Our lesson today begins in Acts 14:19 with Satan again trying to halt the spread of Christianity. Angered by the multitudes of Jews and Gentiles that had accepted the gospel (14:1) the unbelieving Jews poisoned the minds of the unbelieving Gentiles against Paul and Barnabas (14:2). The rulers of the city, with both Gentiles and Jews backing them, intended to stone them. Learning of this, Paul and Barnabas fled from Iconium to Lystra.

In verse 19, in a way explained only that the Jews from Antioch and Iconium who had rejected the gospel persuaded the multitudes, Paul was stoned and dragged out of the city. They supposed he was dead. Satan used the people whom Paul had befriended, healing a man born crippled who had never walked, in a way not explained to stir up such hatred that they stoned Paul.

Satan continues in this 21st Century stirring up such hatred in many countries. At the present time he is using the people of the Muslim religion to do his evil work. The misguided souls of that religion are taught that it is God’s will that all who do not believe that Mohammed is God’s prophet are to be brought under subjection or killed.

Satan has others, particularly in our own country, who hate Christianity and are doing their best to eliminate all forms of its public display. We can expect that to continue because those who call themselves believers are more concerned with electing those who promise them what they want than matters of godliness and morality.

Satan has deceived the multitudes of nominal “believers,” and believers in the traditions of men. These have no concern that the gospel has been so perverted that what is taught in the name of Christianity today by most is Christianity in name only, not what is taught in the New Testament. That is seen by anyone who can see through a ladder, and who wants to see. Even the one way of salvation as presented in the New Testament has been perverted into a multitude of ways, each contradicting the other and contradicting God’s way.

It began shortly following the death of the apostles with the leaders of the local churches deciding that they did not have to follow the way the apostles had appointed the church to be governed. We are told in verse 23 that elders were appointed in every church. This was the beginning of the changes that allowed the multitude of changes that followed.

In the days of the prophet Samuel, the Jews decided they wanted to have a king, like the nations around them and rejected God’s way. The Christian leaders of the churches in the days following the death of the apostles, decided they wanted something more than just elders. It evolved to the situation that we have today. That will be elaborated on in the next lesson.