The Unknown God

<p>THE UNKNOWN GOD </p> <p>Paul had been preaching in Thessalonica and Berea in Northern Greece with Silas and Timothy, as part of his apostolic ministry to the gentiles, and he had to escape on his own from there because of opposition to his preaching and plots against him and he found a safe haven at Athens in the south of Greece. While he waited for his companions Silas and Timothy to arrive Paul was distressed to see that Athens was full of mythologies and legends and idols so he began to visit the Jewish synagogues there and the open marketplace and preach the resurrection of Jesus. </p> <p>Meanwhile some of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers of the city became intrigued and sceptical of these strange new things he had to say so they urged him to come to speak publicly about his views at the Areopagus, which was part courthouse and part philosophical debating forum. There he was met by ‘the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there who would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new’</p> <p>Acts 17:22 So, Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man, of one blood, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their allotted spans of time and the boundaries of their dwelling places, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own philosophers have sai