θεοῦ θέλοντος – theosthelō– that is: IF GOD WILLS. Not only is this Paul’s response to many who urge the Apostle to stay longer on his second missionary journey, but once the Apostle returns home we will see this familiar approach in a third missionary journey.
God wills it.
WHY has the Apostle to the Gentiles remained in Corinth ACAIA for a year and a half?
We might easily ask WHY DID JESUS convict Paul fourteen years ago on a road to Damascus and then five years ago send the Apostle who had persecuted Christ’s followers with Barnabas to Cypress and Galatia back in A.D. 47?
Appearances of the Lord embolden the apostles and followers of Christ.
We haven’t thought of Peter much during Paul’s two missionary journeys, but do you recall how his visions emboldened this Jewish fisherman? He will soon write [in A.D. 64]:
For it is better to suffer for doing good, if God wills it, than for doing evil. Because Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring you to God, by being put to death in the flesh but by being made alive in the spirit.
Once God said, I am with you, Paul proclaimed Christ to the Corinthians for 18 months.
18:12 But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal..
17 And they all seized Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the tribunal.
The Lord Jesus had appeared to the Apostle AND spoken to him in a dream.
Paul the Apostle was unafraid because of what God said.
And how comforting to have the Word assure us that NO HARM will come to us due to our witness of the Gospel of Truth.
Before we leave Greece & ACHAIA
What god said differs according to traditions and culture.
(IF your god is NO God at all THEN human flesh will seek its own desires.)
Athens and Corinth
more about the resurrection?
Although I have already emphasized the impact of culture on Paul's troubles with the Gentile cultures, due to the ongoing importance to his 3rd missionary journey as well as 21st century of the Common Era idolatries let's consult additional commentaries as a summary.
In Paul’s day, Corinth was already an ancient city. It was a commercial center with two harbors and had long been a rival to its northern neighbor, Athens.
Corinth was a city with a remarkable reputation for loose living and especially sexual immorality. In classical Greek, to act like a Corinthian meant to practice fornication, and a Corinthian companion meant a prostitute. This sexual immorality was permitted under the widely popular worship of Aphrodite (also known as Venus, the goddess of fertility and sexuality).
(Pick your 21st c. C.E. city parading its sin. Not so different.)
From Athens to Corinth,
from intellectual pride to sensual lust. – Bill Acton
“There had been culture shock in Athens, and now Paul experienced moral shock in Corinth. Its sweat and perfume and grit smothered Paul’s righteous soul, and he became depressed.” (Hughes)
The duration of Paul’s stay in Corinth shows where his heart was in ministry. He was no “in and out” evangelist, but a man committed to making disciples.
Allow me the liberty to move Luke's account of ACTS 18 from good narrative into chronological order of events.
18 After this, Paul stayed many days longer and then took leave of the brothers..
At Cenchreae [21st c. Kechries] he had cut his hair, for he was under a vow.
and with him Priscilla and Aquila (native of Pontus, Jews from Rome deported to Corinth).
and [they] set sail for Syria (with stops in other port cities).
19 And they came to Ephesus, and he left them [Priscilla and Aquilla] there
but he himself [Paul] went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews.
Once again some Jews are responsive to the Gospel of their obviously Jewish brother. All they had to do was take a look at the Apostle's shaved head symbolizing his Nazarite vow.
20 When they asked him to stay for a longer period, he declined. 21 But on taking leave of them he said, “I will return to you if God wills,”
and he set sail from Ephesus.
by way of Jerusalem
22 When he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church
Why does circumcision of Timothy now seem to be a necessity if he is to continue with Paul and Silas on this second missionary journey?
After parting ways with Barnabas, Paul has chosen Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord.
And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.
Acts of the Apostles 15:41 ESV
view of the Taurus mountains looking Southeast back toward roads from Syria
Paul, on this second missionary journey began via a land route from the church in Antioch, rather than by sea and then proceeding north from Perga as he and Barnabas had traveled before after walking across Cypress to its coastal towns.
