Video first posted: August 29, 2026
Below is a machine-generated transcript of the Song of songs 3 v6-11 (Part 87) BitChute video, with a few minor manual edits. At the bottom, after the transcript, is a machine-generated summary of the transcript.
| Hello, in this video, we're going to continue meditating on the impact of the spirit of Solomon on the early church. And we've been looking at how it began to infect even Paul, the one apostle out of the group who had been the most resistant to it. And we have been going through | |
| the book of Acts, looking at how that spirit of Solomon, the one described in Song of Songs, chapter 3, verses 6 through 11, how that spirit has been making its way into the church and everything that the church was doing, even from early on. And we have been reading up to Acts 19, and I believe we stopped around verse 22 in the previous video, so we're going to continue from there. | |
| And we just wanted to mention a couple of things here very quickly about verse 22 that we may have already said, but wanted to mention them again very quickly. Here, let's read verse 22, Acts 19. So he said into Macedonia, two of them that ministered unto him, Timotheus and Erastus, but he himself stayed in Asia for a season. So we saw, I believe, | |
| previously that the word ministered here, when it says, so he sent into Macedonia two of them that ministered unto him. The word ministered was translated, as you can see here, from diaconeo. And that's where we get the word deacon in English. And it's the word for service, but it's the service of a waiter, of a butler, of a maid, that type of service. So it's connected to the pastoral ministry. | |
| very strongly because that's the ministry most directly connected to service. Service like a waiter, someone who is there to please you in some way by providing a service. So we can see that Timotheus and Erastus were acting pastorally, serving Paul pastorally. And we were sharing how that seems to be the subtle figure that | |
| that something pastoral was beginning to happen inside the heart of Paul and that it was reducing the people around him to pastoral work and pastoral work for him. And not that there would be anything inherently wrong with that, with two brothers wanting to serve another brother | |
| Not that there's anything wrong with that, but in the whole context that we have been seeing of what's been happening to Paul, it seems like God is indicating this is what is beginning to happen in the life of Paul. That now he's reducing people, the people around him, to a pastoral understanding of things. Like reducing Christianity to this pastoral version. And he's getting the people around him to act that way. Yeah. | |
| And then also what happens with pastors that they end up getting people to serve them. And that's what's beginning to happen here. And the other thing we may or may not have mentioned is regarding these two names here. Timotheus literally means, if I'm not mistaken, to honor or fear God. Let's just confirm Timotheus, which is... | |
| you know, what we refer to as Timothy, the name Timothy. It's just a short form of Timotheus. And the theus part is theos in Greek, which means God, and timo, the timo part comes from time, which means to honor. So, and we have shared several times, I believe that honor in scripture is most directly related to the teacher ministry. | |
| It's the ministry connected to the commandment, honor thy father and thy mother. We have shared in previous recordings, I believe, that the first five commandments out of the 10 are connected to the five ministries. And I believe it's in the order, in the same order, the first commandment, apostle, second commandment, prophet, third commandment, evangelist, fourth commandment, pastor, fifth commandment, teacher. | |
| But the thing is that the teacher ministry is the weakest of all the ministries. And it's the one that God requires of us to show honor to. And honor can mean not only respect, but it also refers to provision, even monetary provision. Just like when it says, honor thy father, thy mother, that's related to God calling us to | |
| provide for our parents when they are in weakness. As you may recall, as you may know, in the old days, ancient days, there was no social security or things like that the way we do now. So as people got old, they would obviously be less and less able to provide for themselves. And then it became the responsibility of the children that they had had to provide for themselves. | |
| And in that condition of weakness, the children could very easily say, oh, you're not my problem. I don't care for you. You're on your own. But a good son or a good daughter would tend to their parents, especially as they got older and weaker, and many times it involved a monetary provision. | |
| So the thing is that the teacher ministry, which is the weakest of the five ministries, is the one that is most connected to honor in God's eyes because God wants us to honor what is weak, not to let ourselves be controlled by what we can see. And when we see weakness, the natural reaction is to disdain it or diminish its importance. But God says, no, do the opposite. Honor it. When you see weakness, honor it. | |
| cover it, honor it. And so the thing is that time means honor and is connected to, I just felt led, I felt prompted, I believe, I think it was of the Lord to do a quick search here. So let's look at the word time here. Let's see if I can find the thing that just came to my heart and mind. Let's see if I can find it. | |
| No, I cannot find it, at least not here directly. Let me, I apologize, let me do a quick search here. So I'm going to the Blue Letter Bible website, and I'm going to type double, because there's a verse that I recall that has the word double in it. Here we go, I think this is the one. Yes, 1 Timothy 5:17. | |
| It says, let the elders that rule will well be counted worthy of double honor, especially they who labor in the word and doctrine. And the word honor here is time. Oh, okay. So I'm not sure why I didn't see it when we were looking at the appearances of time just a moment ago. But the thing is that here in 1 Timothy 5:17, it talks about giving double honor. | |
| And it says, especially to those who labor in the word, the logos, in other words, apostolic judgments. But then it says, and doctrine. And the word doctrine is confusing because we associate it with religious things. But the word in Greek really says didaskalia, which means teaching. So didaskalia, as you can see here, | |
| means teaching or instruction. It's the word to teach in Greek. That's why when they put the word doctrine here, it just muddles the meaning because you start thinking of religious doctrine. But it's just saying teaching. That's what it says in the Greek. And someone reading in the Greek, that's what they would get from it. Not the concept of doctrine, but the concept of teaching, someone teaching you. So notice how the Lord says that those who are worthy of double honor | |
| Especially, there's a special emphasis on providing double honor to those who teach, who labor in the word and the doctrine. The word logos, which is apostolic wisdom, and doctrine, which is teacher. And that kind of emphasizes the teacher ministry even more because what does the teacher do? The teacher, as we've shared on the website, is like a lake. | |
| who receives the rivers of the apostolic wisdom, who kind of, you know, feed the lake. And so the apostolic endowment is the one of wisdom that goes and gets new things, new revelations, new understandings. And then the teacher takes that account | |
| accumulation that those rivers of wisdom and and then the teacher becomes the warehouse the storehouse of this apostolic wisdom and then distributes it and shares it with others it's like for example in physics the apostle an apostle in physics shall we say was Isaac Newton he Newton and lightness and people like that but specifically in physics let's say Newton | |
| So Newton would come up apostolically with new wisdom. And the wisdom was the three laws of motion. I think they're called the law of inertia, the law of force, forces, mass times acceleration. And the third law was the law of action and reaction. So he came up with the laws. Those are apostolic principles, wisdom. And then a teacher of physics | |
| receives those new laws that are discovered apostolically and stores them. And then, you know, they get stored in a book and then the teacher comes and teaches out of that book that is filled with apostolic revelation. In this case, apostolic revelation related to physics. So that's what a teacher does. So he or she administers the words, the Logos words, | |
| of apostolic wisdom puts them together, organizes them, and then teaches them. In the case of physics, all the laws and the apostolic revelation and wisdom that has come from different people, Newton or Maxwell or whoever it might have been, they produce this wisdom and then the teacher distributes it. So that's why we were saying here that the presence of logos, | |
| points to the apostolic kind of even emphasizes the teacher even more because the teacher is an administrator of the logos, apostolic word. So he labors, he or she labors in the logos word to teach it to others, if that makes any sense. So the thing is, long story short, from 1 Timothy 5:17, we see the emphasis of what we were saying, just to triple confirm that honor | |
| is connected to the teacher ministry, that God wants us to honor those who teach in weakness. Even though the teacher ministry is weak, He wants us to honor it. And that's just a general principle that when we see weakness, we are to be, when we're in the spirit, to be predisposed to cover it and honor it. Okay, so going back to... | |
| Let's go back to where we were here. We were looking at the name Timotheus, which means honoring God. So it's connected to the teacher ministry. So you're honoring God when you honor a teacher because the teacher ministry is the manifestation of one of the seven spirits of God. Each ministry is connected to the spirit of God. | |
| So there are five ministries, and those five ministries are connected to five spirits. And then there are two other spirits to make a total of seven, but those two other spirits are not connected to any ministry. The thing is, when you honor a teacher, you're honoring a manifestation of God because God, that's a manifestation of the spirit of Sardis that we have shared on the website. | |
| It's the Spirit of God that spoke to the church of Sardis in Revelation. In Revelation 2 and 3, those seven churches, each one was spoken to by the Spirit of God. And the Spirit of God that spoke to the church in Sardis is the Spirit from where we get the teacher endowment. So when you're seeing someone manifesting a teacher endowment, you're seeing a manifestation of the Spirit of God. And when you honor the teacher, you're honoring God. | |
| if that makes sense. But the short version of this is that Timothy is connected to the teacher ministry. And then the other name that was there in Acts 19:22, the two brothers who were diaconeo, who were ministering, pastorally serving Paul, the other brother was Erastus. And Erastus, we saw, I believe, in the previous recording, the name is connected to | |
| it out which means to love but it's um it's from where we get the word arrow erotic uh arrows eros um it's connected to physical love um there are three types of love arrows love which is physical love and then there's phileos love which is soul love uh and then there's agape love which is uh more spiritual so there's three things body soul and spirit so this arrows | |
