Let me ask you something. What does this little snail have to do with an amazing woman who stepped up to be the one? She obeyed. God became a leader in the church, and she actually helped change the history of the world. One of the key events in Paul's mission to Philippi was his encounter with a woman named Lydia, a prominent businesswoman who became the first convert to Christianity in Europe. She was a Jewish woman who every Sabbath went down to the river to pray.
Philippi didn't have a synagogue, so the faithful would go down to the river outside of town. And that's where she met Paul, who shared the gospel with her that day. She accepted Jesus and she was baptized and it changed her life. But it changed the world forever. In every generation, there have been revivals, massive moves of the spirit that changed the course of history. In every revival, there were believers like you who chose to answer the call to become the one in their generation.
Discover your call to be the one in your generation. Lydia has mentioned the Bible just once in Act 16:13-15. But as Paul's first convert, she deserves honor. She was a merchant who traded in rare purple cloth like this. Now, this purple dye came from a little snail like this called murex, and it took thousands of these to make enough dye for just a small amount of cloth. That's why it's called Royal Purple, because only royalty and the rich could afford it.
So that meant that Lydia was a wealthy businesswoman and she used her wealth to support Paul's ministry team in Macedonia. Following her baptism, she opened her household to Paul, his coworkers, and the entire Christian congregation, where she became a leader as the first Christian in Europe. She helped to send Paul on the Macedonian to Athens, and the research literature supports the idea that Lydia acted as a benefactor of the church in line with the Roman model of patronage.
God's plan has always been to bless his people, to meet their needs, and for them to become storehouses for the work of the gospel. Do you see this picture? It's of the oldest known depictions of the apostle Paul. It's a fresco from a cave in Ephesus, where the Church of the Ephesians from the New Testament was founded by Paul. Paul went on his second missionary journey in 50 A.D. and we know this from biblical archeology.
Here's how in Acts 18:13, Paul is brought before the Romans official name Gallio. In 1905, this inscription was found in Greece that contained the exact name of the ruler confirming his existence, Luke's accuracy, and pinpointing the date of Paul's missionary journey. Now, it's important for you to understand the Bible has never been proven wrong. In fact, biblical archeology continues year after year to show the Bible is accurate.
Historically, Paul was a uniquely qualified as the apostle to the Gentiles. Why? Because he was a Greek speaking Jew. His Hebrew name was Saul, and he was trained as a Pharisee. So he knew both cultures and he was miraculously called by Jesus. You remember on the road to Damascus after that, he went by his Greek name, Paul.
No other apostle besides Paul was equipped to take the Gospel into the Greek speaking Roman world of the New Testament, and under Alexander the Great, the Greeks had spread their Hellenistic culture all around the Mediterranean. As Socrates said, the Greeks are like frogs all around the pond. Meaning their culture had spread around the Mediterranean, which was the known world at the time.
Paul, in fact, had been working in Antioch, where the first Gentile church was founded, and it's recorded in Acts 11 that the disciples of Jesus Christ were in fact first called Christians. It was from Antioch that Saint Paul started on his missionary journeys about 16 years after Jesus resurrection. Paul set out on his second missionary journey. He was traveling in the area of the Galatians, another New Testament place where Paul planted churches. In the Book of Acts Luke.
Now he recounts that Paul received in a mysterious way his commission to preach the Gospel in Macedonia. Listen to this. Acts 16:6-10, they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia and were prevented by the Holy Spirit from speaking the message in Asia. When they came to Mysia, they tried to go into Asia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. So bypassing Mysia, they came down to Troas one night.
Paul had a vision and a Macedonian man was standing and pleading with him, Please cross over to Macedonia and help us. Once Paul had seen this vision, we lost no time in arranging a passage to Macedonia, convinced that God had called us to bring them the good news. So Paul obeyed this vision. If the Macedonians needed help, then they would be obedient and go to Macedonia, to the northern and central parts of modern day Greece.
The Macedonian call resulted in Paul and his companions sailing from Troas to Neopolis. They continued on to the city of Philippi, which is the leading city of that district in Macedonia. This area right here is still known as the gateway to Europe. Up to that point in history, the gospel had been limited to Asia. And many historians credit Paul's heeding the Macedonian call with the spread of Christianity into Europe and the western world.
So when Paul arrived, Philippi was a strategic location for Paul's mission because it was a major Roman colony and a hub of commercial activity. Moreover, Philippi was located on the major Roman Road, the Ignatian Way, a major trade route that connected Rome and the West to the east. Generals would call Philippi the center of gravity strategically. This made it an ideal location for Paul to establish a foothold in Europe and to spread the gospel to the wider Roman world.
