One night, after one of these talks, as Paul was asleep in Troy, he
seemed to see a figure standing by him. Surely it was the dream-figure
of Luke, the doctor from Macedonia, holding out his hands and pleading
with Paul, saying, "Come over into Macedonia and help us."
Now neither Paul nor Silas nor Timothy had ever been across the sea
into the land that we now call Europe. But in the morning, when Paul
told his companions about the dream that he had had, they all agreed
that God had called them to go and deliver the good news of the
Kingdom to the people in Luke's city of Philippi and in the other
cities of Macedonia.
So they went down into the busy harbour of Troy, where the singing
sailor-men were bumping bales of goods from the backs of camels into
the holds of the ships, and they took a passage in a little coasting
ship. She hove anchor and was rowed out through the entrance between
the ends of the granite piers of the harbour. The seamen hoisting the
sails, the little ship went gaily out into the AEgean Sea.
All day they ran before the breeze and at night anchored under the lee
of an island. At dawn they sailed northward again with a good wind,
till they saw land. Behind the coast on high ground the columns of
a temple glowed in the sunlight. They ran into a spacious bay and
anchored in the harbour of a new city--Neapolis as it was called--the
port of Philippi.
Landing from the little ship, Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke climbed
from the harbour by a glen to the crest of the hill, and then on, for
three or four hours of hard walking, till their sandals rang on
the pavement under the marble arch of the gate through the wall of
Philippi.
_Flogging and Prison._
As Paul and his friends walked about in the city they talked with
people; for instance, with a woman called Lydia, who also had come
across the sea from Asia Minor where she was born. She and her
children and slaves all became Christians. So the men and women of
Philippi soon began to talk about these strange teachers from the
East. One day Paul and Silas met a slave girl dressed in a flowing,
coloured tunic. She was a fortune-teller, who earned money for her
masters by looking at people and trying to see at a glance what they
were like so that she might tell their fortunes. The fortune-telling
girl saw Paul and Silas going along, and she stopped and called out
loud so that everyone who went by might hear: "These men are the
slaves of the Most High God. They tell you the way of Salvation."
The people stood and gaped with astonishment, and still the girl
called out the same thing, until a crowd began to come round. Then
Paul turned round and with sternness in his voice spoke to the evil
spirit in the girl and said: "In the Name of Jesus Christ, I order you
out of her."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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