| phileo, and agape. And this is the more, you could say, the more physical type. So it's interesting that his name is connected to physical love. And it says here, beloved. And that's erastos. So you could say that in a spiritual sense, if this was connected to an evil spirit, erastos, | |
| It would have to be connected to the Canaanite spirit because when eroticism and all that goes awry, it goes awry through the Canaanite spirit. That's the spirit of low passions because that's what Canaan means. Canaan means lowlands. So it's a spirit of low passions. So the thing is that it's like God embedded in the name a hint of a connection to the Canaanite spirit. | |
| In a negative sense, and the Canaanite spirit is the distortion of the pastor endowment. When the pastor goes bad, he becomes a Canaanite. So you see the connection to the pastor ministry there. And in a negative sense. So you have someone whose name is connected to the teacher ministry very clearly. And then someone who is in a more subtle way connected to the pastor ministry. | |
| And these two, it's as if God is saying, the way Paul is going right now, he's reducing, because he's starting to get infected by the spirit of Solomon, then the people around him began to operate with an emphasis on the two female ministries of pastor and teacher. | |
| Teacher timotheus and pastor erastus on by the way there is a passage also in the one of in one timothy the letter to timothy that paul wrote where paul refers to timotheus timothy as a teacher so that just even emphasizes the connection to teacher even more and erastus is connected to the pastor and they were so it's like people around him began to get reduced to a pastoral teacherly | |
| understanding of christianity that's what was beginning to happen to paul and and and these two were were serving pastorally uh serving paul pastorally so that's what what was going on and that's why god had to kind of like uh um get him out of there um and i mean this in a generic sense as if to say if he stays around too long he's going to ruin his legacy so god was beginning to | |
| sort of like cut him short in a sense. I hope I'm making sense in this. Okay, so that's one thing we wanted to emphasize, this connection to the two female ministries, the Timotheus and Erastus, and how it represents the damage that the spirit of Solomon was doing in Paul. And then the other thing that we also kind of mentioned briefly is connected to Asia here, that he stayed in Asia | |
| Whilst he sent these two off to Macedonia. And in a negative sense, if you think about it, it's almost as if to say that he sent these two who are pastor and teacher out to Macedonia. As if to say, I am sending past matriarchal, the two female ministries out to Macedonia. | |
| instead of sending male endowment, which he represented being an apostle, which is a male ministry, he needed to go to Macedonia. He needed to send maleness to Macedonia, but he sent females. In other words, he needed to send a man, and he sent a woman, and we're talking spiritually. But he stayed in Asia as if to say, the people of Asia need me, | |
| I will exercise my maleness here in Asia and not over there. And it's that because Asia was much was a province, you know, in modern day Turkey that was very they had a lot of Jewish influence. There were there were a lot of Jewish people in Ephesus. So the thing is that he he was saying, oh, let's leave the the the the | |
| important stuff to the Gentiles. I'll stick here in Asia. And this emphasizes what we also mentioned before that when he was at the beginning on his way to one of, I think his first journey or second journey, I forget. He had three missionary journeys, but on the journey where he ended up in Philippi, I think that was the second journey. | |
| God told him to go through Turkey, through Asia, and not preach there, not stick around and preach the word there. And as we see what happened afterwards, when he did return to Asia and preach there, we kind of see why God told him not to stay there. Because God wanted him to reach the Gentiles in Europe. And | |
| If he had, if Paul had stuck around and said, I'll preach along the way, he would have ended up in Ephesus. And look at what happened when he did arrive eventually in Ephesus. He stayed there for three years. And even here in verse 22, Acts 19:22, the verse we're looking at. | |
| he was so enamored with staying in Asia that even though there was need in Macedonia, he sent a woman out there, spiritually speaking, Timotheus and Erastus, and decided to stay in Asia. And if he had preached in Asia on his way to Philippi, he would have never made it to Philippi. He would have become so enamored with Asia that he would have stayed there and he would have never gone into Europe. | |
| And that's why God told him earlier not to do that. But you can see that he's doing like the opposite of what he was told earlier. And as we said before, when God tells you don't do something yesterday, it doesn't mean he doesn't want you to do it ever. That was a commandment for that day and that time. So obviously the commandment not to preach in Asia was not a commandment forever and ever. | |
| It was a commandment for when he was on his way to Philippi. When God was sending him to Macedonia in Philippi. But you can see. It's almost like God is saying. He's doing the opposite of what I want him to do. Not that he wasn't supposed to be preaching in Asia at that time. But the fact that he stays in Asia. And sends these two. A pastor and a teacher back to Macedonia. It just emphasizes how important it was. For him to be. | |
| in Asia and not in Macedonia, because Asia was the middle ground that was more comfortable to him. Asia is halfway between Jerusalem and Europe. It's this middle ground where he can be half Jewish and half Gentile. And that's where he wanted to be. He didn't want to be in your ministry to the Gentiles. | |
| There was a part of him that didn't want to do that. Let's put it that way. There was a part of him that was resisting that. Resisting the full manifestation that God wanted. Of preaching to the Gentiles directly. And forgetting about the Jews. And he just could not do that. Okay, so now that we have shared that. Let's go on to the next verse. Acts 19:23. | |
| So we're going to start reading a story here, something that happened in Ephesus, the place that Paul wanted to stick around it. And let's see what happens. So here in verse 23, 23 is number of pastor, which is not a coincidence. And 22 is the number of divorce or separation. So it's interesting that he separated himself from Macedonia in a sense here when he sent | |
| Timothy is an Erasmus, but stayed in Asia. So, OK, so Acts 1923, it says, and the same time there arose no small stir about that way. So around the same time, it's like God saying in the meantime. When Paul was sticking around in Asia and sending lesser people or more female people, let's put it that way. I'm saying all of this in quotes. | |
| sending them to Macedonia as he was doing that, then some big trouble started to stir up in Ephesus. So it says, next verse, Acts 19:24, for a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmith. So there was this man called Demetrius. | |
| And he was a silversmith, it says here, and he made silver shrines for Diana. Now, the interesting stuff begins to manifest itself in this verse when you look at the names in the Greek. Because when you see them in English, you kind of miss what's going on behind the scenes a little bit. So let's look at the verses here. So we're looking at Acts 19:24. | |
| I'll read it again. For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gate unto the craftsman. So there was a certain man. And interesting here, the word man is not in the original Greek. And that's why I was a little hesitant to say the word man. And you can see here that it's italicized, which emphasizes that it was added in the translation. It's not in the original text. | |
| And you can verify here when looking at the Greek words, it's not there. And that's very important because God does not call him a man. It's just for a certain one. We just need to add the word man in English for completion. It just feels strange to just say for a certain, you know, without saying certain something. So that's why the translators add man, but it's not there in the Greek. So let's just say for a certain one named Demetrius. | |
| So God does not emphasize his manhood. That's very important, his maleness. So his name is Demetrius. And the name Demetrius is very interesting when you look at it. Demetrius, it's from Demeter. It says here, as you can see, from Demeter or Ceres. So that must be another name for whoever Demeter was. | |
| And I'll be very frank when I saw this the first time I honestly honestly thought that the meter. Was the name of a man. And the reason why I would think that is because. When I was a little kid. Long, long time ago. Around you know Passover time or. Or. | |
| in the Xmas or Saturnalia celebrations, around that time of the year, those times of the year, you would see, or at least I would see on television, a lot of biblical pictures, like old pictures being played again. And one that I remembered as a kid that I would hear about like several times, was this one called, | |
| One, it's a movie that involved a gladiator named Demetrius. And that's all I can remember. To be frank, I think I would watch the movie, but I was too young to really understand what was going on. I was just watching the movie, just watching images on a television screen. And that's why I was prompted to kind of look it up. I have a tab here, Demetrius and the gladiators. I looked up... | |
| what the name was and that's the name of the movie and it's a movie from 1954 and it's a kind of a biblical story about a man a gladiator named Demetrius who converted to the Lord and then there was this the robe and I think it's the robe of the Lord supposedly the one that that the soldiers cast lots for when he was hanging on the cross and | |
| And they took his robe and they didn't want to cut it up because it was very valuable. So they decided to cast lots to see who got the robe. So the robe features in that story. And it's kind of interesting. When I read the plot, I said, wow, all that happened. And as I was mentioning, as a kid, I had no idea what I was watching. So... | |
| So this is a very interesting story. But the point that we wanted to share here is that Demetrius, because of this movie, was always a very masculine name to me. Because I would think of a gladiator, some strong, muscular guy with a sword and a shield and fighting lions or fighting other gladiators and doing all this kind of | |
| very masculine stuff. So to me, Demetrius was always a very masculine name. So that's why when I saw going back | |
| here to the name Demetrius, that means from Demeter, I immediately thought Demeter must be some sort of male god, you know, god of thunder, some very muscular god, very powerful. And then, to my surprise, and I have the link, the tab here, this is Demeter. And when I saw it was the latest, and what? And it says here, I'm looking at the Wikipedia article on | |
| Demeter. It says in ancient Greek religion and mythology, Demeter. Is the Olympian goddess of the harvest in agriculture, presiding over crops, grains, food and the fertility of the earth. Although Demeter is mostly known as a grain goddess, she also appeared as a goddess of health, birth and marriage and that connections to the underworld. She's also called Deo, D-E-O. | |
| So the thing is that this, and this is when I began to get the sense of what God was trying to say in that, trying to get us to understand in that passage, if I understand it correctly. And notice here that she's a goddess of the harvest and agriculture. So that immediately links her to the Girgashite spirit, the Girgashite spirit of earthliness, which is the teacher gone bad. So it's | |
