Our Monday got us off to a
good start in the classes on Ephesians and Colossians. As noted earlier, many
of the participants in our classes were coming from Mindanao and did not arrive
until early this morning – a few did not arrive until a little after 1pm. For
this reason, we had arranged to start at 2pm. However, when I called Jonathan
Carino to find out who was coming to pick me up, I found out we had a problem –
the elevator in the building was not working. I asked for Kristofer Carino to
pick me up anyway rather than waiting for the elevator to be fixed. Traffic was
far heavier than normal, so we were even later getting to the venue than
anticipated. To make a long story short, I ended up climbing stairs to the 12th
floor! That was a real test for the new hip as well as the back, but that made
it fine. It did take a while, so we were even later in getting started.
We started with a brief
introduction dealing with our schedule for the week and an overview of the
assignments they would be expected to complete each night. We then passed out
the materials for the class and got right into the introductory material.
We first introduced the city
of Ephesus by showing maps and photos of the city. We noted where it was
geographically in relation to modern boundaries as being in what is now known
as “Turkey.” We saw the first century boundaries had it as the capital of the
Roman province of “Asia.” We also examined some of the picture of the ruins of
the ancient city, how it was laid out and other things to get a sense of life
as it would have been in that first century city, especially with its places of
idolatry (the temple of Artemis or Diana, the temple Hadrian, the temple of
Domitian, etc.) and immorality. [Note: the blog will have a few of those
pictures and maps included at the end of this entry.]
We then noted the other
places in the New Testament where Ephesus is mentioned:
•
Acts 18:18-21 Paul came to Ephesus with Priscilla & Aquila
•
Acts 18:24-28 Priscilla & Aquila met Apollos
•
Acts 19 Paul again came to Ephesus
•
Taught in school
of Tyrannus for 2 years
•
Left after uproar
of silversmiths for Diana images
•
Acts 20:16-38 Past Ephesus - met elders in Miletus
•
1 Cor. 15:32 Reference to fighting wild beasts there
•
1 Cor. 16:8 Wrote this book from Ephesus
•
1 Tim. 1:3 Instructed Timothy to stay in Ephesus
•
2 Tim. 1:16-18
Onesiphorus ministered to Paul there
•
2 Tim. 4:12 Sent Tychicus to Ephesus from Rome
•
Rev. 1:11 Listed as one of 7 churches addressed in book
•
Rev. 2:1-7 First letter to 7 churches was to Ephesus (end 1st
century)
Lastly, we studied introductory matters such as the book’s authorship, setting, background, time of writing, place of writing, messengers, purpose and theme. Since we were late getting started, we only covered the first two verses of the first chapter and introduced the prologue of book (Eph. 1:3-14). The Lord willing, we will take up with the discussion of that section of the text and get through at least chapter 3. Classes are set to start at 7:30am and end at 6pm with a break for lunch and a few short breaks through the day. It is a long day of study!
