The Man Of A Million Lies - The Book of Amazing Stories
The Man of a Million Lies
His Italian mother named him after Saint Mark in the hopes that he would always tell the gospel truth. Yet when he later wrote a bestseller about his travels, cynics called it a book of a million lies. He was nicknamed Mark of a Million Lies.
In the 1200s, Europeans found it impossible to believe Mark’s tales of a twenty-four-year odyssey that took him across the steppes of Russia, over mountains in Afghanistan, through deserts in Persia, and around the Himalayas into the far reaches of Asia.
Mark was one of the first Europeans to enter China. Through amazing circumstances, he became a favorite of the most powerful man on earth. Kublai Khan ruled over a domain that eclipsed the ancient Roman Empire. Mark saw cities that made Western capitals look like roadside villages. The khan’s palace dwarfed the largest cathedrals and castles in Europe. It was so massive that its banquet hall could seat six thousand guests, all dining on plates of pure gold. He saw the world’s first paper money and marveled at the explosive power of gunpowder. It would be five hundred years before Europe would produce as much steel as China manufactured in 1267, and six hundred years before the Pony Express would equal the speed of Kublai Khan’s postal service.
Mark began his journey home to Venice loaded down with gold, silk, and spices. According to some accounts, tucked away in his pocket was a recipe for that Chinese culinary delight, pasta. The khan had sent him on his way with a royal guard of one thousand men. By the time they reached the Indian Ocean, six hundred had drowned or died of disease. A ragged Mark barely limped home, most of his riches lost along the way.
Folks dismissed his stories, and it wasn’t long before he landed in jail. In that lonely dungeon, he dictated his fantastic yarns to a writer of romance novels. Those stories were marketed as The Travels of Marco Polo. But a skeptical public dismissed it as a book of a million lies.
Mark got out of that prison and went on to make another fortune. Yet he never shook that moniker, Marco the Liar. As he lay on his deathbed, his family, friends, and parish priest implored him to recant his fabrications lest they land him in hell. Mark spit out his final words: “I have not even told you half of what I saw.”
Medieval cynics dismissed his stories as the tall tales of a lunatic or a liar. Yet history has established the credibility of The Travels of Marco Polo. A century later, another Italian read Mark’s stories. By the time Christopher Columbus finished them, a dream was sparked that he, too, could discover new worlds.
Is there anything sadder than folks who are afraid to dream big or explore new worlds? Don’t you dare be one of them! Allow Mark’s story to send you out today with a sense of excitement, keeping this in mind:
You haven’t seen the half of all the wonders that are still out there.
Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.
1 Corinthians 2:9, NKJV