The Questor

The Wild Gospel..… …..Tough Times Last month we left Paul and Barnabas on the dangerous mountain road to Antioch in the region of Galatia. Antioch was a lively and volatile city with a mixed population. Founded by the Greeks around 300BC it had become a Roman colony in 6BC. Jews often moved into new cities in order to get in at the start. So the population was made up of Greeks, Jews and Romans as well as native Galatians. On the first Sabbath day after they arrived, they went to the synagogue where they were invited to speak. Paul gave them a sermon which set out how Jesus fitted into the story of the Jews. This sermon is reported in full in Acts 13 vs 16-41–the only one ever recorded. This aroused great interest and the following week almost the whole city turned out to hear Paul speak. When the Jews saw the crowds they were envious and tried to discredit Paul. But he dismissed their arguments and turned to the non-Jews who were overjoyed to receive the Message. The Jews were furious and stirred up the civic leaders who expelled Paul and Barnabas from the city. Next they went to the ancient city of Iconium where, once again, the Jews stirred up trouble and incited the mob to stone them. Paul and Barnabas got wind of the plot and so moved on to Lystra. While they were in Lystra, they encountered a man who had been crippled from birth. Paul looked him in the eye and told him to stand up – and he did and started jumping around! The people of Lystra were amazed and immediately decided that Paul and Barnabas were gods. They said that Barnabas was Zeus and Paul was Hermes. There was a local legend that these two gods had once come to their region in disguise and no-one other than an old peasant couple would give them hospitality. So they wiped out everyone except the old couple. The current population wasn’t going to let that happen again so their priests set about arranging a sacrifice, bringing bulls to the temple of Zeus. Paul and Barnabas were beside themselves and tried to explain that they were just ordinary human beings like everyone else and that it was the power of Jesus that had brought about the healing. But the people carried on with the sacrifice anyway. Then the inevitable happened: a bunch of Jews showed up and told the crowds that Paul and Barnabas were imposters. So they turned on them and they

stoned Paul. Believing him to be dead, they dragged his body outside the city walls and dumped him there. A group of followers gathered around him and were amazed to find that he was still alive. So they took him back into the city and cleaned him up. The next day, he and Barnabas set out for Derbe. They had a much less stressful time there