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

spiritual desolation around the world this day, which ought to be committed to the flames, thus
clearing the way for the Word of God to reach the people with its message of redeeming love and
sanctifying power.
21. It is now spring-time A.D. 57. Paul has been absent from Europe three years, traveling
throughout Asia looking after the work. It is really imperative that he return to Europe, where much
heresy and disorder have crept in during his absence. “And when these things were fulfilled Paul
purposed in spirit, having traveled through Macedonian Achaia, to go on into Jerusalem, saying,
That after I shall be there it behooveth me also to see Rome.” Macedonia is Northern and Achaia
Southern Greece. As Paul was the apostle of the Gentile world, and Rome the great capital and
metropolis, his heart was set upon that far-off city, whither he longed to go and preach the glorious
gospel.
22. At this time he tarries in Ephesus till after the Passover, April 14, and writes the first
Corinthian Epistle, sending on Timothy and Erastus to Macedonia to visit and preach to the
churches, both north and south.
THE DEVIL’S CHURCH.
24-41. Ephesus was the great New York of Western Asia, among many other notable institutions
honored with the greatest and most magnificent temple of the goddess Diana in the whole world, one
of the seven wonders of the world, having occupied two hundred years in its building. In all heathen
lands the manufacture of statues and images, as well as the erection and ornamentation of temples,
is the most lucrative financial employment, as people are always willing to pay their last dollar to
save their souls, though not willing to give up their sins. Now Demetrius, assembling the image
makers and the various artificers connected with the temple and the worship of Diana, delivers them
a powerful and inflammatory harangue, stirring them up to recognize the fact that Paul’s preaching
is calculated in the ultimatum to undermine the worship of Diana, and thus vitiate their lucrative
financial employments in the manufacture of innumerable images of this goddess to be sold to the
millions of her faithful devotees. The result is a great uproar, of vast multitude, like the rolling
billows of the ocean, rushing in impetuous stampede through the streets, shouting uproariously,
“Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” Fortunately, Paul’s friends hold him out of the hands of the mob
who have already seized his traveling companions, Gaius and Aristarchus of Macedonia, meanwhile
Alexander, a Jewish disciple and comrade of Paul, is also caught in the violent whorls of the
incorrigible insurrection. After a two hours’ uproar and stampede have somewhat exhausted them
physically, the city clerk succeeds in commanding audience, warning them of their imminent danger
of prosecution and punishment by the Roman Empire, and assuring them of their utter incompetency
to defend themselves before a civil tribunal, should they be arraigned to give an account of that
disgraceful uproar.
38. “If indeed Demetrius and the artificers along with him have an allegation against anyone,
there are court-days and lawyers; let them implead one another.” Having thus warned and reasoned
the case with them, and succeeded in tranquilizing the multitude,