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

9. This Tyrannus, who received Paul and his meeting, after his expulsion from the synagogue, was
evidently one of Paul’s Jewish converts, keeping a private synagogue in the city.
10. All Asia, both Jews and Greeks, during these memorable two years, because they enjoyed
ample opportunity to hear the Word, are held responsible as if they did hear it, like the millions of
this wicked world who live and die ignorant of the gospel, though held to account for it at the
Judgment bar, as if they had heard it, simply because they enjoyed opportunities, though they let
them slip.
11, 12. We see divine healing became an exceedingly prominent auxiliary of the spiritual work
during the Pauline revival at Ephesus, so that diseases were removed and demons exorcised by the
mere application of handkerchiefs and aprons, carried from the body of Paul and applied to the
bodies of the persons thus possessed of diseases and demons.
13. The Jews always recognized demoniacal possessions and the feasibility of their ejectment by
the power of Jehovah. It is very clear from the Scripture that the Jews availed themselves, ever and
anon, of the superior power of their God to cast out devils.
14. Here we see a case in which those Jewish exorcists [i.e., people gifted with the power of
demoniacal ejectment, of course delegated by Jehovah], undertake to utilize the Christ of Paul in that
way.
15. “The evil spirit responding said to them: Jesus I know and I am acquainted with Paul; but
who are you?
16. “And the man in whom the evil spirit was, leaping on them and prevailing against them both,
overcame them, so that they fled naked and wounded from the house.” In this notable way the Holy
Spirit utilized these unbelieving Jewish exorcists to glorify the Lord Jesus. God has in all ages
permitted the devil to demonstrate his personality refutatory of that subtle infidelity which denies
the existence of a personal devil, and then soon musters the audacity to deny the existence of a
personal God. Here we see a confirmation of the great Bible truth that this world is thronged by
disembodied spirits, both angelic and demoniacal. These excarnate spirits see much farther into the
spirit world around us than we who dwell in houses of clay. Here we have a confirmation that while
Jehovah, the excarnate Christ, cast out the demons in the old dispensation, since His incarnation this
work is done by the personal Jesus, to whom the devils are all subject, and even to His ambassadors
in His name.
17. The above mentioned tragedy gave great notoriety to the work.
18. “And many of those having believed, came confessing and renouncing their practices.”
19. Here we see the devil’s preachers who had been converted to God under the preaching of Paul
making a bon-fire of their valuable theological books, estimated at five thousand dollars. There are
wagon-loads of books all over this country, expository of Dark Age creeds and vindicatory of the
fallen sects, i.e., the daughters of Babylon, throwing their Briarean arms of blight, mildew and