Paul would not have been aware of the significance of Philippi as Christians are today. When he left Troas and set sail for Philippi. He was simply traveling from one Roman province to another. Now, here's the point. The Christian community he established in Philippi marked the birth of Christianity in the western world and changed the history forever. This highlights the cultural significance of Paul's mission to Philippi.
The city was heavily influenced by Greco-Roman culture and religion, and Paul's message had to compete with these established traditions. However, Paul was able to effectively communicate the gospel in a way that resonated with both Jews and the Gentiles, ultimately leading to many in the city joining the very first church in Europe. Much happened in Macedonia.
Lydia's baptism in Acts 16, The Deliverance of a fortune telling slave girl, Acts 16:16-18, Paul and Silas imprisonment in Philippi again. Acts 16:16-28. The conversion of the jailer in his household in Acts 16:29-34. And then he went on to plant churches in Thessalonica in Acts 17:4 and Corinth in Acts 18:1-11. Five of the New Testament epistles were written to these three churches.
Paul in the small amount of writing, the 13 letters in the New Testament laid the foundations of the western world and the western world changed the entire world. The history of the church and of the world forever changed because of this God given dream known as the Macedonian Call. Let me give you some background with a brief history that will help you understand why Philippi was so important in the spiritual warfare between God and His enemies. Philippi had been the gateway to Europe.
It was on the main road from the east into Europe, on which traveled armies of empires like the Persians, the Greeks, and then the Romans. Also, trade and ideas moved over this road. It was named Philippi because of King Philip of Macedon. He conquered the area because it was a land with vast reserves of gold and silver, which made it the richest province in all of Greece. Macedonians were never considered real Greeks by the other Greeks.
They viewed them as uncivilized goat herders who were beneath them culturally. So this caused a type of jealous inferiority complex among the Macedonians, and they set out to change their culture to become more Greek than the Greeks were. This was the birth of the Helenization of culture, which they wound up spreading worldwide. Philip understood that, and he understood that to expand his influence and gain the respect of other nations, he needed to elevate the culture of his people.
He realized that the best way to do this was to adopt the Hellenic Greek culture, which was considered the pinnacle of civilization in those times. So he used the wealth from the mines to fund an ambitious project of cultural conversion. Philip began by bringing in Greek scholars and philosophers to educate his people. He even went as far as hiring the great philosopher Aristotle to be the personal tutor of his son Alexander.
Under Aristotle's guidance, Alexander grew up to become one of the most brilliant minds of his generation, and his knowledge of Greek culture and philosophy became the cornerstone of his future conquests. So as the years went by, Philip's plan proved to be successful and the Macedonian empire became a dominant force in the ancient world. The people of Philippi embraced the Hellenic Greek culture, and it became the norm for the whole empire.
The mines, well, they continued to produce vast amounts of wealth and the Macedonian empire flourished. It was this gold that would fuel Philip's Helenization of Macedonia. The Greeks under Alexander the Great felt it was their mission to not just conquer the world, but to spread Hellenism to create a one world humanist culture. Sound familiar? It was this spread of these Greek anti-Christ ideas in Hellenized Israel that Jesus had to deal with in the Gospels.
Paul also had to deal with the same ideas in Acts 17, in his sermon to the Epicureans and the Stoics on Mars Hill in Athens. Philippi was the epicenter of the spread of Hellenism following Alexander the Great's conquest, and Paul was steered there by the Holy Spirit, forbidden to go to Asia. In a vision, he received a call to take the Gospel for the first time into Europe. It became the first church in Europe and a beachhead in the war of ideas between God and His enemies.
The West, as we know it, began the day Paul stepped foot onto European soil when Israel was still in captivity in Babylon. 200 years before Alexander's rise to power, the Prophet Daniel had a vision of the rise of the Greeks to destroy the Persians. As prophesied in the Book of Daniel, Chapter eight. In the aftermath of Alexander the Great's conquests, a new era dawned upon the ancient world.
Hellenism the fusion of Greek culture and ideas with the diverse civilizations of the known world, brought about a transformative exchange of knowledge and philosophies among the prominent Greek philosophers that spread during this time the teachings of Epicurus on evolution held a special place in shaping the abandonment of spiritual concepts in favor of intellectual concepts for the first time in history.
