When they arrived at Antioch, they gathered the church together. They reported all that God had done through them. They told how he had opened a way for the Gentiles to believe.
Pray for us too. Pray that God will give us an opportunity to preach our message. Then we can preach the mystery of Christ. Because I preached it, I am being held by chains.
“ Here is what I command you to write to the church in Philadelphia. Here are the words of Jesus, who is holy and true. He holds the key of David. No one can shut what he opens. And no one can open what he shuts. He says,‘ I know what you are doing. Look! I have put an open door in front of you. No one can shut it. I know that you don’t have much strength. But you have obeyed my word. You have not said no to me.
Brothers and sisters, we want you to know about the hard times we had in Asia Minor. We were having a lot of trouble. It was far more than we could stand. We even thought we were going to die.In fact, we felt as if we were under the sentence of death. But that happened so that we would not depend on ourselves but on God. He raises the dead to life.God has saved us from deadly dangers. And he will continue to do it. We have put our hope in him. He will continue to save us.
Did I fight wild animals in Ephesus with nothing more than human hopes? Then what have I gotten for it? If the dead are not raised,“ Let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we will die.”( Isaiah 22:13)
Paul entered the synagogue. There he spoke boldly for three months. He gave good reasons for believing the truth about God’s kingdom.But some of them wouldn’t listen. They refused to believe. In public they said evil things about the Way of Jesus. So Paul left them. He took the believers with him. Each day he talked with people in the lecture hall of Tyrannus.This went on for two years. So all the Jews and Greeks who lived in Asia Minor heard the word of the Lord.
