Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

men are servants of the most high God, who proclaim unto us the way of salvation!” Of course, her
incessant clamor was seriously impedimental to the intelligent audibility of their street preaching in
their daily peregrinations. Ere long forbearance has ceased to be a virtue, and Paul, utterly worn out
with her clamor, turns and speaks to the demon of vaticination dwelling in her, and bids him to come
out of her. Hence that very hour the demon evacuated the damsel, responsive to the mandate of Paul.
This is demonstrative proof of demoniacal possession and supernatural revelation at the present day.
Satan, in all ages, has been permitted to demonstrate his personality, thus refuting the infidel dogma
of no personal devil, which always proves the antecedent of denying the existence of a personal God.
In ancient sorcery, mediæval witchcraft and modern spiritualism, Christian science, hypnotism, et
cetera, we have in all ages the demonstration of demoniacal possessions It is as true and real to-day
as in any preceding age. Here you see that the power of vaticination, on the part of this damsel,
appertained altogether to this familiar spirit which dwelt in her. Paul did not speak to the damsel, but
to the spirit, when he ordered him to come out of her. Hence we see the demon occupied her distinct
from and independent of her own human spirit, which throws clear light on all the supernatural
incantations of modern spiritualism. They actually possess and hold communion with disembodied
demons which throng the air.
19-24. After the demon has evacuated the damsel, she has no more power to tell fortunes and
practice divination than any other person. Consequently, her owners, seeing that they can get no
more money for her fortune-telling, fly with an awful rage against Paul, arouse the rabble, stirring
up their European prejudices against these Asiatic intruders, exciting to their very utmost Gentile
prejudices against these impudent and meddlesome Jews, accusing them of infringing upon their
rights and privileges as Roman citizens. They so manipulate the uncouth rabble as to raise a general
uproar against the apostles, maneuvering to deceive the Roman magistrates and precipitate them into
a premature and illegal verdict, even foregoing the very form of a trial, so that they simply command
the lictors to strip and beat them with their cruel rods pursuant to the Roman custom.
24-26. To put a final quietus to all the trouble, they cast Paul and Silas into the deep, dark
dungeon of their cruel, filthy old prison, with their lacerated, bleeding backs down on the cold, stone
floor, and their feet raised up and wedged fast in great blocks of wood, thus precluding all possibility
of escape. If you had been in their place, would you not have concluded that you were mistaken as
to the call of God to that place? Paul and Silas, while the hours glide away, tell their experiences,
pray to God, get very happy and continue to sing uproariously the praises of God, arresting the
attention and astonishing the suffering inmates of those gloomy dungeons, utterly unaccustomed to
hear songs of joy. At midnight God answers their prayer with the earthquake shock, disrupting the
deep foundations of the prison, snapping all the bars and bolts, and slamming back the ponderous
iron doors against the massive stone walls like claps of thunder.
27-34. The awakened and panic-stricken jailer, knowing that cruel Roman law will require his life
as substitute for the fugitive prisoner, in the absence of Bible light on suicide, and with the noble
examples of Cicero, the prince of Roman authors, and Cato, the champion Roman statesman, and
many other mighty men who had preceded him in suicide, resolved at once to add his name to the
honored catalogue. Through the wide-open doors Paul sees him in the act of killing himself,
fortunately in time to save his life. This heathen jailer was a wicked, ungodly, ignorant man,
acquiescent in the clamor of the roaring mob, and the verdict of the cruel magistrates; he looked