A disciple was there, named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek.
2 He was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium.
3 Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.
But wait! I thought that we had settled those issues of circumcision at the Council in Jerusalem?
Since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions, it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. – Acts 15:24-25 ESV
Cultural clashes between Greeks and Jews
In fact, Saul of Tarsus continues to preach Christ to the Jews at great cost as the apostle returns once more to their local synagogues along with others.
Do you recall the issue which had led Paul and Barnabas to return to Jerusalem?
Circumcision.
Many gentiles had come to follow Christ and worshiped as brothers alongside converted Jews of The Way. Young Timothy is the son of one such believer.
Saul of Tarsus had been equally zealous for the Mosaic traditions before his encounter with Christ some years ago.
Joseph of Cypress (Barnabas) had sought out Saul in Tarsus where Paul had mostly stayed out of sight of zealous Judaizers for ten years. This is not dissimilar to Joseph bringing Mary and the child Jesus out of Egypt more than forty years before after the death of Herod’s grandfather.
Yet Zealots for the Law and traditions had recently caused trouble on Saul’s first missionary journey with Barnabas.
Apostles sent out into ever-changing political landscapes of Rome, Judea and a Hellenist world in between journeyed on frequently-shifting tectonic plates of clashing cultures.
Some men had come down to Antioch from Judea saying,
“Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”
Acts 15:1b ESV
This incident in Iconium, one of many, had threatened the apostles sent out by the Church.
On his second missionary journey Paul seeks out these new believers once more, including a young man named Timothy who had been raised by his Jewish grandmother and mother.
16:2 He was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium.
Luke mentions [16:1] that Paul and Silas travel to Lystra and Derbe even before now mentioning ‘brothers‘ in Iconium. What had happened in Iconium last time?
Now at Iconium they entered together into the Jewish synagogue and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed.- Acts of the Apostles 14:1 ESV
At Iconium as in Antioch Pisidia the apostles received a divided (and sometimes violent) reception to the Gospel.
The Jews of Cilicia held to their Jewishness in opposition to rampant cultural sin in the customs and ceremonies of an idolatrous Hellenistic majority of their own towns. Saul of Tarsus returns to these Christian brothers trying to convince other Jewish brothers that Jesus is the Christ.
How could these apostles of the risen Jesus reach even more Jews in theirs journeys?
In order to do this the Apostle Paul and his company of men must seem most Jewish in order to proclaim Christ in their synagogues.
BUT the issue of bringing Timothy to other towns is that his father is Greek and of course had not circumcised his son eight days after his birth — in the manner and custom of Hebrew fathers.
חֲתַן דָּמִים לַמּוּלֹֽת׃
Circumcision
At that time she said, “You are a bridegroom of blood” with reference to the circumcision.
Exodus 4:26b – Proclamation of Zipporah after she completed this sign of the covenant of the LORD on Moses’ son.
We read and the Hellenists read of the signs that the Lord God had confirmed His solemn promises to Abraham.
And he gave him the covenant of circumcision. And so Abraham became the father of Isaac, and circumcised him on the eighth day, and Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs.
ACTS of the Apostles 7:8 – from the preaching of Stephen to the Sanhedrin (most likely with Saul of Tarsus nearby)
Let’s be clear that in the διαθήκη covenant of περιτομή circumcision that our solemn agreement cut with the LORD is paramount to any sign or evidence of the flesh.
And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying,
“This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
Gospel of Luke 22:20 – the words of the Lord Jesus to the Twelve at the meal of the last Passover
WE are not Jews or Christians — true followers of the LORD (as was Moses) — true disciples of Jesus the Christ of the New Covenant — by signs of baptism, communion, ceremony or any other claim of grace separate from God’s covenant in Scripture.
The Apostle Peter had also been confronted with this same issue after reporting back to the Church in Jerusalem of the signs of the Holy Spirit also given to the gentiles.
Peter, John, Phillip, Paul, Barnabas and all the evangelists of the Gospel must continue to convince Jews as well as gentiles concerning God’s mercy and new covenant of the heart.
