Ephesus - Acts 19:1-10

In what seems to be the beginning of his third mission, Paul finds himself in Ephesus and encounters “certain disciples.” Probably getting a feel for exactly what had been done and what the status was with the members there in the church. He asks these disciples “have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?” and they answered, “we have not so much as heard whether there by any Holy Ghost.” The believers tell Paul that they were baptized “unto John’s baptism.” This seems a little confusing because as far as I know John never went to Ephesus or baptized there. So this leads me to believe that some men who were believers of John’s message and perhaps even baptized by him came out this way preaching what they had learned about the gospel and baptizing those who believed.

Paul points out that John’s baptized “to repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.” What I think Paul is saying is that the men who taught them previously didn’t have the whole gospel and John specifically said to wait for Jesus, which these people apparently didn’t. In all, about 12 men accepted Paul’s explanation and were rebaptized and given the gift of the Holy Ghost “when Paul had laid his hands upon them” and they “spake with tongues, and prophesied.”
The IM quotes the Prophet Joseph Smith as teaching, “baptism was the essential point on which (the disciples) could receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. It seems… that some sectarian Jew had been baptizing like John, but had forgotten to inform them that there was one to follow by the name of Jesus Christ, to baptize with fire and the Holy Ghost: -which showed these converts that their first baptism was illegal, and when they heard this they were gladly baptized, and after hands were laid on them, they received the gifts, according to promise, and speak with tongues and prophesied.”
  Paul spends the next three months in “the synagogue, and spake boldly… disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God.” I imagine that all those who believed Paul’s message from the synagogue converted in those three months because the rest “were hardened, and believed not, but spake evil of that way before the multitude,” so Paul left and began teaching “daily in the school of one Tyrannus.”
Looking up what “the school of one Tyrannus” actually means, it is suggested that Tyrannus is the name of a man who owned a building who allowed Paul to teach the gospel to the public there, either free or by rent. An article discussing the school of Tyrannus from smoodock45.wordpress.com reminds us that this was Paul’s M.O., to take the gospel first to the synagogue and Jews, then move on to teaching the gentiles in a place large enough to accommodate many people. The article says, “He normally used a large residence offered by one of his more prominent and wealthy disciples or rented an establishment whereby he could reason and persuade people, whether Jew of gentile, that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior of the world.In Phillip, Paul worked from Lydia’s home, and in Thessalonic it seems he operated from Jason’s home. In Athens he used the marketplace and the Areopagus… However, when he arrived at Corinth, he used the residence of Justus, which seems to have had a common wall with the local synagogue.”
A phrase in the next verse had me wondering about the importance of Ephesus in terms of location and population. It seems that there was only one synagogue, but that the rejecting Jews did not try to get Paul expelled from the city indicates to me that they were a very minor and impotent influence in the community as a whole. In verse 10 we learn that Paul taught in the school of Tyrannus “by the space of two years; so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the world of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.”
What gave me pause was the implication that in Ephesus, Paul had access to “all they which dwelt in Asia.” This really made me wonder, just where was Ephesus, who lived there, and how in the world did Paul have access to the population of a whole continent by staying there? On the Unesco website, Ephesus is described saying, “The city of Ephesus was one of the largest and most important cities in the ancient Mediterranean world, lying on the western coast of Asia Minor (in modern day Turkey). It was one of the oldest Greek settlements on the Aegean Sea, and later the provincial seat of Roman government in Asia. Situated at the end of the Royal Road0 the chief thoroughfare of the Roman East- the city was a western terminus of East-West trade, with one of the most important Mediterranean harbours for exporting products to Greece, Italy, and the rest of the Woman West.”
I’ve been listening to the podcast “A History of Rome” and it’s really helped me understand a lot more about the politics and geography of the New Testament. One of the facts that’s really come home to me while listening to this podcast is that while Rome started out just in a southern section of Italy, it has slowly grown into two distinct elements in one huge empire, the Eastern portion and the Western portion. The eastern portion of the Roman empire was rich with mystery, lore, exotic goods that came all the way from China, and a culture distinct from the west. There have been a few mentions in the podcast about the “Silk Road,” a trade route from China to western Europe and the divergent city center where the main trade route from the East and the main trade route from the West converged would have been huge both in activity and transient population.
It’s possible that in Ephesus, Paul’s potential audience could have included people from everyone between there and China and between there and Portugal, and that would be the definition of “all of Asia.” And those who heard Paul’s message could have taken that message back to their home countries and prepared the people there for the gospel when it got to them. This also makes sense why Paul’s skill as a tentmaker would have been so important, because those traveling with the goods along the trade routes would have needed accommodations to sleep in while on the road.
I can only imagine the hustle and bustle of people and animals and bags and boxes and ships and wagons all over the place. Talk about opportunity. From what I understand, Paul worked as a tentmaker during the day and then taught the gospel at night. He might have talked about the gospel to those he sold tents to, he might have done a little street preaching, he might have had a decent word of mouth campaign going. All of these could have attracted people to the school house in which Paul was teaching the gospel, and now it makes sense why he was there fore several years on the mission, such a large cosmopolitan of people, and probably so many prepared to hear the gospel when they found it.