| A teacher gone bad, if we take this in the negative sense. And then the fertility part, that makes you think of the Canaanite spirit, fertility. And she's also connected to marriage, which is a very, it's soul communion, which in a negative sense is connected to the Canaanite spirit. So it's very pastoral. So there's a pastoral element to this Demeter and also a very Girgashite or teacher element to her. | |
| this deity and so you see the two female female ministries there again the pastoral uh but more in a secondary role and then the teacher uh in a in a primary role which kind of goes with timotheus and erastus with timotheus being mentioned first who was the teacher if that makes sense so so there's something like god saying teacher pastor um | |
| And it's almost as if to say that's how it started to happen with Paul. Paul was an apostle, but he was also a teacher. And I think he calls himself a teacher somewhere. I forget where, but I'm pretty certain that somewhere in Scripture he calls himself a teacher. And you can see it from the epistles. He was a teacher, the way he's described things. He was teaching people. | |
| apostolic wisdom that god was giving him so he was a teacher so it's through that teacher ministry that the pastoral began to creep in um and that's why the teachers mentioned first and pastor second timothy is first eras to second and this demeter goddess is primarily a teacher first and a pastor second um so okay so so then uh so so you can see the switch something that was i thought was very masculine turns out to be | |
| very feminine um it was a female goddess and and then going back to um to Demetrius here so he was from or pertaining to Demeter so he belonged to the woman so you can see that in the name you see a subjection of the male to the female the female is the dominant one she's the goddess and then there's this man who's named in honor of her | |
| As if to say, he is of her. He belongs to her. He is of Demeter. And here, as you can see here, belonging to Ceres or belonging to Demeter. I imagine Ceres must be the, maybe the Greek, the Roman version of it. That's the sense I'm getting because a lot of Greek mythological gods and goddesses had | |
| They're equivalent in the Roman world because the Romans just copy-pasted the Greek mythology and just renamed stuff just to make it look like it was Roman and not Greek. Let me see if I, just out of curiosity, if I see the word Seres here somewhere in this Wikipedia article. Here it says, yeah, Roman, Seres. So that was a Roman name. Yeah, and in Egyptian, it's Isis, interestingly enough. | |
| So apparently this, okay, but we'll see some things here a little later about this goddess, and you'll see how there are certain themes going on here. First, someone being stuck halfway between God's perfect will and the will of man. There's this halfway thing going on, and then there's this theme of | |
| the female uh taking predominant rising to to uh to predominance um starting with the teacher first um okay so but let's go back for a moment here um to Demetrius um okay so this is the guy talking a guy whose name uh is referring to someone who is dominated by by femaleness uh | |
| by a female goddess. Okay, so let's return to Acts 19 24. That's where we are right now. For a certain one, not a man, for a certain one, that's how it says it in the Greek, for a certain one named Demetrius, a silversmith, a worker of silver, and that's what it says in the Greek, so we'll just keep reading, which made silver shrines for Diana. And that's, so shrines, let's see shrines here. | |
| It's a very interesting word. The word in Greek is naos. And when I clicked here, I was taken aback when I saw the usages of naos. As you can see here, the first time it's used is in chapter 23. 23, number of pastor. Matthew 23, verse 16. Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, the naos, it is nothing. But whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, | |
| the Naos, he's a debtor. Matthew 23:16. So notice that Naos is spoken in the context of a temple. So here they translated it as temple, not a shrine. So in a general sense, it points to the temple of Solomon, the spirit of Solomon, the spirit that says the temple is important. | |
| The temple is relevant. That's why you have in the matriarchal church in the Christian church of today. The emphasis on the church. The church building. The temple. Because it's the spirit of Solomon. Trying to emphasize the temple. The temple of Solomon. So notice that the immediate connection. You can see to the spirit of Solomon there. But okay so. | |
| But that got me to thinking, as I was looking at the word temple here, like, is this the word for temple in other places or is it just in these places in particular? And then let me see if I can, how did I do this? I did it a moment ago. Oh, there's another word for temple. That's what I wanted to get at. | |
| It's like I became aware that temple, there's another word for temple in Greek. And I think it's because, now that I'm remembering, I think it's because God brings it up later here. But let's leave it at that. This word shrine is a form of temple. So he was making silver temples. | |
| And that's what the Spirit of Solomon goes around doing, building these silver temples. So why silver? Silver is, as we've shared before, in scripture, a figure of purity. So it's a place of purity. The church is a holy place, a holy temple, a clean temple. So that's what the Spirit of Solomon gets people to do, to build these silver temples, these silver naos, | |
| uh but they are they are silvery on the outside but um in other words pure on the outside but they're dedicated to to the soul and that makes them impure i hope that makes sense um because they're they're they are for diana diana's a woman woman is a figure of the soul um so um and diana is uh | |
| And this is where it gets interesting with the name because Diana is actually Artemis in Greek. That's Artemidos or Artemis, the name itself that Luke wrote as God was inspiring him to write this verse, Acts 19:24. The word was Artemis. That's the name of the goddess in Greek. Diana, I think, is the Roman version of the same name. | |
| goddess. So let's look | |
| at Artemis here so Artemis which means it comes from Artemon which means a top sail or foresail of a ship okay but yeah what we wanted to mention here is that notice that she's only mentioned this demon or deity is only mentioned in Acts 19 | |
| All appearances, as you can see here, are in Acts 19. But the fact that it's mentioned, let's read it here. I think this is what we wanted to look at here. It says Artemis, that is to say, the so-called Tauric or Persian or Ephesian Artemis. And this is what got very interesting to me. | |
| Because when I thought of Artemis, I said, oh, it's a god, it's a Greek goddess, part of the Greek mythology. But notice that it says here, Tauric or Persian. So it says the goddess of many Asiatic people. Asiatic, in other words, the people of the province, the Roman province called Asia, which is in modern day Turkey, that's where Ephesus was. So Western Turkey. So it says here, so it's an Asiatic goddess, | |
| So I said to myself as I was reading this, oh, I thought it was a Greek goddess. And then it says to be distinguished from the Artemis of the Greeks, the sister of Apollo. Because I knew that there was an Artemis. That's because many years ago, I knew of a bookstore called Artemis. And that's why I knew that there was a Greek goddess called Artemis. So... | |
| So now I was finding out as I was reading this that the Artemis that's mentioned in Acts 19 is not the Artemis of the Greeks, the one that I'd heard of before, because that other one is the sister of Apollo. Notice it mentions Apollo, and that's, well, but let's not go into that. There's like another tangent there that we can look at, but let's not do that for now. So it says a very splendid temple was built to her at Ephesus. | |
| which was set on fire by Herostratus and reduced to ashes. But afterwards, in the times of Alexander the Great, it was rebuilt in a style of greater magnificence. Notice that a temple that was very important, a temple of magnificence, and that just points to, again, the Temple of Solomon. Excuse me, but, excuse me. So, uh, | |
| But the thing here is that the Artemis that is being mentioned in Acts 19 is not the Greek Artemis. It's the Asian, the Asiatic Artemis. It's the same name, but it's more Middle Eastern Persian. So it's going east, you know, east of Jerusalem. And Tarek, I think, I'm not sure that this sounds like Turkic. | |
| Maybe I should do a quick search on what Torek is, but I would not be surprised if Torek is like a people in the Turkic nations. Here, the Torei or Toreans were an ancient people settled on the southern coast of the Crimean peninsula, inhabiting the Crimean mountains. So the Crimeans are... | |
| That's where Ukraine is, if I'm not mistaken. So it's around here, around the Black Sea, which is kind of in the area around Turkey. These maps are not very helpful here. But yeah, as you can see, Ukraine is right here. And Turkey is down here. So it's in that region. | |
| So it's Middle Eastern. Well, you could say it's kind of Eastern, but the Persian version of Artemis, obviously, is from way east to the east and not visible here in this map. But the thing is that what we're trying to say here is that this Artemis was not Greek. She was Asian, but she was pretending to be Greek because she had a Greek name. | |
| So it's someone trying to play both sides against the middle. It's trying to have their cake and eat it too. And that's what Paul was trying to do. He was trying to say, oh, I'm preaching to the Greeks, but at the same time, I'm honoring the Jewish people and trying to let every place where I preach the gospel be reached through the Jewish people so that the glory will go to the Jewish people of that place as the point of entry | |
| of the gospel of Christ into that part of the world. He wanted the Jews to be honored everywhere he went and spread the gospel. So he wanted to have his cake and eat it too, preach to the Greeks, to the Gentiles, but hold on to Jewishness. And that's what this represents. Artemis is actually a Middle Eastern deity | |
| but she's given a Greek name, which makes her look Greek, but she's not Greek. I hope that's making sense. So that's the theme we begin to see here, this middle ground, someone's stuck in the middle. And all right, so let's keep reading here. So this business of building the silver temples for Artemis | |
| And again, it's not a male god, it's a female god. So Demetrius was named after a female god. And Diana was a female god. And let's just go to a description of Artemis or Diana goddess in Wikipedia. Let's see how we'll see something here. Diana mythology. Let's see if we can... | |
| find something in reference to Ephesus um okay um the temple of Artemis in Ephesus so this is the temple of Artemis at least that's uh a model of it I guess um so um this Artemis um or Diana here um um | |
| And this temple was destroyed and rebuilt many times in ancient history. The last incarnation of the temple was destroyed in 401 AD. Only foundations and fragments of the last temple remain in the present day. So it's like the spirit tried to rebuild the temple, rebuild the temple, rebuild the temple, and God kept destroying it and destroying it and destroying it. And that's kind of what the church is doing all the time, trying to rebuild the temple of Solomon. And God keeps destroying it and saying it's cursed, it's cursed, it's cursed. And | |
