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Psidia

St Paul undertook three important missions to propagate the new faith in Anatolia. Choosing this city of Antiocheia as his center, it was here that he proclaimed the new religion to all who would listen. It was from Yalvac (Antiocheia) that Christianity began to radiate all over the world. One of the first four apostles of the Christian religion, Paul was also its first theoretician. His knowledge of religion was deep.
An eloquent speaker with the ability to command respect and enormous drive,
he played a crucial role in the spreading of the new faith.
At the time, Yalvac (Antiocheia) was a city where one could find living side by side the devotees of oriental mysteries, 
Jews, dolaters, and pagans. 
There was also, however, a class of well-off people for whom monotheism,
the belief in a single, all-powerful supreme being,
had a strong appeal.
This was the setting that Paul found himself in when he arrived here to preach the new religion.
Paul was driven by the love for God that he bore in his heart to teach it to others and believed it was his duty to do so.
And his conviction gave him the strength to travel great distances under the most difficult conditions,
preaching and making converts.
 
Paul's stay in Antiocheia is described thus in Acts 13: Now when Paul and his company set sailed from Paphos,
they came to Perga in Pamphylia; and John departing from them returned to Jerusalem. 
But when they departed from Perga, they cameto Antiocheia in Pisidia, 
and went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and sat down and prayed..
And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue,the Gentiles
besought that these words might be preached to them the next sabbath.
Now when the congregation was broken up, many of the Jews and religious
proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas who, speaking to them,
persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.
And the next sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God. Yalvac (Antiocheia) is also a setting in the life of Christianity's first female saint. According to an account in the Apocrypha, Thecla was a virgin from Iconium (Konya) who was converted to Christianity and led to dedicate herself to perpetual virginity by the preaching of the Apostle Paul. Miraculously saved from death at the stake to which she had been condemned, she went with Paul to Antiocheia in Pisidia where she was thrown to the wild beasts and was again saved from death by a miracle.