Day 5 Thu Jun 10

Day Five - Thursday June 10th - on the Via Egnatia headed to Turkey

Today was basically a travel day on the bus to get from Kavala to Istanbul. On the bus and started out at 8:00.

We went through the borders (customs) and had lunch on the Turkey side. Got into Istanbul in time for some bad traffic jams. When to the Grand Bazaar to a carpet place that the Stuckeys knew about 5:00 and saw the presentation of the carpets. Then we got to the hotel about 7:45, had dinner, and hit the end of the day.

On the bus today, Pastor Wayne taught on Acts 17:17 "Paul reasoned with them". There were three major prerequisites for the spread of the Gospel: 1. Language 2. Roads 3. Reasoning approach. 

1. The universality of Greek in the first century provides a common language for the spread of the Gospel. 2. The Roman Road system provided a easy way for the physical spread of the people and the letters. 3. The reasoning approach was added by Democritus, possibly the world's first scientist, who argued that if your only knowledge comes from your five senses, then that knowledge is subjective and incomplete. The way to get to genuine knowledge is taking the observed data and reasoning through it - you have to THINK about it, and think critically. Democritus used the term inductive reasoning, possibly the first person to do so. 

This brings up the question of absolute truth. Those that say "there is no absolute truth" have just made an absolute statement. Obviously there IS an absolute truth, and God is it. Just like in Bible study, there are multiple observations, but only a single correct interpretation - one answer that is right (like algebra or geometry). After you get to the correct answer, there are then multiple correlations and applications.

Later on, Pastor Wayne gave some history in regards to to brothers from Thessaloniki, Cyril and Methodius. These were geniuses especially around language in the ninth century. These brothers were very infuential in the development of world events - Cyril invented Russian (Cyrillic), for instance, and is probably a big reason why the Russians adopted the Orthodox church.

*Dale*