The Turkish "I AM"

Antakya, Turkey—A BackLook at Antioch

Believers were first called “Christians” in Antioch. (Acts 11:26) It was the location of the first Gentile church. Historically, this city in present day Turkey was a safe haven for those of the church fleeing persecution within the Roman Empire. Jewish believers from Jerusalem went to Antioch, mixing with Gentile Christians.

The church in Antioch grew and Barnabas was sent to investigate. (Acts 11:23) The believers in Antioch were an unusual mixture of people: former pagans who were new converts, Jews who believed Jesus was their Messiah, and Gentiles devoted to Judaism who had completely converted. (Bible Ref)

These differences could cause schism, but Barnabas told them all to be faithful to the Lord.

The church across the globe today is like the church of Antioch. It is Orthodox, Oriental, from the East, Catholic, Protestant and many other denominations, yet they must all be faithful to the Lord who is the Head of the church.

In the Church of Antioch, a potential conflict arose regarding the differences between believers of Jewish background and those from the Gentile world.

“After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, 'Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles would hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, testified to them giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us..’” (Acts 15:7-8)

All believers in Jesus the Savior are given the Holy Spirit. They are sealed as the Lord’s and are each a necessary part of the body of Christ.

Antioch was also a missionary springboard (Paul, Barnabas, and others) for their good news journeys. (47-55 AD) As a result, many churches were founded in Turkey: Colossae, Laodicea, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Tarsus, Cappadocia, Constantinople, among others.

Many of the books of the New Testament were letters written to these churches. Some scholars believe the Gospel of Matthew may have been written in Antioch. (BLB)

The first Seven Ecumenical Councils of the church were held in Turkey. They defined Christianity.

Because Peter and Paul had founded the church in Antioch, the location became one of five important patriarchal city-centers among Christians. By 270 AD, the School of Antioch opened as a place of Christian learning. The church fathers were “influential in theology and ecclesiastical politics.” (Britannica)

Turkey, especially the region called Anatolia, was an area of widespread Christianity. The church there had strength. (Turkish Studies)

At one point, the Holy Spirit warned through a man of Antioch named Agabus, that famine was coming across the Roman Empire.

“One of them named Agabus stood up and began to indicate by the Spirit that there would certainly be a great famine all over the world. And this took place in the reign of Claudius. And in the proportion that any of the disciples had means, each of them determined to send a contribution for the relief of the brethren living in Judea. And this they did, sending it in charge of Barnabas and Saul to the elders.” (Acts 11:28-30)

God warns His people. God prepares His people. God uses His church to help other parts of the body. Though many believers had left Jerusalem because of persecution, some Christians remained behind as a witness of Christ.

This is the same today. Persecution has driven many believers from the Middle East to the West for safety, while others have remained on their lands for 2,ooo years as a witness for Jesus.

It is the duty of believers in the West to help the church body in Turkey and the Middle East where few who know the Lord remain.

A part of the Roman Empire, Antioch was the third largest city after Rome and Alexandria. Its location was a crossroads for Italy, Greece, Mesopotamia, Egypt and the East. Caravans traveled to and through Antioch from the East with trade goods. The city flourished with between 100,000-300,000 people.

God uses major city centers of diverse peoples and languages to spread the Gospel.

After enduring a major fire and earthquakes (525-528 AD), Antioch then fell to the Persians, was taken back by the Byzantines (the Eastern Roman Empire), and later became a part of the Arab Caliphate (Islam) in 737 AD.

In 969 AD, the Byzantines reconquered the shrinking metropolis, but lost it to the Seljuk Turks (Islam) in 1084 AD. The Crusaders reclaimed Antioch in 1098 AD. The Mamluks (Islam) completely destroyed what was left in 1268 AD.

From 1517, the city remained a part of the Ottoman Empire (Islam), until its end (at the conclusion of World War 1). Afterward, the French mandated that Antioch become a part of Syria.

In 1939, Antioch was returned to Turkey (Islam), the former Ottoman Empire.

Although Antioch fluctuated between wars over strategic landscape, it also bounced back and forth between Christian and Islamic ownership.

What happened to Antioch’s large Christian community?

It endured natural disasters, regime changes, and persecution. In modern days, genocide specifically against Christian minorities by Turkish government. “Between 1.5 million and 2.5 million people died as a result of the genocide.” (The Thirty Year Genocide, Alex Bellamy, International Affairs, Volume 96, Issue 1, Jan 2020, Pages 247–249, Oxford Academic)

Islam is not a friend of Christians who live within the same nation’s borders. Christians are seen as those aligned with the West or as enemies of Islam. There is nothing new. It is the same situation today in many Islamic countries.

During the thirty year genocide of Christian minorities within Turkey, few helped. This was wrong. The church in the West must help the church in the East.

Paul wrote to the Corinthian church:

“But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that part which lacked, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the same care for one another. And if one part of the body suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if a part is honored, all the parts rejoice with it.” (1Corinthinans 12:24-26)

Schisms arose in Antioch. Divisions came. The church became the Oriental Church, the Catholic Church, and the Eastern Orthodox. (CNEWA, Sister Jean David)

Three major branches are still worshiping separately, yet, they are bound by the same faith and the same blood—that of Jesus’, and are filled with the same Holy Spirit.

Today there are approximately only 180,854 Christians in Turkey. (AA) This is about the size of the population of ancient Antioch. These people are the physical and spiritual descendants of the early church, now scattered across the country.

