Next summer from Sunday 15th to Tuesday 24th June 2025, I will be co-leading a trip to Turkiye and Greece with my friend Dr Peter Walker, exploring the sites of the seven cities in Revelation, Patmos, Crete, Athens and Corinth. It will be a very exciting, enjoyable, and transformative trip! The brochure summarises:
Travelling to the Mediterranean always offers the opportunity for a time of enjoying a great holiday experience—in beautiful sites and in sunny weather. This Study Tour will be no exception, but it will be more than just a wonderful holiday: we will be travelling to over a dozen places that are mentioned in the pages of the New Testament and finding that the biblical text comes alive before our eyes.
The two of us have been to this historic part of the world, separately, on numerous occasions and each of us has always come back with fresh excitement about the world of the New Testament and wanting to teach its powerful message about Christ with new vigour and confidence.
However, we have never travelled together, so we are looking forward to all the fresh ideas and insights that might be sparked—both between us and amongst those travelling with us—as we all learn together about the apostles and how we should follow Christ ourselves today in our own generation.
So please join us for what we trust will be a ‘trip of a life-time’—full of biblical teaching and spiritual inspiration. We may come from different backgrounds and with different interests: some may be ordained Christian ministers, wanting to be refreshed in the task of preaching; others may be doing research in biblical studies, looking forward to seeing the geographical context of the Early Church; others may be practising Christians, simply wanting to learn more about the Bible whilst travelling with other like-minded people.
Whatever your particular interest, we look forward to welcoming you to join the party. We believe it will be fun and enjoyable, informative and inspiring. Together we hope we will come to a new appreciation and understanding of St Paul and St John the Divine, and, through reflecting on their authoritative writings, come to experience a greater love of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
The full brochure is attached here: Turkiye and Greece June 25 brochure and the application form (which needs to be printed, completed, and posted) is here: Turkiye and Greece June 25 app form Places will be reserved on a first come, first served basis, so don’t delay!
Note on travel: there are fewer flights to Izmir on the Sunday when the trip starts, so many will be planning to fly on Saturday, and request an additional hotel booking on Saturday night. The travel company JCBS can arrange ; the price for such extra nights will be determined nearer the time, but please make your requests known as soon as possible.
For more information about Peter’s other trips and resources, visit his website here. For Ian’s commentary on Revelation, see here.
For a taster, do watch this short video in which Peter and I introduce the trip:
It’s TURKEY, not Türkiye! (You missed out the umlaut.)
For some reason Turkey wants to make everyone use the Turkish name for their country but when speaking or writing English I don’t say ‘Deutschland’ or ‘España’ and I don’t see why we should do the same for Turkey (or Asia Minor, as I prefer to call it).
Will you be going to Constantinople?
Anatolia is another name.
If the trip were extended as you suggest then it would make an itinerary of Byzantine complexity. More than a decade ago I climbed to the top of the ruins of the Palace of the Porphyrogenitos, guided by some local children whom we bribed. This involved walking most of the way round an 18-inch wide support for a long vanished wooden floor, about 50 feet up. Once at the top we were seen by police who shouted at us, at which point the children simply vanished and we got down quickly and avoided them. The palace has since been restored.
I am fond of the opening of the Introduction in John Julius Norwich’s Short History of Byzantium. He begins by quoting Lecky: “Of that Byzantine Empire the universal verdict of history is that it constitutes… the most thoroughly base and despicable form that civilization has yet assumed… Its vices were the vices of men who had ceased to be brave without learning to be virtuous… The history of the Empire is a monotonous story of the intrigues of priests, eunuchs and women, of poisonings, of conspiracies, of uniform ingratitude, of perpetual fratricides…” Norwich then goes on: to modern ears [this diatribe] is perhaps not quite so effective as the author meant it to be – the last sentence makes Byzantine history sound not so much monotonous as distinctly entertaining.
I must say I’d like to see the towns of the Seven Churches of Revelation 2&3. I recommend the book The letters to the seven churches of Asia in their local setting by Colin Hemer.
I’ve long meant to read that book – I think Colin Hemer wrote it at Tyndale House .
(Was he a former Classics teacher?) Herodotus tells a a great story about the capture of Sardis that commentators on Revelation often refer to.
Maybe Ian could recommend a good commentary on Revelation.
Yes, and it happened again to Sardis a couple of centuries later, in 214BC as told by Polybius.
William Barclay’s Daily Study Bible series is good on the seven letters and their context.
‘Maybe Ian could recommend a good commentary on Revelation.’
I hope that’s tongue in cheek!
Hemer’s is a excellent book. I’m preaching “on Smryna” on Sunday. Some fascinating background but one needs to be a tad cautious and not preach on the background and ahead of the plain meaning of scripture mode.
I “7 churched” in 2006 and then went to Damascus… wandering up the street called “straight”.
Extremely worth doing. You get a feel places rather than just the descriptions of them. I felt most moved in Miletus…
Then there is Israel itself. I shall never forget emerging from Ben Gurion airport and seeing road signs to places named in the Bible. “It’s real!”
Ah! To visit the sites of the seven gatherings in the Province of Dawn. Seriously up for that. We shall see.
I’m (very probably) in! I did different parts of Turkey with Peter Walker about 20 years ago. This will be great (except there probably won’t be a total eclipse of the sun like we had then!)
That’s encouraging. Sorry we cannot align the planets as well!
I too was slightly acquainted with Peter Walker, the former Bishop of Ely.
Do it. They are nice/interesting places to visit.
Do it. If doing so gives you a personal understanding of what it means to be faithful.
Do it. But if nothing ‘magical’ happens (they are just places), don’t come back telling everyone it was “awesome” because any other answer is socially unacceptable in evangelical circles.
By the way, I don’t know if you’ve looked at flights for Sunday 15th June, but it looks like quite a few of the regular carriers don’t actually travel to Izmir on that day (certainly not from London)! Flights seem very few and far between.
That is a timely warning—many thanks!
When I say ‘quite a few of the regular carriers’ what I actually mean is BA and EasyJet. You’re left with Turkish Airlines (via Istanbul) or direct with a carrier I’ve never heard of and that has terrible reviews!
Icarus Airways?
That’s very funny! No, it’s a Turkish holiday airline called Corendon Airlines.
This is something l have always wanted to do.
But can’t do it next year unfortunately 🙁
Shame… They’ll be ruined by the time you get there