New Testament: Acts 19.35

To read the Bible in a year, read Acts 19.21–41 on July 16, In the year of our Lord Christ 2022

By Don Ruhl 

Paul and those working with him, were causing many, perhaps most, in Asia Minor to turn to the Lord. However, in Ephesus, many craftsmen profited from the statues that they sold of the goddess Diana. Yet, with most of the people becoming Christians, they abandoned the worship of Diana, and that did not make the craftsmen happy. 

Then a great mob assembled to denounce the arrival of Christianity and to affirm Diana as the Great One. To calm the crowd down, an official wanted the people to know that everyone knew what Ephesus was: 

And when the city clerk had quieted the crowd, he said: “Men of Ephesus, what man is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple guardian of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Zeus?”

– Acts 19.35 

I want to say to that man that I did not know of the status of Ephesus as guardian of the temple of Diana and of the image that fell down from Zeus, unless I had read it in the Bible, because it never happened. 

If those things were true, then the worship of Diana would still be going on today! 

However, instead, the faith of Jesus Christ has gone out and spread all over the earth. 

Questions: 

• Who was Zeus? 
• Have you seen a statue of Diana? 

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Don preaches with the Savage Street Church of Christ in Grants Pass, Oregon. 

Listen to his sermons here: GrantsPassChurchOfChrist.com