The Mission to Europe (16:6-19:20).

Paul's plans now seemed to begin to go awry. All doors seemed to be closing to him as in one way or another he was first hindered from going one way, and then another. But unknown to him it was to be the commencement of the mission to Europe. Why then does Luke emphasise these negative responses? It was in order to underline that when the move to go forward did come it was decisively under God's direction. He was saying, ‘the Spirit bade him go'.

We need not doubt that new Christians had already entered Europe, as converts at Pentecost and other feasts had returned to their home cities taking the Good News with them, and that Christian traders and travellers also spread the Good News, but as far as we know this was the first direct Spirit-impelled attempt to evangelise Europe as a whole. Europe, as it were, now lay within God's sights. It was a prepared Europe, a Europe using one main language, Greek, with good main roads and an established system of justice. What it lacked was the truth.

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