| Um, but we wanted to mention here, let's, let's look at Diana, what she was like. Uh, she's a goddess in Roman religion, uh, primarily considered a patroness of the countryside, nature, hunters, wildlife, childbirth, crossroads, the night and the moon. She's a, she's equated with a Greek goddess Artemis. Uh, let's just look at Artemis here, the Greek goddess herself. Um, and she. | |
| She is related to childbirth, care of children, chastity. She was often said to roam the forest and mountains attended by an entourage of nymphs. The goddess Diana is her Roman equivalent. So the nymphs thing that just kind of points to the Canaanite spirit and caring children, that's motherly, that's in a negative sense Canaanite. So you can see that this one, this goddess is more focused on the Canaanite spirit. | |
| But it is is the canine spirit under a shroud of purity because you know, she she is she has chastity but Like the silver temples the silver is purity So so she's the pastoral trying to pass up for pure and and the other one the other goddess we saw which was Demeter She's more teacherly also pastoral but more teacherly Okay, so | |
| Let's go back here to... All right, so... So they made silver temples for Artemis and brought no small gain. And the word gain is ergasia in Greek. And ergasia, interestingly enough, if you look at the appearances of ergasia, it's used once in Luke 12:58, when the Lord is talking about... | |
| try to settle things disputes with your adversary before it's too late but then it's used the second time in Acts 16 16 as you can see here and it's a passage we looked at before it's when Paul was in Macedonia in Philippi and there was this woman who had a spirit of divination and and | |
| And she brought her masters much gain, much ergasia by soothsaying. So when the Lord God, and then the word is mentioned again in Acts 16:19. And when her masters saw that the hope of their ergasia, their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas. So God with this word is pointing back to when Paul was in Macedonia doing God's will. | |
| And it's like the same story, something similar happening here, but it's kind of different. It's like God saying to Paul, what are you doing in Asia? You're supposed to be in Macedonia, but you're in Asia. I don't know what else to say, but that's what I'm getting in my heart here because the reference to someone providing gains for someone else is repeated. | |
| So I hope that's making sense. But that's what I get when I read this. It's like God saying to Paul, what are you doing in Asia? You should be in Macedonia. Okay, so let's go back to Acts 19:24. So, okay. So the building of silver temples was producing a big profit for these people. | |
| Just like the spirit of divination was producing big profits for the masters of the young lady in Acts 16, the one that Paul and Silas healed by casting out the demon of divination from her. So it's almost like God saying this is the same thing going on in the spirit of Solomon church. It's the same spirit of divination that | |
| Gives much profit. To the people who work. In that system. The church system. Is a system that produces much profit. To the people who work in it. The people who are dedicated. To building these silver temples. That's what these silver ministries. Each shrine. That's mentioned here. In Acts 19 24. Is a ministry. Think of any ministry. Kenneth Copeland ministries. | |
| The guy from Oklahoma, I forget his name. Oh my goodness. I see his face and I can't see his name. The guy who started the Oral Roberts. Yes, for some reason it just escaped me. Oral Roberts Ministries, that's a shrine. | |
| Joel Osteen ministries. These are the silver shrines. And as they build these temples. These ministries. These systems. It brings much profit. To them. Just like the woman of divination. With the spirit of divination. Was bringing much profit to her masters. Because she was exercising. Some form of spirituality. Some sort of supernatural. Manifestation that was making. | |
| her master is very wealthy and it's the same thing with the silver church the silver shrines that all these men build it it there's a form of supernatural supernatural quality to these temples these shrines and it gives them much profit and it's a system they need to they keep to keep going to uphold just like these people these people relied on on the | |
| On the on this on the silver shrines being popular to make a to have profit Just like the pastors pastors of the church need the system to continue profiting from it and Okay, so then verse 25 acts 1925 the next verse it says whom he called together | |
| with the workmen of like occupation and said, Sirs, you know that by this craft we have our wealth. Notice how out in the open he is. By this craft we have our wealth. We make money off of this stuff, ladies and gentlemen. And it's very interesting, the word Sirs, when you look at it in the Greek, the word Sirs is aner. It comes from aner in the Greek. And this is a very male word. | |
| Aner, as you can see here, literally means with reference to sex of a male. In other words, it's referring to the gender of the person, not just man in general. It's a male. Here, notice here, any male. So it's very masculine. So he's saying men, males. And it's the irony that these people are serving a female goddess. | |
| And this is being said by a man whose name is consecrated to a woman. Demeter. Even though the name sounds very masculine. It's a name consecrated to a woman. So the irony of him calling these people males. I hope you see the irony. God just showing the irony. These people on the outside look like very spiritual people. Very male. Male spirit. Female soul. So they are very male looking on the outside. But they're serving a female deity. | |
| Just like the Solomon, you know, what happens in the Solomon churches, which are the vast majority of churches, almost every church in the current system. Okay, so then verse 26, Acts 19. Moreover, you see and hear that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people | |
| saying that they be no gods which are made with hands. So, okay, so notice that Paul was having a lot of success and his name was becoming well known throughout all of Asia. He had been there for three years as we had read earlier here and God was doing mighty things through him. I think it was the first two years then he stayed one more year or something to that effect. But the thing is that | |
| that God was giving Paul and the church a taste of what could have been if things had been right. And then the name of God was spreading and the name of Paul was spreading because there was kingship associated to it. And I hope that when we were sharing on this earlier that we pointed that out in the passages, | |
| a passage as you're reading Acts 18 and 19, you're seeing the kingship of God being established in the place. There was kingdom. It was a gospel of the kingdom, not just a gospel of getting people saved to repeat the salvation prayer. There was a spreading of the influence of God in the spiritual atmosphere of the place, and these people felt it, and they were reacting to it. So this Paul hath persuaded and turned away many people, saying that there be no gods which are made with hands. | |
| It's kind of ironic. They are admitting, oh, we are manufacturing these gods. And the focus on hands is very important. The word hands, just to confirm here, is in the original text. And keir, that's the word for hands in Greek. And hands, they can refer to many things, but | |
| But in many contexts, I've seen the word hand being connected to service. You serve with your hands. And service is connected to the pastoral ministry. So hands are many times connected to the pastoral. So this is God saying the pastoral ministry fashions God's that people worship. And that's what the pastoral church is doing all the time. They see that the people | |
| Don't like a God who judges, so they manufacture with their hands a God that is not judging. They see that people like a God that likes communion and everybody loving each other and having compassion and getting along. So they build a God like that to the people's likings, just like Aaron. You know, molded the golden calf to the likings of the people in the wilderness. It's the same thing. | |
| And that's what the Spirit of Solomon gets people to do. Let's build temples that look pure on the outside and let's manufacture these gods for the people. Because when we manufacture a god to the people's liking, we make much money. And obviously there's literal money involved, but we're talking about more than literal money. Because the pastors, a lot of them are greedy financially, | |
| monetarily speaking but a lot of them are not don't care so much about money they care about more about something else they want loyalty they want people to love them they want people to depend on them and need them that power and control you know like a mother who doesn't let go of the kids that's how pastors become and in many cases that's more important than money so uh | |
| But this system brings them much profit. They build, they fashion a God to their liking, to the liking of the people, and they establish a system that is very profitable to them, to their souls, and also, in many cases, financially. So then, verse 27, Acts 19, I'm going to read Acts 19:27 now. | |
| It says, so that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at naught, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshipeth. So notice again the temple, the temple, the temple, because this is the spirit of Solomon, the spirit of Solomon's temple, always trying to rebuild the temple, the temple that God has destroyed. | |
| That's why this temple kept getting destroyed and they would rebuild it and it would get destroyed by God again and again and again. And I think at the end it got wiped out. So it says here, but also the temple of the Greek. So let's look at the word temple here in the Greek. Let's see if it's Naos. And then lo and behold, it's the word Yeron. And that's where I began to say, oh, my goodness. So there are two words for temple. Naos. | |
| which was translated at the shrines a moment ago, and hieron. This is like the more formal word for temple. And I recognize it because the h-i-e-r part kind of looks like priest. That's the word for priest that I've seen in the Greek. Anything that's related to priest in the Greek, when I've seen it, always starts with h-i-e-r. This is actually yesterday in French. | |
| H-I-E-R, E-R, E-R. If I remember my French, high school French correctly, this is yesterday in French. So every time I see yesterday in French, I say, oh, this is related to priesthood. So this is the more formal word for temple in Greek. So I did a search before this recording to see what is the difference between Naos and Yeron? | |
| So let's see, I think I have it here. I just typed it up. I just went on Bing and typed difference between Yaron and Naos. And it gave me this whole thing here. It says in New Testament Greek, Naos and Yaron both refer to temples or sacred places, but they have distinct meanings and scopes. Naos, literally dwelling place from Naio, meaning to dwell. | |
| And it says refers specifically to the sanctuary or temple proper, the innermost sacred space in the Jerusalem temple. Notice the temple again of Solomon in Jerusalem consisting of the holy place and the holy of holy. So it's like the actual temple itself, you know, like the building in the center of the temple complex and where you had the holy place and the holy of holies. | |
