Today, I am reading and commenting on  Acts 19-20.

While Paul was in Ephesus there was a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit there resulting in many miracles.  This led to other occultists attempting to use Jesus’ name in their activities.  Before long this backfired on a team of exorcists.  This resulted in many Believers who had continued their occult practices after becoming Believers giving up those practices and destroying their “spellbooks” .  I use quotes because we do not really know what was on the scrolls which they burned, only that they were related to their practice of sorcery and had a large value.  Interestingly, only a short time later, Demetrius, a silver smith who made and sold shrines to the goddess Artemis, started a riot against Christians.  He appears to have done so by implying both that the spread of Christianity would hurt business and by threatening those craftsmen he employed with loss of employment with him.

When I started writing the previous paragraph I thought it was going somewhere different, but when I reached the end I cam back to a thought I had before I started writing.  At the end of today’s passage when Paul stopped and spoke with the elders from Ephesus he warned them against false prophets who would arise; men who would distort the truth in order to recruit followers.  The exorcists had attempted to hijack the name of Jesus to accomplish their own ends, rather than serving Him.  Demetrius tried to protect his own beliefs by using violence to silence Paul’s message, rather than making a counter argument for his own beliefs.  In the end, both served to bring glory to God, as will those who attempt to distort God’s Truth today.

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