As the dust settled after Alexander's relentless military campaigns, the lands he had conquered found themselves imbued with a newfound curiosity for Greek ideas. It was in this thriving atmosphere that the philosophy of Epicurus took root and began to flourish. Epicurus, a Greek philosopher, established a school of thought known as Epicureanism.
Contrary to the prevailing beliefs at the time, which often revolved around the whims of the gods, Epicurus emphasized the pursuit of pleasure that there is no God because he taught, there was no creator. Instead, we evolved. Central to His teachings were the concepts of atomism and evolution, the notion of atomism as espoused by Epicurus, posited that all matter consisted of indivisible particles called atoms.
These atoms, he argued, were in constant motion and combined to form everything in the universe. This revolutionary idea challenged traditional belief in the spread of epicurean evolution, was facilitated by merchants and travelers carrying their ideas with them as they ventured into the far reaches of the known world. Spreading Hellenistic culture and philosophy to distant lands, Epicurus was the first to teach evolution as a way to justify atheism.
Hellenistic cities sprang up throughout the conquered lands, serving as bastions of Greek culture and philosophy. These cities, such as the ten cities of Decapolis in Israel, became thriving centers of learning and intellectual exchange, especially in Gadera. Gadera became a major school of epicurean philosophy.
Greek philosophers Philodemus of Gadera and their disciples flocked to these urban centers, impacting their ideas and engaging in philosophical debates, which had a major influence on the Hellenization of Second Temple Judaism. The Hebrew word for heretic is Epicurus. The philosophy of Epicurus with its emphasis on happiness, the rejection of the idea of a resurrection and afterlife, and the pursuit of knowledge resonated with many during this era of political and cultural upheaval.
The ideas of Epicurus also found an eager audience among the educated elite of the Hellenistic kingdoms who sought to reconcile and blend their traditional beliefs with the philosophical ideas of the Greeks. The Jewish historian Josephus, wrote that the Jewish sect of the Sadducees was influenced by Epicurious teaching and the Pharisees were influenced by the Stoics. This explains one of the reasons the Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection, but the Pharisees did.
Epicurious philosophy of evolution also left an indelible mark on the intellectual landscape of the Hellenistic world. This concept challenged the biblical beliefs of the Helenized Jews, but it also set up a spiritual war that both Jesus and Paul faced in the New Testament. Jesus told His disciples, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees” in Matthew 16:6. Now, let me read this scripture.
I raised up your son Zion, against your sons Greece, wielding you like a mighty warrior sword. Sons of Greece will war against the Sons of Zion. God warned Daniel of the coming of the Greeks and Zachariah of the coming spiritual war. All of history, the plan of salvation and the future of the world and your eternal soul hangs in the balance of Athens and Jerusalem. Make no mistake about the origin of the Greek humanist philosophy. This is a doctrine of the devil.
Remember Jesus said in the Book of Revelation to the Church in Pergamon, I know where you dwell, where the throne of Satan is, where Satan lives. Its Revelation 2. Pergamon was where the altar to the Greek god Zeus was, and it was the throne of Satan himself. This Greek humanism was a tool straight from Satan. It's important to understand Epicurus ideas were extremely effective at providing an alternative explanation against creation, not because they were good science now, because they weren't.
In fact, they were very bad philosophy. Disguised as science, they were never about the science, but they were designed to destroy faith in a divine being and promote atheism. Epicurus, nicknamed by his fellow philosophers who knew him, was Theomachos the battler of the gods because he hated the gods and wanted to free man from religion itself. To him, this was the secret to happiness. No God, no afterlife, therefore no sin, no consequence.
Jesus, along with the early church, was able to shut down epicureanism by the third century revival in the Gospel won out and changed the Greek culture ideas to biblical ideas. The epicurean schools were closed, the heretical writings were destroyed. And the only reason we even knew about Epicurus and his teaching was from the writings of the early church fathers like Tertullian, Clement, Origin and Augustine.
These leaders who answered the call to be the one who took up the fight and had written sermons and papers against Epicurus’ ideas. They won for the next 1000 years. Everyone forgot about Epicurus, so if we won, why does this matter today? Because in the Middle Ages, in a remote monastery in Germany, a single copy of this book was discovered. It's a book length poem about Epicurus doctrine of evolution by the most famous disciple of Epicurus, the Roman poet Lucretius.
This book circulated among Renaissance scholars in Florence. And just like it did in ancient times, these atheist ideas fueled the humanist enlightenment. Now, it's important to note the timing of all this. This book resurfaced just at the beginning of the revival fire that was breaking out of the revival we call the Reformation. This ancient atheist philosophy was Satan's weapon in response to the Reformation that was reviving the gospel of salvation by grace in changing the world.
