NT Doctrine — Acts 19

We come to another critical time in the early Christian religion. It’s easy to miss this point because Luke is more concerned with exonerating Paul before the Emperor’s court than with actually writing history. Luke’s narrative mentions Paul’s role in turning Ephesus into the new capital of the Christian message to the Mediterranean world.

Paul had already stopped here on his way home some months previously. He had left Aquila and Priscilla in charge, who in turn educated Apollos. When Apollos went across the sea to Corinth for a few years acting as an apostle there, it was about the same time Paul began a fresh visit to the churches he had planted. Luke tells us Paul passed through mountainous areas, hiking the back roads across the land we call Turkey today, and eventually made his way back to Ephesus as promised.

Ephesus was an ancient city, and the Roman headquarters for the entire region. It was also home of the Temple of Diana. The temple had been destroyed and rebuilt at least a couple of times in the past, and the identity of the local goddess is not certain. Later worship of Diana included elements drawn from Cybele. The idol itself was supposed to have fallen from the sky at the hand of some other ruling deity.

About all we can make of the legends is that a meteorite fell near there, and someone was able to discern in the surface of the largest piece of this space rock an image of this pagan goddess. This talisman was kept in the temple until its final destruction a few centuries later after Paul’s time. When the Greeks had conquered the area, the locals simply embraced the name of Artemis as the nearest in the Greek pantheon to the original goddess of the locals. When Persia took the area, the temple rituals gained elements of Isis worship. When it was Rome’s turn, the name of the goddess was changed to Diana.

The temple was a major source of income, keeping a large sector of the local economy busy turning out figurines and amulets celebrating the idol and the temple structure. As a natural harbor, the city saw countless tourists and business travelers who would buy these trinkets.

Upon arriving in Ephesus, one of the first things Paul encountered was a dozen Jewish men who were echoing the message Apollos had been preaching before he learned about Jesus. As a senior rabbi himself, Paul was able to get across to them the updated story, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. A major change between the Old and New Covenant was that, upon His Ascension into Heaven, Jesus sent back His own spirit to inhabit those who followed Him. The repentance ritual John the Baptist had preached symbolized this new spiritual change. As soon as these men embraced their Messiah, the power of the Holy Spirit manifested in them much as He had at Pentecost in Jerusalem.

This boosted Paul’s message significantly, because people could see the powerful change. With their support, Paul spent some months there teaching in the synagogue. A great many Jews were moved to embrace Jesus as their Messiah. However, there were some who were more worried about the institution of the synagogue, and they began slandering Paul to the local pagan people. Frustrated, Paul took the church crowd with him to a leased facility owned by someone named Tyrannus. Over the next two years, not only the City of Ephesus, but a great many surrounding towns and cities in Asia Minor heard the gospel where people embraced Jesus as Lord. Ephesus was no longer just the city of the mother goddess, but the city of the mother church that gave birth to dozens of smaller churches in the region.

Furthermore, God witnessed to Paul’s calling through miracles, so that common items of clothing over which he prayed would carry the power to heal throughout the region. But Satan was not idle, turning this whole thing into a circus. Ephesus was a famous market for magic and miracles. Jews would get in on this business by pretending to exorcise demons, a service for which they charged hefty fees. There were seven of these hucksters who called themselves “Sons of Sceva” (referring to a Chief Priest in Jerusalem) who tried to leverage the the fame of Paul and the now legendary miracle powers of Jesus to chase demons out of people. They happened to try it with a genuine case, and the demon answered that he recognized both Jesus and Paul, but these Sons of Sceva were nobodies. The demonized man brutally beat them and chased them out onto the street.

When this story made the rounds, people took Paul and his message much more seriously. The power of the gospel was changing lives on a huge scale. People began to abandon their pagan cosmopolitan morals for the strict holiness of the Christian faith. At one point, they held a bonfire in which they burned their “Ephesian Letters” — magic rituals recorded on expensive scrolls for which Ephesus was a famous market. The total value was more than a laborer could earn in two lifetimes.

At some point, Paul felt the drawing of the Spirit to revisit Macedonia and Achaia, and began talking about a need to return to Jerusalem, but to also visit Rome. To prepare for the first part of this journey, he sent a couple of friends before him into Macedonia, Timothy and Erastus, while he stayed a little longer in Ephesus. That is, he stayed until there was a major disturbance in the city.

Luke refers to this rising Christian faith as “the Way”, likely a local nickname. It was powerful enough to have changed the local economy. People were openly walking away from the polytheism so common among pagans to the point the temple traffic and trinket trade was suffering. One of the biggest supporters of this trade, named Demetrius, felt his livelihood threatened and called an ad hoc meeting of his friends. Mentioning the financial losses, and pushing lots of emotional buttons, he persuaded them to raise a lynching party and go after Paul.

It quickly turned into a riot. The leaders managed to locate two of Paul’s friends from Macedonia, Gaius and Aristarchus. They dragged these two at the head of a mob into the local outdoor theater. Paul would have done his best to rescue his friends by making himself the target of the crowd’s wrath, but some local Roman officials who better understood the situation would not allow him to take that risk.

The whole city was in an uproar. As they crowded into the theater, most had no idea what was going on. The local Jews realized that their community was threatened by this, and convinced a spokesman named Alexander to attempt to address the crowd. As soon as the crowd recognized who he was, it stirred them to even stronger emotions regarding their sacred temple and worship of Diana. As they began shouting her greatness, the chant caught on and kept going for a couple of hours.

Apparently the only man the crowd respected, the city clerk, was able to get them to listen. He gave them a stern warning that the whole city was very close to provoking a police action from the Roman soldiers stationed near the city. Not one person there could have justified all this noise and violence. There were plenty of valid ways to handle any complaints without that. He noted that the accused men hadn’t actually done anything illegal. So the clerk rebuked Demetrius and his pals and dismissed the crowd. The threat to the gospel was significantly weakened that day.

From here on out, the church in Ephesus began to rise as the primary hub for Christians and their faith, and the center of a vast mission outreach. A few decades later, it become one of the few safe refuge cities for those of Jesus’ faith among His extended family who fled Palestine, including His cousin John and probably His mother.