Paul’s later letter begins by addressing circumcision.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
Romans 1:16 ESV
To the Jew FIRST — Apostolic approach of taking the Gospel into all of the 1st century world.
Paul mentions the culture of so many idolaters among whom the Jews and Christians live. This idolatry is a legitimate concern, more so than a sign of circumcision.
Romans 1:22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!
Amen.
These Hellenists to whom the LORD made the Jews a light living among them are citizens of many towns to which Paul now will bring this Greek disciple named Timothy.
BUT the Jews have been rightly cautious about now allowing the leaven of their idol worship come near the worship of the Living God — most especially at their own Passover feasts.
Note: Konya (Iconium near Derbe & Lystra) in foreground – source: Google Earth AD2023
For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision?
I have only to mention recent, current and highly anticipated pagan festivals of the 21st century to paint a glace of the idolatry of first century — idol worship including parades, drinking, ritual sex, raucous celebrations and porneia in the public places — which Jews and Christians recognize as abhorrent to Almighty God.
The Hellenes to which Paul, Silas and Timothy would soon travel lived NOT in a unified Greece under Roman occupation similar to the religiously-united Judea of the Jews throughout the Empire, but in numerous culturally divergent city-states conquered separately by Roman centurions advancing from ports of the Mediterranean and Aegean seas.
Idolatries of the Hellenes worshipping gods of each city, similar to god idols of Roman myths allowed for a tolerant Roman peace. Romans simply viewed idol worship as harmless and practical public parties of a cultural nature, even a religious duty.
These frequent festivals sometimes celebrated each year may have been out of obligation, but culturally they generally were celebrations influential men of the city used to maintain their hold on the women, boys, slaves and money they controlled.
Remember, in most of the Roman Empire and most Hellenist cities MOST men served other men of means in charge of various aspects of their everyday lives. Many captive slaves worked for local land owners and the Roman army as well, including young boys who served their masters in ways NOT acceptable to any faithful Jew.
On the further mission beyond Derbe, Lystra and Iconium (modern-day Kona, Turkiye) Silas and Saul of Tarsus would certainly NOT want any fellow Jew to mistake this faithful young man and disciple, Timothy, as a Greek (because of his uncircumcision by his non-Jewish Greek father) as some Jews who traveled like Saul already knew.
4 As they went on their way through the cities, they delivered to them for observance the decisions that had been reached by the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem.
Acts 15 Decisions of the Council in Jerusalem (last year)
.. For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements:
that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality.
If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.
Farewell.”
So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily.
Acts of the Apostles 16:5 ESV
ACTS of the apostles Silas, Paul and Timothy .. To Be Continued…
Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne; And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth.
“Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, … to Thyatira…
“Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one.
I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.
19 Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this.As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.
Christ, our risen Lord and Savior holds in His right hand the angels of the churches. Christ, our returning Lord and Savior stands in the presence of His golden churches – the believers to be taken-up along with those who have gone before us.
Yet each letter to the churches is specific to a group of believers: praise for faithfulness and call to continued faith.
Not all who say, “Lord, lord,” will stand as a light of witness as a lampstand on His right.
For some will be separated to the King’s left and He will say of those who did not glimmer with the light of Jesus, “I never knew you.”
And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. – Matthew 25:46 KJV
Therefore: The warnings for the seven churches are addressed to the saints of every generation until the last.
You with ears to hear, let the scripture of Revelation speak to your eternal soul.
“And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write:
‘The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.
Why would the risen and returning Christ Jesus speak so severely to a small church far from Jerusalem or Rome, far from Athens and Ephesus on a road between other cities of much more importance?
Thyatiralay on the road that connected Pergamum with Sardis and went on to Philadelphia and to Laodicea, linking up with both Smyrna and Byzantium. That was the road by which the imperial post traveled; and it was crowded with the commerce of Asia and the east. Therefore, first and foremost Thyatira was a great commercial town.
