Acts 19:8

Paul's Work during the Three Years' Residence at Ephesus, 8-41.

Acts 19:8. And he went into the synagogue, and spake boldly for the space of three months. Very short is the account which the writer of the ‘Acts' gives us of the long residence of Paul at Ephesus, nearly three years altogether. It was, perhaps, the most successful period of the busy stirring career. It was a comparatively quiet time. Before it and after it were long missionary journeys, alternating with periods of comparative rest, but none for so long as this. Some seventeen years had passed since the event on the Damascus journey, and the name of Paul was known and his influence acknowledged in Jerusalem and Syrian Antioch, in the highlands of Asia Minor, in well-nigh all the great merchant cities of the Grecian and Asiatic coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. In these three quiet eventful years, not only were the foundations of the great Ephesian Church laid by Paul and his chosen companion, but also the early stories of those famous Christian congregations known as the churches of Asia as well as the churches of the Lycus, Colossæ, Laodicæa, and Hierapolis. These names we are well acquainted with, but no doubt the restless activity of Paul was not confined even to these. The synagogue where he first taught was doubtless the same Jewish congregation which (Acts 18:20) had before his Third Missionary Journey prayed him to tarry with them. Josephus tells us that there were not only numerous Jews at Ephesus, but that many of them were Roman citizens.

Disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God. We can form some idea of these disputes and arguments from the well-known dialogue of Justin Martyr with the Jew Trypho, the scene of which was laid at Ephesus only a few years after Paul's work in that city.