? Or do you want a quiver full that fits in a chariot that holds 50?

I don't know. Next. Just a couple things there as you walk through the door.

Next. King. Drinking. Next. Pergamum, this is the last thing.

Open your Bibles to Revelation chapter 2. We're going to talk about pergamum. Scott, the next one. Next. Okay, right there in the center, let's read about that and we got to quit.

715. Are you dying? Let me just read this, I'll read it fast and we'll be done. I'd have you all over to my house and have a little slideshow, but my house isn't big enough, so this was my slideshow for you.

Revelation chapter 2, remember Jesus is writing to the churches. We can all learn lessons from these churches.

And this is the church of Pergamum. And so I just want you to see this so you can get an idea of what was going on.

Revelation 2 .12. And to the angel or messenger of the church in Pergamum, write.

Back a slide, Scott. Two slides, sorry, next one. There's Pergamum. Here's a little postal route.

Ephesus is here. Miletus is a little farther south, not on the map. And you've got these seven churches that are on a postal route.

And so there's Pergamum right there in Turkey. And it says in verse 13,

I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is. What is

Satan's throne? Satan's throne is this area here that worships Zeus. This is all the activity of Satan.

It's not in Salem, Massachusetts. Satan's throne at the time was right here. It was known as Satan's throne, right in this little area, worshiping and offering things to Zeus, high and lifted up on a mountain.

Next one. Zatonis' throne, right here, the altar of Zeus. And you would walk up these steps into the altar area.

Next one. You can see in this representation here where it would be.

Up the steps, this is Zatonis' throne. Next one. Right here in the museum, you can't see it.

But it seems to work out well in mine. You get to walk up those steps. The Germans have taken this from Pergamum and put it in their museum called

Pergamum. Next one. I'm standing up in Zeus' throne. If somebody asks you where did your pastor go for the last two weeks, you can tell them he went into Satan's throne.

So I'm right up here in the throne area. Next one. Walking up the throne into the throne.

This is Satan's throne in Pergamum that they've not reconstructed, but this is actually it that I guess they stole, brought it in there.

They learned from the Brits. Next one. That's a representation of what it would be like walking up into Satan's throne.

Next one. Those are steps. Next. That was the inside of it.

Next one. Kind of an interesting relief of what was going on and where you would go.

Okay, next. Satan's throne. No, sorry. Wait a second. This guy,

I had to put a picture in here. He is, Luke, you know who this is? Henrik. We were there five years ago.

Henrik would pal around with us. He was just a young guy, and now he's there serving at the church. Next one.

That is Christian Andreessen's son -in -law. Next. That is called

Thanksgiving in Berlin. And so they gave us a Thanksgiving dinner. Next. There is

Christian's daughter who's married to Marco. That's his other daughter, Lizzie. Okay. There's Christian back there hiding.

Next one. And then for the final night to give special things to the visiting pastor, they take you out to a restaurant, and in every one of these cups is liquid hot chocolate, dark chocolate.

And so you go out, instead of having coffee, you have the liquid European dark chocolate.

And I got mine with chili, which means with like a hot, spicy chili. So you drank hot chocolate, and then when it also went down into you, then it felt like it was burning.

It was a double burn, and I really enjoyed that. And here we are, everybody's just drinking like 19 ,000 calories of hot chocolate, but real hot chocolate.

Okay, next. And there's Christian. It actually makes you very happy when you drink hot chocolate that's just melted down chocolate.

Next one. And then they have downstairs all kinds of, that's a real chocolate kind of bear and all that.

That's Christian's grandson. Let me finish reading Revelation chapter 2. It says,

I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is, yet you hold fast my name, and do not deny my faith, even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was killed or martyred among you, where Satan dwells.

And then he goes on. I think that's the last picture. Back to Bonhoeffer. So, sorry that the pictures weren't as bright as I wanted them to be.

But there you have it. We're going to pray, and would some of the guys set up some tables in the back? You know, here's the good news.

You all look like you're just sleeping five times more than you would sleep if I was preaching. Maybe it's the lights,

I don't know, but I'm happy you stay awake when I preach. If I'm doing slideshows, okay, go ahead and sleep. Stretch out, enjoy yourself.

Sleep's a blessing. I like that.

Let's pray. If a couple guys could put the tables out, let's have some fellowship together. Father, thank you for our time tonight. I'm thankful that you're a

God who is trustworthy, and what you say in Scripture is true, even if it takes science a long time to catch up to it, that you have preserved some of these things.

Father, our faith doesn't rest on artifacts. It rests in the personal work of Jesus Christ. But we are thankful for some of these things that do help confirm our faith as real and true.