| When you went indoors, because there was a temple area outside where they did the sacrifices, but that's not included here. The Naos is like the temple proper. And then Yeron, it says here, from Yeros, which means sacred, according to this website, apparently. And it says, refers to the entire temple complex. The sanctuary Naos, plus their surrounding consecrated precincts and outer courts. | |
| So that's the difference between Yeros and Naos. Naos is the temple proper and Yeron is more of the whole area, the temple area, including the outer courts. So this is the summary that the co-pilot thing did, but I always try to honor the length | |
| Because we're losing the habit when we're doing internet searches nowadays. We just look at the summary that AI provides. And they do provide the links here, but you kind of stop looking at the search results the way we used to back in the day. So just in honor of that, I always at least click on one of these in order just to visit their website and give them some traffic. It's kind of a strange thing to say, but I don't know. I just feel led to do that. | |
| So, and that's what I did here. I already had the link up here. So let me just close this tab. So here, they just explained the same thing again. Let me just see if I, I think I saw something that was worth pointing out here, but let's see. Oh yes. | |
| Revelation 21 22 they point out here. It says and I saw no temple now Oh there in for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it and temple is now also again Notice and I know God sent me here, you know, like you have to click on a link don't just read the AI summary and and that's when I saw this Revelation 21 22 and | |
| God saying at the end when he restores everything, one of the things he's going to do is get rid of the temple. There's not going to be a temple anymore. No Solomon temple anymore. This concept of a temple and the importance of the temple is not from God. It's from the spirit of Solomon, from the matriarchal spirit of Solomon, because God, when he finally | |
| does his thing and is allowed to do his thing through us in the final days, he's going to get rid of the temple. Because it says, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. It's a spiritual thing. And we still don't get it. And people go to church every Sunday and keep honoring the temple, the temple, the temple. This is the house of God. No, no, you are supposed to be the house of God. God is supposed to inhabit you. | |
| You are the house, not the temple, not the building. But we keep referring to it because why do we need a temple? Why does the spirit of Solomon demand a temple? Because once you get a temple, you get a priesthood. And then you say, oh, see, you have to go to the temple to see the priest. And if the temple is in a physical location, then whoever lives there or works there | |
| They are the priests, not you. They are the priests. And that's how they start restoring the old covenant again. A cast of priests needs a temple to be legitimized in the eyes of people. I hope that makes sense. That's why they need the temple so they can say, oh, we are the priests in the temple. We are the ones wearing the priestly robes. Whenever you come on Sunday, you see us with our priestly robes. We are the priests. | |
| Not you. We. We are the priests. Old Covenant. Separation. Priesthood and layman. So. But God has said. I will destroy the temple. The temple system. Is an abomination to God. The temple system. And I say that again. Is an abomination to God. It's from the spirit of Solomon. And you say. Well there was a temple before. Yeah. There was a temple. Under the Old Covenant. And it was a shadow. Of what the real temple is. And that's what we are. | |
| to work towards. Okay. All right. So the temple of the great goddess Diana or Artemis. Okay. So let's read. Where were we here? So we're reading Acts 19:27. | |
| So that not only this, our craft, is in danger to be set at naught, but also that the temple of the great, that Yaron, of the great goddess Diana, should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshipeth. So notice Asia. Paul is stuck in Asia. And that's what God is saying. Paul became spiritually stuck in Asia. | |
| And Asia worships the spirit of Solomon in the form of Diana or Artemis, which has a Greek name, but is not really Greek. It's just halfway between Europe and the Middle East. And the word despised is kind of, I'll just mention it very quickly. It's logizomai, and I'll be very frank, I didn't quite understand | |
| what that word meant, at least in this passage, in this verse, because logizomai doesn't mean despise, it just means reckon or compute or calculate or count over. And you can see all the translations here of the logizomai, they always say reason or numbered or reckoned. It doesn't say despise. And the first time it's translated as despise is in Acts 19:27. | |
| And I said, for example, Romans 2:3 | |
| Maybe the next time it's used after Acts 19 27. It's it says Romans 2 3 and think is thou this and logitza my thou this. Oh man that judges them which do such things and do us the same that thou shalt escape the judgment of God. So notice that and you can see the word logitza my is very similar to logos. It comes from logos which is the word of judgment. So. | |
| Oh, thank you, Lord. I think I finally got it. Why logitimai is being used here. And it's the key here is in Romans 2:3. Notice how it says you are judging. You are going around judging others. And how should you escape the judgment of God? And this is talking to religious people. Paul is talking. | |
| God is talking to religious people through Paul here in Romans 2-3, but we won't go into all the details of that passage, Romans 2. But just the thing is, logizomai is connected to judging. Someone standing over something and judging it. And that's what Demetrius is resenting about what Paul was doing, the righteous spirit of Paul. | |
| Because it says, so that not only this, our craft is in danger to be set at naught, but also that the temples of the great goddess Diana should be judged or scrutinized. That's what we're doing right now. You and I, that's what we are doing right now. We are judging the temple of Solomon. We're judging the spirit of Solomon and scrutinizing it and questioning it and making it | |
| exposing it as the nothing that it is. We're doing exactly this. And that's what Demetrius, the spirit of the, Demetrius here are the pastors of the church. This is what they resent. When someone comes and starts logizimizing, judging and questioning and scrutinizing the validity of the temple. And when you scrutinize it, you go, the judgment is, it's no good. It's no good. Maybe it's no good. | |
| And they resent that. And that's why they say stop judging the temple. Stop dishonoring the temple, the temple. We need the temple. It the temple has blessed us. The temple provides for us. The temple gives us a reason for being. It is it is the source of a system that benefits us and gives us importance and relevance over other people. Stop judging the temple. | |
| And that's what the spirit of Solomon is constantly trying to do, prevent people scrutinizing, logitimizing the temple system. And curse it, it is. And Demetrius is very accurately saying, the more you judge it, its magnificence is being destroyed. The greatness that it has on the surface is being exposed as nothingness. | |
| And it says here magnificence is megaleotes, which comes from bigness. Mega means great or big. So it's greatness. Magnificence is a good translation, but I would have just left it at greatness. The greatness should be destroyed, and the word destroyed is katai leo. Katai leo literally means to take down. | |
| It says without the notion of violence or with the use of force to throw down, to pull down, to demolish. Yeah, it's notice here says the subtle reasonings of opponents likened to a fortress to refute, to destroy. So it's yeah, it's tearing down, exposing the non greatness of something that's being called great. And that's what. | |
| we do in the spirit as we question this the temple of Solomon the spirit of Solomon that's what these audio these videos and that we're we're sharing are doing when you and I are studying scripture and exposing the spirit of Solomon that's exactly what we're doing we're we're diminishing the greatness exposing the non greatness of what people perceive to be great and important and worth preserving | |
| These traditions of men. And that's why. Now I get it. Why the teacher ministry is emphasized. First above the pastor. In terms of order. Because Timotheus as we said. Is connected to teacher. And he's mentioned before Erastus. Who's connected to the pastor. And the goddess Demeter. Is mentioned before. The goddess Artemis. | |
| And Demeter, as we saw, is the goddess of agriculture. So it's connected to the Gergeshet or the teacher's ministry. Teacher is connected to traditions. And what the spirit of the remnant spirit is doing is coming against the traditions of men who want to uphold the Temple of Solomon system. And they resent the judgment and the scrutiny that's going on. And that's done through the red horse. | |
| And it starts with the red horse and then it proceeds from there. Okay, so, and those of you who have read about the red horse know what we meant by that. Okay, so let's keep reading here. So we've read Acts 1927. Oh, and notice it says, whom all Asia and the world worshipeth. And this is a very pastoral comment to make. | |
| You know, everybody does it. Whenever you hear someone say that, you're hearing a Kenyanite say, you know, like when teenagers are, you know, they want to do something and the parent says no and they say, oh, everybody does it. And obviously you'd have to take into account what the teenager is asking to do. It may or may not be right, but... | |
| The point is that in general, when you hear people validating something because everybody else is doing it, you're hearing a Canaanite spirit. The Canaanite spirit is the spirit of peer pressure, of wanting to please one another. You know, this constant concern about pleasing others and having people approve of them and being accepted, all that peer pressure, all that is a very Canaanite thing. | |
| And you can see here the very Canaanite argument being made. He first makes a Girgashite argument, a practical. The Girgashite spirit is very practical. So he makes a very practical argument at the beginning in verses 25 and 26 when he's talking about the wealth. This is good for us. It's a mechanism. It's a system. The teacher endowment promotes systems. So here the teacher is making the point. This is very practically good. | |
| This is a very systematic. It's all very orderly. It's working fine. And then he goes pastoral and says, Canaanite spirit is the pastor gone bad. So he goes Canaanite or pastoral and says, see, everybody does it. The whole world does it. And the word world is oiko, if I can get to it here. The word world is oikoamene. | |
| And as we've said before, the oika part means house. Excuse me, which emphasizes the matriarchal spirit, the home, you know, staying at home spirit, the two female ministries of pastor and teacher that stay at home. So it's seeing the world as a big home being taken care of by a mother, in this case, the mother Diana or the mother Artemis. So. | |
| So then verse 28, Acts 19:28. And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. So he gave a teacher argument and a pastoral argument, and then people got upset, and they were full of wrath, and they cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. So Paul wants to minimize or diminish the greatness of Diana. Well, we're going to | |
