09 - Lystra and the Close of Paul's First Itinerary -The Itineraries Of Paul

Walter Cummins

Lystra and the Close of Paul’s First Itinerary After Paul had ministered to this lame man at Lystra and the people saw what had happened, they started gathering their things together to do sacrifice unto Paul along with the priests of Jupiter. They were calling Barnabas Jupiter and they were calling Paul Mercury. One thing you have to look at here; is the people saw what Paul did but they didn’t see how he did it. This is so true. People see what happens as a result of the spiritual realm. They see what goes on among believers. They see what goes on in the psychic field but they don’t see how it’s done. The next thing is to speculate. Natural man cannot know God. It’s impossible for him to know God because he’s just a man of body and soul. He can’t see, hear, smell, taste or touch God. So all he can do is just guess as to where these things come from; both the true signs and wonders and the lying signs and wonders. They saw what Paul did but they didn’t see that it was the power of God in operation. So they started guessing and they said, “It must be that these two guys are Gods. One of them must be Jupiter and one must be Mercury. Why would they pick those two? Because that was something that was a very important part of their lives. The priest of Jupiter lived there. They had a big temple to Jupiter. They always associated Jupiter and Mercury closely together. Mercury was the talker; the messenger and Jupiter was the head one. In this book, Metamorphoses by Ovid, in its eighth book he talks about these two poor people who lived in Phrygia. That was in the same general area as Lystra. Ovid was a Roman poet. He lived between 43 B.C. and 18 A.D. He was born before Christ and died sometime during Christ’s life. The myth behind the poem was in existence a lot longer than that. That’s why they had temples in this area to Jupiter and Mercury. You lose all the meter and stuff in translation from Latin so don’t expect it to sound like a poem. The Story of Baucis and Philem