Proof The Bible Is True

Today the cross sits inside a display case in Vienna, Austria. But for many years it had a much humbler home. Sewn carefully underneath the silk lining of my dad’s wool blazer, below the left pocket.

 

Back in 1962, he was a teenager in southeastern Turkey about to embark on his first real journey away from home, to attend high school six hours away, in the city of Diyarbakir.

 

It was no ordinary cross. For centuries, the Aydins had been known as “the family of priests” in their small town. The cross was a cherished heirloom; the top opened to reveal a hollow chamber where a sliver from the Holy Rood, Christ’s original cross, was said to have once been kept.

 

By the time the cross reached my dad, it had survived two world wars, revolutions and the genocide during which two million Armenians and other Christian minorities were forced from their historic homeland in Turkey.

 

Growing up, he’d watched his father–a priest in the Syriac Orthodox Church–use it to bless parishioners every Sunday. He couldn’t believe it when, the night before he left for school, his mother showed him how she’d sewn it into his freshly pressed jacket.

Read More: Miraculously Reunited with the Aydin Cross – Guideposts