| re-emphasize it um and then uh acts 1929 and the whole city was filled with confusion and having called gaius and art aristarchus men of macedonia paul's companions in travel they rushed with one accord into the theater so verse 29 acts 1929 we'll read it again and the whole city was filled with confusion | |
| And having caught Gaius and Aristarchus. So two men are mentioned here. And we'll not go into details about them because they make more sense when you read them later. Because these two brothers are mentioned later in Acts 20, I believe. And Lord willing, we'll get to that in a list of seven names. And when we see these two names in the context of the seven names, | |
| then we get a better sense of what God is saying here. | |
| By the two names, but let's not go there at least for now So these two the thing is these two brothers were from Macedonia And they were companions and travel with Paul. They should be in Macedonia Why are they here? See Paul bringing them to Ephesus and Getting them away from where they had to be God wanted to minister in Europe But but Paul brings them brings them into Asia | |
| And then they get caught up in this mess. And I see Paul is responsible for having, like God makes Paul responsible for them being in this mess. That's why he says they were Paul's companions in travel. So Gaius and Aristarchus are caught in this crossfire in Ephesus. So let's just look at the map. | |
| Once again here, Macedonia and Philippi and all that here is up here, as you can see here on the map. Their emphasis is down here in Turkey, in modern day Turkey. These two brothers are from up here. They should be up here, but they're down here where they are not supposed to be because Paul brought them down here because Paul is enamored with this part of the world. And that's what I get in my heart that God is saying here. | |
| And by the way, I do believe that at some point, Paul would have, if he had been in the fullness of God's will, he would have been in Ephesus and been there for a while, but it would have been under a different spirit. We're not saying that Paul should have never been in Ephesus, that the church in Ephesus should have never been started. That's not what we're saying. It's just that it was done in the wrong spirit or not under the fullness of God's perfect will. Let's put it that way. | |
| OK, so so two men got caught up here and they rushed with one accord into the theater. So they so they grabbed these two brothers and they went into the theater, you know, some central theater place, the way kind of Greek cities used Greekified cities used to have this theater where they would have concerts or or | |
| Do plays or I imagine things like that. So they brought them to this central theater in Ephesus. And. And then verse 30. Acts 19 30. Let's keep reading here. And when Paul would have entered in unto the people. The disciples. Disciples. Suffered him not. So Paul wanted to go in. To defend. You know. | |
| to kind of like talk to the people and maybe also speak in defense of Gaius and Aristarchus and the disciples didn't let him and it's interesting that he agreed or maybe he was restrained there were too many disciples holding him and not letting him go into the people and start talking but I get in my heart that this was God's doing saying Paul | |
| You think you have a say in these matters. You don't. And that's what I think God was saying. You should be in Macedonia. Paul, you should not be here. That's why God didn't let him influence events here. He left. He sidelined him. Okay. Because all of this happened because he stuck around in Asia for too long. He was supposed to have gone back to Macedonia. | |
| But he wanted to stay in Asia. He should have returned and he just sent a woman to do a man's job. And I mean that spiritually speaking. Please do not misunderstand what I just said. I'm speaking spiritually. He sent a woman, a teacher and a pastor to do what an apostle was supposed to do. So he stuck around in Asia and God said, no, you're not going to influence this. | |
| So he sidelined him. And then. OK, so let's keep reading here. So now we're in verse 31 of Acts 19. And certain of the chief of Asia, which were his friends, sent unto him, desiring him that he would not adventure himself into the theater. So there are certain people from the important people of Asia. | |
| Let's see the word chief here. Chief of Asia was translated from Asia Arches. The Arches part means principal or chief or beginning, like someone at the top. That's where we get, as we said before, archbishop or archdiocese or arch... | |
| Arch nemesis is like the biggest nemesis, the top nemesis. Yeah, the word arch could maybe, a good translation now that I think of it would be top. Like top, the top people of Asia. Asiarches. So the top people of Asia who were his friends sent unto him desiring him that he would not adventure himself into the theater. And the word adventure, let's see if I can see here. | |
| Adventure is didomi. Which means give. That he not give himself. Into the theater. That's what they were telling him. Don't give yourself into the theater. And. I'll be very frank. I don't have a full understanding. Of this. Of these two verses. Of what it really means. I feel like I'm missing something. But the fact is. The disciples. Were restraining Paul. | |
| Not letting him go into the people. And Paul wanted to go talk. And it's like. Talk to the temple people. To reason with them. Oh thank you Lord. I think that. It's like. I don't understand something. And then God in his mercy. Just lets me know. Yes thank you Lord. I think that's what this was representing. Paul was into the habit. Of reasoning. | |
| With temple people. That's why he would go into the synagogues. And argue with the Jews. He thought he could make them understand. And reason with them. And God kept saying no. You don't reason with temple people. Temple people don't get it. Temple people are too caught up in the temple system. They have too much at stake in the temple system. To want to listen to you. | |
| They don't want to listen to you. Their whole life depends on the temple. Don't. Don't bad talk the temple. To temple people. Because temple people will not listen to you. When you bad talk the temple. They depend on the temple. So you don't reason with temple people. And that's what God was. Kind of pointing out here. Yeah that's. And that Paul was in the habit. Of reasoning with temple people. And God said enough. | |
| And it's like God saying, see, you don't need. It's a waste of time to reason with them because things work out on their own. And we'll see how it works out on its own. Without Paul's interference. So verse 32, Acts 19. Some therefore cried one thing and some another. For the assembly was confused and the more part knew not where for they were come together. | |
| I get confused by the English here, the old English. But what I got from what I just read is that the whole people, everybody was in an uproar. They were, you know, just angry and upset. Everybody was, you know, in a stir. But a lot of people didn't know why they were there. And this happens a lot with liberals and especially stupid young kids, especially here in America. You know, there's a protest. | |
| demonstration somewhere and they go. And when they go there, people, sometimes reporters come and interview them and say, why are you here? Well, we're here to protest against the war in Ukraine. And what don't you like about the war in Ukraine? And they turn into like deer staring at deer in the headlights. They don't know. They don't even know where Ukraine is. | |
| They barely know who Vladimir Putin is. They barely understand the history of Ukraine having been part of the Soviet Union and part of the oppression of the Soviet empire for 45 years and communism oppressing the Eastern Europeans, Soviet communism. They have no clue of any of that. They wouldn't be able to point Ukraine out in a map, but they're there because it's the end thing to do. | |
| That's what all the cool people are doing. Oh, we're protesting against the oppression in Palestine. What's what's going on in Palestine? I have no idea. I don't know, but it's very bad. That's why we're here. And. | |
| And they ask specific questions. They have no clue. So it's kind of like what was going on here. And this is very Canaanite. The Canaanite spirit is just low passions. You just do things without thinking. You know. It's just doing things without thinking. And that's what these people are manifesting. That's what I get from this. But. And let's see the word assembly. Here in the Greek. And this is very important. | |
| See the word assembly here? I hope you can see it if you're watching the video, if you're just listening. The word assembly here is ekklesia. Ekklesia. And this is very important because ekklesia, God put this here on purpose. So you miss it when you read it in English, but when you read it in the Greek, you go, oh my goodness, | |
| I see what God is saying here. And let's look at the word Ecclesia here. First time it's used. Matthew 16:18. And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter and eat and upon this rock, I will build my Ecclesia, my church. Notice how it's translated. My church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And next time Ecclesia is used is in Matthew 18:17. | |
| twice and both times how is it translated church and and if he shall neglect to hear them tell it unto the church but if he neglect to hear the church let him be unto thee as a as a heathen man and a publican so next time is used acts 247 praising god and having favor with all the people and the lord added to the church to the ecclesia to the assembly daily | |
| such as should be saved so notice church church look let's look if you're um if you're um watching the video you'll see here um matthew 16 18 church 18 17 church church x 247 church x 5 11 church x 7 38 church x 81 church | |
| Acts 8-3 Church, Acts 9-31 Churches, Acts 11-22 Church, Acts 11-26 Church, Acts 12-1 Church, Acts 12-5 Church, Acts 13-1 Church, Acts 14-23 Church, Acts 14-27 Church, Acts 15-3 Church, Acts 15-4 Church, Acts 15-22 Church, Acts 15-41 Churches, Acts 16-5 Churches, Acts 18-22 Church, Acts 19-32 Assembly. | |
| And I'm sorry for having put you through that long line ranting here. I just went through all the verses that have the word ecclesia and how it was translated in the King James. Church, church, churches, church, church, churches, churches, church. And then suddenly in Acts 19:32, it's assembly. And you can say, well, I see what you're, I understand. I understand because this was not church. | |
| This was a public gathering of people, and it wasn't related to the Christian church or anything Christian. It was not a Christian church. It was a, you know, a pagan assembly in honor of Diana or Artemis. So that's why they said assembly. So you miss it in the you miss it when you see it in the translation. They should have left church. They should have left church. | |
| If you're going to use the word church for assembly, use it consistently. For the church was confused and the more part knew not where they were come together. That sounds like a regular service on a regular Sunday morning. The people there are confused. They don't know why they're there. They just go there because everybody goes to church on Sunday. But they don't know why they're there. | |
| They don't understand that they are assembled together to equip themselves in the spirit to go and fight. And do the male fight, the apostolic judgments, the prophetic sacrifice and the prophetic declarations against the kings. And then evangelistic conquest and domination of the enemy. That's what they're there for. They're supposed to be there to be equipped to do this male fighting. | |