He first tried using it to stop the plan of salvation by trying to corrupt the Jewish belief in Scripture as keepers of the covenant and stop the promised Messiah. Now his plan failed, and Jesus and His church defeated this plan, and now it's back. And for the last 300 years, this is the fight the Church has been in. And we're still in this fight today.
The humanist philosophy has been slowly creeping in and taking over our universities, our schools, our politics, and even our churches step by step, incrementally undermining faith and promoting atheism. Now, listen close to this. God was aware that we'd have this fight, and both the prophets and Jesus said this was coming. The Apostle Paul showed us how to share the gospel to these Greek minded Greek thinking people. And remember, we won this battle before and we can do it again.
The Sons of Zion will contend with the Sons of Greece. This brings us back to where we were with Paul bringing the gospel to Greece as recorded in the Book of Acts. Paul headed to Athens, where he had an iconic meeting with both Epicureans and Stoics in Acts 17, where Paul showed us how to share the gospel with the Greeks. Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him, and some said, What will this babbler say?
Others said he seems to be a preacher of strange gods because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. The Greeks couldn't relate to Paul, especially the Epicureans. And here's why. It's in first Corinthians 1:23. But we preach Christ crucified unto the Jews, a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks, foolishness to the Greek mindset.
The gospel is foolishness because they have no prior concept of the plan of salvation that God has been working on since the fall of Adam in the Garden of Eden. Let me explain. Historically, every culture that’s steeped in the Bible, like the Jews in Acts 2 after Peter’s sermon that day of the Pentecost, when they ask, What must we do to be saved? The answer is simple repent and be baptized because they have a basic understanding of biblical principles. This is the Acts 2 approach.
This method is based on how the Apostle Peter preached to the Jews, the people who believed in the God of creation and understood the meaning of sin and the fall. He was boldly presenting a message of Christ's death and resurrection and the need to repent and put faith in Christ for salvation. But for the Greeks who have no prior knowledge of the Bible, they ask what God, what creation, what sin? Why Jesus? So Paul, in the Acts 17 approach, Paul used a different method in this approach.
Paul had success in preaching to the Greeks. The Greeks were outright pagans who had no knowledge of the true God or understanding of the meaning of sin. The fall like the Jews did. The Greeks basically dismissed. That message is foolish. But when Paul explained who the real God is, the God of creation and laid the foundation of the Gospel about all of us being descendants of one man, Adam, thus explaining the origin of sin and the need for salvation.
He then dismantled their belief in pagan gods. He then presented the salvation message, beginning in Genesis, not just the Gospel, and they began to respond. So we need to use Paul's Acts 17 strategy, because today Greek humanism philosophy has creeped in and it's taken over our schools, our universities, and even our government. Even many churches now have been affected and don't believe in creation. Fact they're in favor of evolution.
They don't believe in a real Adam in favor of multiple evolved Adams And without the first Adam, you don't have Jesus as the second Adam qualified to be Savior. And if man is not made in the image of God, then you don't have Thou shalt not kill. And instead you get Darwin's survival of the fittest, abortion, eugenics and the Holocaust. You see, the enemies plan to eliminate creation and replace it with evolution, all in the name of science has been insidiously effective.
America's biblical heritage that's been slowly degraded by Greek thought. We as a culture have no common knowledge of the plan of salvation. And this is why the key to taking America back for the Gospel is following Paul's lead from Acts 17. This obviously is not new. This is what every missionary, beginning with the Apostle Paul, has been preaching when they first make contact with a culture that doesn't understand or know the gospel. You have to begin in Genesis with the creation story.
The difference is this is not the America we grew up in. America has been radically transformed by the left, fueled by this Greek mindset. But the good news the good news is we've had an answer all along in the Word, and it's worked before. We just need the right strategy. The Acts 17 verses Acts 2 strategy. It's a spiritual war, and in this program we introduced you to the spiritual struggle between the principalities that are opposing God's plan of salvation and the Greek philosophy.
that's their weapon of choice. Jesus had to face this in the Hellenized culture and the Sadducees priesthood that were influenced by the teaching of Epicurus. Then the Apostle Paul in Acts 17 was faced with the Epicureans in spite of the early church defeating them. They are now back and seem to be winning this war of ideas. But we have the plan, the tools, and we have the victory. And Jesus has the dominion and every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. Jesus is Lord.