They call it the call it the castle now! And it does look much like
a majestic castle on its rock perch overlooking the ocean on the western coast of Ghana. However, it was anything but a castle originally. Built in 1692 as a strategic fort, with its many cannons for defense from sea and land. One of the 46 such forts built along this stretch of coast in the country of Ghana.
But as I walked through through the inner court yard I knew it was more than just a fort for defense. This was a fort of human bondage and for gold dug from the earth to make men rich. We entered the holding cells where up to 30 men would be held for months at a time until a ship would come to take them away to distant lands that they knew nothing about. Thirty men, in a room no larger than fifteen feet by fifteen feet. No beds to lie on, but simply stone walls and a brick floor were theirs where they would await their fate. Cell after cell where human bondage was practiced and lives would not be the same ever again for those held captive.
And the ships would come! And these men and sometimes women would be put in shackles and marched to the large iron door at the front of the castle. It was known as the “Gate of no return”. And such it was, as these were now slaves to be sold to the highest bidder for a life of pain and suffering in a land that was not their own.And the ships did come; every few months; and over sixty lives would be changed forever more with each ships sailing. They would leave their native land, no longer free, but slaves to another.
Two things struck me as I walked the courtyard of this fort, now called a castle. There on the highest point of the front wall over the “door of no return” was a large iron cross! A cross, I thought, in this place? This place had become known as the “Fort of the Iron Cross” and was referenced as such even from the 1600’s. And as I thought of these words and tried to make the connection between slaves and a cross it struck me.
The Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 6:16-23 that we were all slaves; slaves of sin. But thanks be to God that you became obedient from the heart and became slaves of righteousness. As these slaves went through the “the door of no return” and their lives were forever changed; we to as Christians entered through the “door” that is Jesus Christ and our lives have been changed forever more under the cross of Jesus.
As I walked out of the “Fort of the Iron Cross” my mind was racing with emotion. How many lives were changed because of this place? But then I saw that Iron Cross, and thought how many lives have been changed because of that cross as well?
We walked down the hill below the fort, below the iron cross to the water’s edge. There in the ocean water we baptized a young man by the name of Isaac that we had studied with that day. Most likely it was on the very spot where slaves were once loaded onto ships to take them away and their lives would be forever changed. I prayed that this young man might also on this very spot, below the Iron Cross, have his life forever changed as well.
“But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.”
Romans 6:17-18
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