Strategically the importance of Thyatira was that it was the gateway to Pergamum, the capital of the province. The first we hear of Thyatira is that it is an armed garrison, manned by a company of Macedonian troops, placed there as an outpost to protect Pergamos. The difficulty was that Thyatira was not capable of any prolonged defense. It lay in an open valley. There was no height that could be fortified; and all that Thyatira could ever hope to do was to fight a delaying action until Pergamos could prepare to meet the invaders.
Jesus appears in a vision to the Apostle John an speaks to Thyatira with awesome imagery of threat. It would not be unlike the Angel of the Lord standing on the hill overlooking the valley of Sodom.
Genesis 19:28: And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked and, behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.
The same description of awe is described by Ezekiel, who has great difficulty describing the appearing of God:
The Glory of the Lord
4 As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal.[b] 5 And from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had a human likeness, 6 but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. 7 Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf’s foot. And they sparkled like burnished bronze.
This same description of burnished bronze is John’s description of the feet of the returning Christ on the clouds… and He looks toward Thyatira with eyes of fire.
If you have never been within eyesight of a great furnace for iron or steel or bronze, picture the furnace of Daniel. In fact, it takes a furnace with such great fire of temperature to melt hard metals for the forming of idols.
Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated. 20 And he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace. 21 Then these men were bound in their cloaks, their tunics, their hats, and their other garments, and they were thrown into the burning fiery furnace. 22 Because the king’s order was urgent and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. 23 And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell bound into the burning fiery furnace.
And from within the fiery furnace, a witness of unexpected awe:
“But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.”
26 Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the burning fiery furnace; he declared, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out, and come here!”
Now picture this same Jesus returning with eyes like a flame of fire staring down your church!
Revelation 2:19 “‘I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.
20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. 21 I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.
Your tolerance is for everything EXCEPT the Truth.
Does the church tolerate Jezebel? Do we follow any prophesy and seducing spirit? Do we coexist with those who sacrifice to idols?
Dare you preach prosperity, when the poor will inherit the Kingdom? [Luke 6:20]
Why do christians run to the casino, to the lottery, to glitter of false promise?
Why do christians stand alongside followers of false prophets and idols?
Dare you preach universal acceptance into Heaven, when Jesus has preached to souls in Hell after going to the cross for our sins? [1 Peter 4:6]
Christ Jesus, King and Lord, has (thus far) given us 2000 years to REPENT and come to God the Father ONLY through Him.
The Lord sends His Holy Spirit to believers to guide us in the Gospel. We need no other spirit or guide. Yet the seducing spirits of some pulpits broadcast in His Name the message of the Anti-Christ.
Why does the church listen to Jezebel, when time is so short and the Lord IS so near?
Jezebel is a Phoenician name, and by this time the Phoenicians had disappeared as a separate ethnic identity and had become part of the Greek-speaking world. (Jezebel seems no different from the faithful of the church. She blends in with you and me and the church.)
Presumably Jezebel argued that a Christian might join a guild and participate in its feasts without thereby compromising his faith. He was initiated into a superior wisdom. he knew the idol was nothing and he could not be defiled by that which did not exist. . . . The local situation favored the accommodation of incompatible beliefs and practices: the letter insists on individual devotion to a Lord who searches the hearts of men and demands a consistency of life. The love and faith commended in the church might easily be corrupted by compromise with pagan society: the guilds themselves were devoted to good works.
Queen of King Ahab in the OT. A woman in the church at Thyatira in the NT who also represents the apostate church of the Tribulation. See Jezebel. (IF gentle teaching from pulpits has hidden true meaning of this:
36 Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples came to him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.”
37 He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man.
38 The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom.
The weeds are the sons of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sowed them is the devil.
The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.
40 Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.
41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, 42 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.
Revelation 2:
22 Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, 23 and I will strike her children dead.
And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.
24 But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden.
25 Only hold fast what you have until I come.
26 The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, 27 and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. 28 And I will give him the morning star.
29 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