The early church in Turkey spoke Koine Greek. It is still used in Greek Orthodox churches today. They also spoke Aramaic—the language of the Lord from the cross—which is utilized in Syriac churches of Turkey today. Presently, Christians in Turkey also speak the common language of Turkish.

Today’s world is small. It is connected. So can the church be connected as one body today. This is the will of the Lord, who prayed for unity of His people while sweating great drops of blood for His own, in the Garden of Gethsemane. (John 17)

To honor the Lord and the witness of the Turkish church for Jesus among the Romans, Arabs and Turks for 2,000 years, I have embroidered in Turkish, İsa, ‹‹Benim›› meaning, Jesus said, “It is I” into this artwork titled “I AM.”

Listen to the prayer of Jesus in Turkish:

Please share!

More about the art piece: “I AM”

(C) Kelly Jadon, 2025

The Macedonian "I AM"

Macedonia is a key country in the spread of the message of “I AM,” or the knowledge of who Jesus is. It once was a province of the Roman Empire and borders Greece to the north.

The Apostle Paul, author of much of the New Testament epistles, was a traveling church planter. One night he dreamed of a man waving to him pleading, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Paul went. (Acts 16:6-10) He landed in Philippi and began telling the good news of Jesus, the message “I AM,” for the first time in Europe.

After leaving, Paul returned twice to visit Philippi, and also wrote the Philippian church a letter just past 60 A.D., which is now part of the New Testament—Philippians.

Paul also traveled to Thessalonika, later penning them a letter too, now know as the Thessalonian epistle.

The Macedonian Orthodox Church has the oldest Christian traditions of any church in Europe. Though there have been movements to drop the title “Macedonian” from the church’s name, their Archbishop Stefan maintains that “Macedonian” will remain.

To honor the Word of God, which includes “Macedonia” as the first entrance of the Gospel to Europe, this church has kept its title.

After the fall of the western portion of the Roman Empire, the eastern half continued as the Byzantine Empire, which included the Macedonian Orthodox Church.

In 862 A.D., two brothers who were also Christian missionaries, Cyril and Methodius, developed the earliest form of the Cyrillic Script to help spread Christianity throughout Eastern Europe among the Slavic-speaking peoples. They translated the Greek Scriptures into the Slavic language and its new alphabet. These two brothers influenced culture and literacy across Eastern Europe. Cyril and Methodius were born in Thessalonika—they were Macedonians.

God uses language, both the spoken and the written, to unite the church and carry forward the message of Jesus, the “I AM.”

The Macedonian tongue is Slavic as well. It incorporates the Cyrillic alphabet, even in its Bible. This alphabet is yet in use in other Slavic languages and in Russian.

Today, there are approximately 260 million Eastern Orthodox Christians worldwide. God has used two Macedonian brothers, members of the Eastern Orthodox Church, to influence and create a foundation of Christ throughout Eastern Europe and into Russia which remains to this day.

Listen to Macedonian, the language of early believers:

The Spoken "I AM"

Jesus spoke more than one language. The common tongue at his time in the Holy Land was Aramaic. From the cross, the Lord cried out loudly in Aramaic, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) He wanted listeners to know what was happening.

Jesus also used Aramaic to raise a small girl who had died, “Talitha koum,” or “Little girl, I say to you, get up!” (Mark 5:41) Though she was dead, he spoke to her in her native tongue.

Mark 7: 32-34 records that Jesus spoke Aramaic when he healed a deaf man. “They brought a man to him who was deaf and had a speech impediment. They pleaded with Jesus to place his hand on him.  Jesus took him aside in private, away from the crowd. He put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spit and touched the man’s tongue.  After he looked up to heaven, he sighed and said, ‘Ephphatha!’ (which means ‘Be opened!’)” The man hadn’t been able to hear any language, but the first word he ever heard was Jesus speaking the Aramaic, “Ephphatha!”

Language is important to God. He communicates with his people through words. Even, his Son is called The Word. (John 1:1)

The Old Testament was written primarily in Hebrew, but during the exile of the Israelites to Babylon, parts of the books of Daniel, Ezra and Jeremiah were recorded in Aramaic.

Over time, Aramaic displaced Hebrew as the everyday language of the Jewish people. The precedence of Aramaic continued until the rise of Islam, when Arabic replaced Aramaic in the Holy Land, approximately 600 years after the Lord ascended.

Aramaic is still used today by small groups of Christians in northern Syria, Iraq, Iran, southeast Turkey and in diasporic communities of Armenia, Georgia and Russia.

The Syriac Bible, a dialect of Aramaic is still used today by the Syrian Orthodox Church, whose headquarters are in Syria, where we were first called “Christians.” This branch of the church was the second established after that in Jerusalem. After 2,000 years, these believers are the physical and spiritual descendants of the early church. They have kept the holy places and the living language of Christ.

Jesus also used Aramaic for teaching, “raca” or “fool,” and “mammon” meaning “wealth.” He wanted the people themselves to know and understand him, the Father and the kingdom of heaven. For that, they needed to hear in their own tongue. The disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray. They learned “The Lord’s Prayer.”

Listen to Jonathan Roumie pray “The Lord’s Prayer” in Aramaic. It is quite moving.

To honor the Lord and the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Aramaic word “Jesus” has been embroidered in this artwork titled “I AM.”

Please share!

More about the art piece: “I AM”

(C) Kelly Jadon, 2025