| But they have no clue, just like the crowd of Acts 19:32. They don't know why they're there. The vast majority have no idea why they have come together. It's God. It's an indictment against the Temple of Solomon and the Solomon system of the church. But you don't see it because the word assembly, the word Ecclesia, is translated as assembly when it's translated as church every time up until that verse. | |
| And by the way, this is just a side comment, and I think I still have the tab here. Some of you may or may not have noticed that I had a tab here that said Julio Iglesias. And whoever, if you were watching the video, you might have seen the tab in the previous recording and wondered, why is there a tab about Julio Iglesias in a study of Acts 19? And the reason was, | |
| When I saw the word ekklesia, I just thought of Julio Iglesias. And why? Because ekklesia, as you can see, if we go back to the word here in the Greek, ekklesia, ekklesia, and this almost word letter for letter, translated to the Latin alphabet, E-K-K-L-E-S-I-A, epsilon, kappa, kappa, lambda, | |
| ETA, SIGMA, IOTA, ALPHA. So it's the same letters in Greek, just Latinized with the Latin alphabet, ECCLESIA. And ECCLESIA looks a lot like ECCLESIA. As you can see, if you change the E to an I and the K to like a softer sound to a G sound, you get ECCLESIA. And that's how you say church in Spanish. | |
| And I would imagine in other languages, if I go to the Google Translate thing, let's see, if I put church here and I say it in Italian, oh, it's Chiesa. Okay. If I say Portuguese, Portuguese, Portuguese, Igreja, Igreja, or something like that. I'm not sure how they pronounce it. | |
| Iglesia. It sounds like Iglesia. It's kind of similar. Ecclesia. It's just a distortion of it. If I say French, I think it's Eglise. Eglise. As you can see, it looks a lot like Iglesia in Spanish. And so the thing is that for some reason, God brought me to Julio Iglesias as I was thinking about church. | |
| And then I saw something interesting that I didn't know. Many of you might not even know who Julio Iglesias is. I think he's still alive. Yeah, he's old, but he's still alive. Julio Iglesias is a famous Spanish singer. And I mean Spanish from Spain, not Hispanic. A singer from Europe, a European singer from Spain, who was very popular starting in the late 60s, early 70s. | |
| And when I was a kid, I was, I knew about Julio Iglesias even, you know, before, you know, most people like in America, most people have no, had no clue who Julio Iglesias was until the beginning of the eighties. But, but I was aware of Julio Iglesias even as a, as a kid. Julio Iglesias was very popular in Europe. He, he, he was, he, he was Spanish, Spaniard, | |
| But he had hits in Italy and Germany, even in Germany, imagine that. He sang some songs in German, in fact, horrible German accent, I think. Well, I'm not German, so I wouldn't know, but I've listened to some of the songs in German and I go, wow, that don't sound German to me. But regardless, at least he tried. And he's also sung in Italian and stuff. | |
| and very well known in Europe. He was, uh, uh, very popular. Uh, and I was, as a kid, I was aware of a couple of songs of his, um, and, um, and let me just, uh, go here, um, to the Wikipedia, uh, article here. It says the name Iglesias translates as churches. Iglesias says that he is of Jewish ancestry. And this is what caught me when I was reading this, um, before the recording. | |
| Last week, the previous video, I did not know this. I had no idea. I knew about this man. I knew some of his songs. But I never knew this, that Iglesia says that he was of Jewish ancestry on his maternal side. And that his mother's family name, De La Cueva, meaning literally of the cave, and referring to Jewish people in hiding, is a common Jewish name. | |
| He has proclaimed himself Jewish from the waist up. Not sure what that means, but... | |
| The thing is that He's Jewish and this kind of like like God saying I'm I'm connecting things. I want you to understand That I'm talking to Paul and I'm talking to the church in general and to Paul He was saying you keep clinging to to the church people who are the Jews They are the the the church people the temple people and | |
| And you keep trying to reason with them and there's no reasoning with them. They will not understand. And that and that's what I get from this. And that's why the very strange connection to between church Iglesia, the name Iglesia and and Jewishness. All the people who are in church every Sunday. | |
| And who follow the pastoral system. They are trapped in Jewishness. It's just a very subtle form of Jewishness. But they're as lost as the Jews. In the wilderness. Wandering and wandering. And not knowing why they're there. And I just noticed this. Just hit my eye. This phrase here. I hadn't read it until now. Spade. Spade. | |
| Let's read here. Uh, let's read the whole thing in Brazil, France, Italy, and elsewhere. Iglesias is the most successful foreign record record seller. While in his home country, Spain, he has sold the most records in history with 23 million records. 23 is number of pastor. Um, and, um, okay. And one thing I wanted to, and a lot of people don't know, I mean, the few people who may be aware, especially in America, | |
| In Europe, I think more people, even younger people, are kind of aware of him. But I knew this when I was a kid, that Julio Iglesias used to be a soccer, I hate the word, but let's use it for a second, a soccer player. He was actually a goalkeeper for a second division Spanish team. He was young, so he was on his way up. | |
| So he was not playing in first division yet, but he was in second division of Spanish football, which is a big achievement in and of itself. Spanish football has always been very, very, very competitive. One of the elite football countries on earth. It's always been a very good league. So the thing is, he was that good. And he was in second division of Real Madrid, which is the best team in Spain. | |
| So he was not just like a goalkeeper in the system of of a second rate team, you know, or not so good team. He was in the Real Madrid system. Real Madrid, the most one of the most it's like the New York Yankees of football in Europe in many ways. Unfortunately, I used to be a fan of Real Madrid for many years, but not anymore. The thing is that | |
| in the days of Hugo Sanchez. But I digress. The thing is that he was a football player, and he was on his way up, and then he had a car accident. He was with his friends in a car. I don't think he was the one driving. I'm not sure. The thing is that he crashed, and he... | |
| was severe injuries to the point that people weren't sure if he was going to be able to walk again but he was able to walk and all that but while while he was in hospital um a friend someone i forget who it was uh came and and and dropped off a guitar you know and said to him you know just um you know they gave the guitar as a gift to him to kind of help him get his mind off of his his woes because he knew that his | |
| football or sports career was practically over because of the accident. So as he was convalescing there, you know, they gave him the guitar and, and yet apparently he wrote poetry or something like that. So, so he started putting his poems to, to, to music and that's how he got into, into, into music. So he had a completely different path. He could have been known as a football player. I might've known about him eventually as a football player, | |
| playing for Real Madrid, but no. His life was drastically altered, and he ended up playing as a singer, and that's how he became a superstar. And let me read here in the Wikipedia article. In 1968, he won the Benidorm Song Festival with the song, La Vida Sigue Igual, | |
| which means life goes on the same, which was used in the 1969 film, La Vida Sigue Igual, in which he played a fictionalized version of his own life. So that's how he started. The song La Vida Sigue Igual is one of the songs I was aware of from him when I was a kid. And if you take the lyrics and translate them, you will see that it's talking about | |
| How when things happen, life goes on. And I think that's the better translation of the title. Literally, it says life goes on the same. But in English, you would say it like life goes on. Like, you know, the sun goes up every morning. You know, the sun goes down at night every night. Despite everything, life goes on. It's kind of a form of Ecclesiastes kind of song. | |
| Um, and, um, and it was in 1968, a very important year. Um, okay. And then he, 1979, he moved to Miami. He came to the, to, to America, um, and try to break into the American market. And then he broke in with some songs and I've never liked the songs in English because they're not the same as his style in, when he sings in Spanish. Uh, what if you hear some songs and I, uh, and I know I'm, I, you might be wondering why am I talking about him? | |
| I feel that I have to. So let me just quickly look at the discography here. These are the albums. Let me see if I can see the songs. I think there's an article here. I'll click here. I think they list the songs here. And I just wanted to point out a couple of songs. And I feel it's related to the whole thing we're talking about in Acts. | |
| Let's see if I can find it. He had a song, as you can see here, Amis 33 Anos. Anos means years. So he's saying at age 33. And I find that interesting because 33 is believed to be the age when the Lord Jesus died at Calvary. So interesting that he had a song about that, about him being 33. | |
| but that's not what I wanted to point out. Let's see if I can find the, oh my goodness, these are albums, no wonder. I need the songs. Where are the songs for crying out loud? Oh, singles, let's see, okay. So I already mentioned La Vida Sigue Igual. It's, you know, you run into a disaster, but life goes on. And he was singing about his own life as he was | |
| know writing that song um but um let's see if i can find um uh this song was one of the other songs i was aware of it's a rio rebelde which means um rebellious river and in the song he talks about throwing a handkerchief into the river to see how it sinks um and and how the river takes the handkerchief away and it's talking about a love that is lost | |
| Like he was in love with someone and that other person went away or it was not meant to be or whatever. And it's a song about regret. And that's how I can describe it. And when you listen to it, it has that regret kind of feel to it. And then let's see if I can find the other song that I wanted to mention here. | |
| Uh, let's see. Um, this is a very good song. Uh, I don't know about the message, uh, or the lyrics, but if you ever want to listen to it, uh, it's, it's a song about say, yeah, I think this, yeah, I have to, I have to talk about this. If you want, if you go to the lyrics of this song and translate them, um, and the, and the tune is very catchy, by the way, if you ever want to listen to it, very catchy. Um, | |
| But in the song, the guy is saying to the lady, if you leave me, that's not fair. That's what the title literally means. If you leave me, that's not fair. Because apparently the lady found out that he had cheated on her, but it was a long time ago. And so she found out and now she's leaving him. And then he's saying in the song, | |
| It's too harsh of a punishment for the mistake I made. | |
| and and and if I hurt you I'm so sorry and that's one other thing when you hear people say that that means they really are not sorry if I hurt you I'm sorry that means they're not acknowledging if they did something wrong because if you would you know it's like if someone stabs someone else and says if if my knife you know plunging into your into your your stomach | |
