Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-Minute Bible Hour podcast, and we are considering the flags that flew over the great city of Colossae, the city that is in view in this season of the 10 Minute Bible Hour. So we have considered flag number one, which is the distant ancient past. Flag number two, the Phrygian Age from 1200 to 676 BC. Flag number three, the Sumerian Age from 676 to 620 BC. Flag number four, the Lydian Age from 620 to 540 BC. Flag number five, the Persian era from 540 to 333. And right now we are working through the very multifaceted, very complex, but very understandable, so don't get discouraged. Greek era that started in the 330s BC and ran to around 130 BC. We hit pause last time, so we're just going to pick up right where we left off after my friend Jeff plays some lovely music. Antiochus I is like, I'll tell you what I want you to do there in Hieropolis is make wool and red dye. Now, if you're from Colossae, you're like, wait, um, Antiochus I? Yeah, it's me, Colossae. I got my hand up over here. Oh, thank you for calling on me. Um, we kind of already make wool and red dye, and we're pretty good at it. It's kind of what we're famous for. We used to make dye and stuff that people could, you know, put on their war outfits when they went to do war battle and things like that. So maybe we could just keep doing that and you could have your new Hieropolis do something different. And Antiochus I, in this imagined conversation, was like, No, I want Hieropolis to do the wool and red dye thing now. And then I imagine that Colossae slumped their shoulders very, very, very low, like George Michael, and walked away sadly. Just a few years later, Antiochus II founds another town called Laodicea. Again, if you're one of the people who's here who's read a lot of the Bible or been around it for a long time, that name's gonna pop for you because Laodicea is a pretty important town later on in the New Testament. Maybe we'll talk about that more later. But Laodicea is the third town of this little new triangle of Colossae, Hieropolis, and Laodicea. Before it was just Colossae, but now it's a triangle, and Laodicea gets favored treatment as well. It's just like Hieropolis, super Greekified, and it's also good at all the same stuff that Colossae used to be good at. Well, unfortunately, this sixth flag era of Colossae is when it's kind of the beginning of the end. Hieropolis and Laodicea are sort of the writing on the wall for Colossae. They're newer, they're nicer, they're getting Seleucid money, they're getting new gymnasiums and tracks and pathhouses. Also, Hieropolis has a super awesome multi-tiered hot springs thing that kind of looks like mammoth hot springs in Yellowstone. If you've ever been there when it was working, it is cool. People think you can get to the underworld from there. People like to go there to convalesce. I don't use that word very much, but I think it's the right word, right? Convalesce means somewhere you go to be sick and try to feel better or kind of be sick and eventually die. Like I guess maybe in the ancient world, that was like a self-guided hospice, but with hot springs. Hieropolis was really popular for that, and it was popular for that for a very, very long time after its founding. Colossae was just the odd man out. It's the loser, and you start to see a population drift. I would guess, though I can't prove this, I would guess that there is a brain drain with a lot of the talent, the people who are good at business, who start seeing there's just more opportunities in these new fancy towns of Hieropolis and Laodicea, including these towns, have the favoritism of the Seleucid kings. And so we start to see a drift in that direction, and Colossae starts to decline in importance during this time. However, there is another interesting shift that happens during this Seleucid Greek Alexandrian sixth flag over Colossae era, and that is that some of these Antioches are like, you know what we need in this part of the world? More Jews. I'm serious, guys. Go get me a bunch of Jews and move them here. Give them money, do whatever you have to do. And so, by there are census records or some kind of record that suggests that there might have been as many as 50,000 Jews living in this little, well, kind of square or trapezoid of four cities that are Sardis, Colossae, and the new towns of Laodicea and Hieropolis. By the time of Pompey and Julius Caesar, you have 50,000 Jews living up here. As I understand it, I think this is true. I've read it, I haven't been there myself, haven't been to this part of the world. The largest excavated synagogue, maybe in the world, maybe just outside of historic Israel, is in Sardis, indicating that, well, those historical records are right. The Antiochene policy to move Jews into this area, apparently it really worked. And if you think about it, this is important, this is very interesting. What I'm about to say, if you think about it, it makes Paul's journeys make way more sense. Where did he always