Today, I am reading and commenting on  Acts 17-18.

In town after town where Paul and his companions preached the crowds were riled up in an attempt to stop them preaching the Gospel.  I always find it noteworthy that in Berea, when people began agitating the crowds against the Gospel, the Believers sent Paul on his way, while Silas and Timothy stayed behind for some period of time.  From this we realize that Paul was more confrontational than many others.  I would argue that we should learn from this that there is a place in the Church for those who are confrontational about preaching the Gospel and a place for those who take a more gentle approach.

In Athens, while waiting for Silas and Timothy to join him, Paul got into a debate with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers.  These two schools of philosophy were in direct conflict with each other, but both were materialistic philosophies.  That is both schools taught that all beings are entirely material with nothing that was not part of the physical world.  While Paul made some converts in Athens, we know from reading between the lines from his letters to the Corinthian Church that he felt getting into debates with the philosophers was a mistake.  However, I believe that Paul, and certainly Luke, felt that the argument Paul made in Athens concerning the “unknown god” was an important Christian apologetic.  Paul’s argument was that God has revealed Himself to mankind through aspects of the world, that those who truly seek the Truth will find God.  In fact, that is part of the point of Luke including mention of Apollos later in this passage.  Apollos appears to have come to a belief in Jesus from a combination of hearsay and studying Jewish Scripture.  In today’s passage Priscilla and Aquila  introduced Apollos to the Holy Spirit.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.