| hurt you, I'm sorry. That means they're not aware of the damage their knife did. Can you see what I'm saying? So. So when they say if I hurt you, I'm sorry, they're really saying I'm really I didn't realize you're going to be so thin skinned. That's what they're saying to you. I didn't know that you were going to be so sensitive and if I had known I would not have done it and I'm so sorry. | |
| I mean, that's basically what they're saying, but I digress. The thing is that he says that you see my action a long time ago as if I had betrayed you. So someone was justifying his situation and he made a mistake, but he doesn't want to own up to it, to the other person and say, oh, that's from the past. It doesn't count. It meant nothing to me. | |
| And it's someone who is trying to stay in two places at the same time. That's how it feels. You know, he wants to be with the lady, but at the same time, he wants to feel like he did nothing wrong by the thing he did a long time ago, just by virtue that was a long time ago. It doesn't matter anymore. And you found out, oh, you know, I'm so sorry if I hurt you. | |
| but it's not fair. And it's almost like someone who's trying to have their cake and eat it too. And it feels like it's about Paul in some ways. Okay, but let me see if I can find, this is the song that I wanted to mention. Which literally means I forgot to live. And when you, if you pull up the lyrics and translate them, you will find that it's talking about someone who, | |
| He's talking about himself. I think he was going, he might have been going through a divorce at that time. And he says, from singing so many songs to the wind, I forgot to live. From going to place to place, singing to everybody, I forgot to live. And it's a song about regret. | |
| That he was doing his profession, carrying out his singing to the world and to the atmosphere. But then he forgot to live his life. So the reason why I'm bringing Julio Iglesias up is that it's a figure of someone who was trying to have his cake and eat it too. | |
| and is not fully committing to something. And because of that, every time he looks back, he can only look with regret because of the things that could have been that never got to be. And it's like the same thing with Paul. Paul was trying to, yes, serve God and go to the Gentiles, but at the same time, he wanted to bring the Jews up with him. | |
| and have them share in what he was doing. And then because he was doing that, there was nothing but regret and things that he could have done that never got done. And that's what I get in my heart. It's as if God brought up Julio Iglesias for that purpose, to bring up the life of someone who could have been | |
| uh something else but wasn't it's almost like even the fact that he could have been a football player but he had an accident that because he was with his friends and i have no idea where they were and he was hanging around with his friends and because of that he um you know he had the accident so it's almost like um like paul had an accident because he kept hanging around with the jews and because of that he did not become | |
| the fullness of what God had for him. And then something was left behind in the church system because Paul didn't deal with it. And we've been dealing with it even to this day. And that's what we want to get to eventually. Okay, so all of this, we went on this tangent or so-called tangent because of ecclesia, the word assembly. | |
| In Acts 19:32. So I'll read Acts 19:32 again. Some therefore cried one thing and some another. For the church, the ecclesia, the church was confused. And the more part knew not wherefore they would come together. They didn't know. Just like most people in church every Sunday. Okay. And then Acts 19:33. | |
| And they drew Alexander out of the multitude, the Jews putting him forward. And Alexander beckoned with the hand and would have made his defense unto the people. Now, this guy is very confusing to me. It took me a while to kind of understand. I had to ask for help online to get a better understanding because I said, who is this guy? Where is he coming from? And who is... | |
| who is he with now it says and they drew alexander out of the multitude the jews putting him forward so that means he he was with the jews and i go what did the jews have to do with anything here because this thing was about the people of the the the silver um temple makers of ephesus upset being upset with paul so it was a matter between paul | |
| And the Artemis or Diana worshippers in Ephesus. So where did the Jews come in? It's like they started to butt in. But it's like God was showing. It's like why does God put the Jews in the middle of this? Because this was a message to Paul. Because just like that crowd of the Artemis people were the Jews. Just in a different form. Because they're all part of the spirit of Solomon. | |
| If that makes any sense. But that's one thing. But but then the thing is, who is Alexander? Well, obviously, he was a Jew. And why would did he want to speak? And then I found online an explanation that made sense. And I was kind of leaning towards that, but I wasn't sure. And let's see if I can find the explanation. Oh, here he is. I just did a search. Who was Alexander in Acts 1933 in Bing.com? And this is what it says. | |
| Let me read from here. The Jews seeking to distance themselves from the Christians and avoid being implicated in the uproar put Alexander forward as a recognized spokesman to address the assembly. This is what I'm reading here, what I'm highlighting here. To address the church. His role was to exculpate | |
| the Jewish community and shook the blame for the riot onto Paul and his followers, a common civic strategy under Roman law to prevent collective punishment. So the Jews got involved because they wanted to say, by the way, Paul is not one of us. And so notice that the Jews were getting involved not to call things down, but to make life harder for the Christians and for Paul. | |
| And that's what God is emphasizing here. Look at the Jews. Instead of being a blessing, a source of protection for Paul and the Christians, they were going to make things much more difficult. This Alexander was going to stir things up against the Christians and against Paul and make life hell on earth for them in Ephesus. And this is who Paul kept reaching out to. And Alexander, the name itself, and we're running out of time, Alexander means... | |
| Um, yeah, I feel like the Lord said, leave it for later. So we'll, we'll talk about the meaning of the name and it's just, it just emphasizes the pastoral flavor of all that, of all that's going on here. Um, but, um, yeah. And so I pray that as we've been looking at these verses that you've been seeing how God is describing the church today, the Solomonic church of today. | |
| And how God is indicting Paul here for being a person who was halfway between the promised land and Egypt. And we'll see how the indictment gets even stronger as we get to the end. There's a very powerful thing at the end that you go, wow, this is what God is saying to Paul. Thank you very much for watching and listening. |
The meditation continues on the "spirit of Solomon," a spirit described in Song of Songs that began to influence even the early church. This study focuses on how this spirit contaminated the apostles, including Paul, who was perhaps the most resistant to it. By examining the Book of Acts, specifically moving from chapter 19, we see how the negative influence of the spirit of Solomon created unnecessary burdens for Paul and damaged the integrity of the early ministry.
In Acts 19:33, a man named Alexander is drawn from the multitude by the Jews to make a defense. There is a significant spiritual ambiguity here; while one might expect Alexander to defend the Christians, the Jews put him forward to distance themselves from Paul’s activities. This reflects a reality within the spirit of Solomon: the difference between a Jew opposing the Kingdom and a Christian operating under this spirit is minimal.
The Jews' attempt to distance themselves from the attack on the goddess Artemis reveals a lack of true zeal for God. They were willing to tolerate idolatry and the breaking of the second commandment just to maintain social standing. This highlights the "Canaanite spirit," which operates through peer pressure and communal social pressure rather than objective, righteous law.
The name "Alexander" carries a dual meaning. In a negative spiritual context, it translates to a "defender of man," which can imply a pastoral role that seeks to "protect" people from God’s judgment rather than leading them to truth.
The text describes Alexander being "drawn" or "pushed" forward using proibazzo, a word implying force or violence. This mirrors the Canaanite spirit's reliance on social pressure. Furthermore, when Alexander "beckoned" (kata seyo) with his hands, he was shaking them to gain attention. In a spiritual sense, the "hand" is connected to service and pastoral ministry. Alexander’s waving of hands represents a pastor who uses their service to demand attention and control the crowd through a "quid pro quo" relationship, rather than serving with the anonymity characteristic of true biblical shepherds.
When the crowd realizes Alexander is a Jew, they cry out for Artemis for two hours. This division into clans and interests is a hallmark of the spirit of Solomon—it divides people based on soulish connections rather than spiritual truth.
The town clerk's speech in Acts 19:35 mentions the "great goddess Diana" and an image that "fell from Jupiter (Zeus)." Spiritually, this is a subtle indictment. Just as the image fell, humanity has fallen from its original calling to manifest the likeness of God. As long as the church operates under the "pastoral matriarchy" or the spirit of Solomon, it remains in a fallen state, separated from the true maleness of the spirit of God.
The town clerk defends the men, stating they are not "robbers of churches" (yerosilos). Interestingly, the Greek word used here refers to robbing temples rather than the ecclesia (the assembly/church). This provides a profound insight: the "temple system"—the organized, institutionalized pastoral structure—often views the "remnant" as temple robbers because the remnant seeks to practice true Christianity outside of their controlled, man-made systems.
The clerk’s refusal to call Diana "our goddess" (calling her "your goddess" instead) signifies a detachment from the crowd's idolatry. This represents the remnant, who are often accused of blasphemy when they prioritize the spirit over the soul and call for the reestablishment of spiritual dominion over emotionalism.
God prevented Paul from speaking during this uproar because Paul himself was partially contaminated by the spirit of Solomon. Had he spoken, he might have inadvertently validated the system. The intervention of an anonymous Gentile clerk served to protect the Christians and demonstrate a contrast: the Gentiles were often more supportive of the truth than the Jews, who were focused on their own religious identity.
The dismissal of the assembly by the clerk acts as a prophetic sign of God disassembling the current church system. The "temple of Solomon" church system lacks legitimacy in God's eyes, and its structures are being dismissed.
As Paul travels toward Asia and Greece, the text mentions seven men accompanying him. These names are not mere historical listings but are spiritual identifiers of the various ministries and the spirits of God:
This study serves as a call to recognize the unlawful nature of the pastoral matriarchy and to demand the dismissal of systems that prioritize the soul over the spirit.