go, right? He went to Western Turkey. These ran little circles in like south-central Turkey and then all over West Turkey. Why did he go there? Well, look at what Paul always did. I mean, the beginning of every single stop is like, well, and Paul traveled throughout Asia and the provinces around there, and he taught first in the synagogues, as was his habit. I mean, every single stop starts the exact same way. Examples, Acts 14, at Iconium, Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue. Okay. End of Acts 18 and Acts 19. After spending some time in Antioch, Paul set out from there and traveled from place to place through the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples. Isn't it fun how those names pop a little bit more now? Uh yeah, skip ahead a few verses. Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months. So that's in Corinth. Then the same stuff happens in Ephesus, which is about, what did they say, a hundred miles down the road from Colossae. The point is, this policy that is just a footnote to history under the rules of Antiochus I, Antiochus II, and as well, especially maybe even Antiochus III, to move Jews into the western half of Turkey. This hugely shapes the way the New Testament unfolds, and it hugely shapes why Paul goes where he goes. He starts in the synagogues, and then some Jews respond, some Jews get mad, and then he talks to the Gentiles, and the Gentiles gobble up the message of Jesus. All of that stuff was set in motion by these policies, by the stuff that happened during these different flag eras over Colossae and over this part of the world. Remember that little bit in Galatians where you just get that passing reference to how God unfolded the redemptive plan in the quote fullness of time. But when the fullness of time had come, this is Galatians 4:4. God sent his son born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law that we might receive the full rights of sons. That fullness of time concept, it's cool when you're just reading the Bible. Don't get me wrong. The Bible is self-sufficient, it's great. I am very impressed with it. It is from God. I have no notes. I think it is just spectacular. Also, I think it's really fruitful to spend time doing what we're doing right now so that we better understand what would have been intuitive to the original audience. And that is, what does the fullness of time mean? Well, the Galatians who received the letter, I'm just referencing the letter we talked about in our last season, they would have been pretty dang familiar with the history of all the stuff you and I are working through right now. The people of Colossae would have been familiar with all the stuff you and I are working through right now. They would have intuitively felt all of this swirling massive stuff, the policies of Antichus I, Second, and Third, Alexander's invasion, what the Persians did, how much Darius and Xerxes were able to accomplish, but how much they weren't able to accomplish. All of it, even the Sumerian horse raider legends from centuries past, they would have had all of this rattling around in their heads, and they would have started to connect these dots intuitively. They would have seen the patterns of history and they would have suspected there was something to what God was doing with all of this seemingly chaotic stuff that Galatians 4.4 just nails on the head and says, Oh, yeah, oh yeah, that was God. Any suspicion you have that all of this crazy stuff that we're calling, you know, the multiple flags over Colossae, all of this crazy story from this region of the world, it was on purpose. And here we see just one more example with this patriation, this relocation, repopulation effort that happened during the Seleucid Empire in this area by moving a whole bunch of Jews there, some of whom, sure, rejected the gospel and rejected Jesus, but many of whom, sure, did not. And there was enough of a seed there in Colossae and all the towns of Galatia and Laodicea and Hieropolis and Ephesus and all of these towns. There was enough of a seed there for the framework of thinking about the triune eternal God to take root and to make sense. I think all of this stuff is on purpose. I think it all fits together. I find the whole thing to be ludicrously fascinating. Wouldn't it be convenient if it were just as simple as the Greeks were there for a while and there were just, you know, some stuff happened and then Rome came in. But it's not that simple. It's a little complicated how we get from the one to the other. But that complicated is very important to how the story plays out as it pertains to Philemon. So I'm going to hit pause here, and next time around, we will finish out this sixth flag era over Colossae by looking at how this Greek era came undone and how the Romans came into possession of Colossae. And after that, we'll be up to Rome, and Philemon happens during Rome. So I guess we're just moving forward. Rock and roll. Matt, this is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.