THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

<p>THE MIDNIGHT HOUR </p> <p>We are continuing in the narrative of Silas now becoming Paul’s partner instead of Barnabas as Paul goes on his second missionary journey back to Lystra and Iconium </p> <p>We now read in Acts Chapter sixteen and verse one that Paul and Silas go to Lystra where they meet a new Christian named Timothy, who had a Jewish Christian mother and a Greek father. Paul was so impressed with Timothy that he asked him to join them on their journey. They set off together and tried to go into Asia Minor but the Holy Spirit told them not to, so they travelled through Galatia deciding to head north for the province of Bithynia, but again the Holy Spirit said no. Paul then had a vision in a dream where he saw a man over in Macedonia in Greece, pleading with him, ‘Come over here and help us’, and it became clear to Paul then that God was sending them to preach the Gospel in Philippi, a Roman colony just inside the Macedonian border. When they got there, they preached to some women by a riverbank where they would come to pray and worship God each Sabbath. One of the women was named Lydia from Thyatira, who was a purple cloth merchant and who opened her heart to all that Paul was saying. She became baptized along with all her household and asked Paul and the others to stay at her house as her guests. </p> <p>Then one day as Paul and all the others were heading down to have prayer beside the river, they met a demon-possessed slave girl, who was a fortune-teller that earned a lot of money for her managers, and she followed along behind Paul shouting, “These men are servants of God, and they have come to tell you how to have your sins forgiven”. She did this for a few days until Paul became so distressed with this that he turned and commanded a religious spirit to come out of her, and when it left, her managers realized that their hopes of wealth were now shattered. These influential managers grabbed Paul and Silas and dragged them before the judges at the marketplace for upsetting the Roman peace. The judg