S. DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS

DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS Dr. W. A. Criswell Acts 19:28 01-24-54 This morning, we begin Acts 19:1-41 and continued through the seventh verse. Tonight, we begin at the eighth verse and go through the remainder of the chapter. For our reading, let us begin in the nineteenth chapter of the Book of Acts and the twentieth verse: Acts 19:20 -“So mightily grew the Word of God and prevailed.” Now the twenty-fourth- For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen. So he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, you know that by this craft we have our wealth.

Moreover you see and hear, that not along in Ephesus, but throughout almost all Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away much people, saying that there be no gods, which are made with hands: So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshipeth. And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. And the whole city was filled with confusion; and having caught Gaius and Aristarchus, companions of Paul, . . . they entered into the theater [Acts 19:24-31].

-with the people- And they drew Alexander out of the multitude, the Jews did it. And Alexander beckoned with his hand, and would have made a defense to the people. But when they knew he was a Jew, all with one voice about the space of two hours hounding down crying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians-Great is Diana of the Ephesians. When the town clerk had appeased the people, he said, Ye men of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how the city of the Ephesians is a worshiper of the great goddess Diana -and of the things-and the image which fell down from Jupiter?

Seeing then these things cannot be spoken against, [and so on] [Acts 19:33-36] And he completed his address and then “he dismissed the people” [Acts 19:41].

Now, that is the part of the background of the message tonight on Paul and DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS. There is not anything that a schoolboy does not hear more about when he sets his face in history than “the seven wonders of the ancient world.” And those words are almost household words: the seven wonders of the ancient world. They were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Pyramids in Egypt, the Alexandrian Lighthouse-Pharos, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Colossus at Rhodes, the Phidias’ Statue of Jove [Zeus] at Olympia, and the temple of Diana in Ephesus. And of the seven wonders of the ancient world, far and away the most magnificent and impressive and glorious of them all was the incomparable temple of Diana in Ephesus. The glory of that temple could hardly be described. I copy from Pausanius who was an ancient Greek traveler and geographer, quote, "It surpassed every structure raised by human hands." And another ancient writer, "I have seen the walls and Hanging Gardens of old Babylon., the statue of Olympian Jove, the Colossus of Rhodes, the great labor of the lofty Pyramids, and the ancient tomb of Mausolus, but when I beheld the temple at Ephesus towering to the clouds, all of these other marvels were eclipsed." The temple at Ephesus was far larger and far more magnificent and far more famous than the Parthenon in Athens, which to us is the greatest building of antiquity. And the reason for it is that the temple at Ephesus was destroyed by the Goths in about 250 or 260 A.D. and it sank out of sight, and it sank out of memory. And it has only been since the days of the Renaissance that its glory and its splendor and its beauty and its grandeur has ever come to light. Pliny said it was two hundred twenty years in building. And the size of it was about two city blocks long-about six hundred feet long and about a city block wide. And it was supported by a hundred sixty [twenty]-seven columns of Carian marble and they were arranged eight at the end, and eight at the end, and all of the rest of them along the sides. They were sixty feet tall. As you entered Ephesus going up the ship channel of the Cayster River, you got a view of about three-quarters of the building. It was placed exactly east and west, and when a stranger first looked upon it, his breathe was almost taken away by the awe-inspiring sight. It had one architectural figure that distinguished it from all of the rest of the buildings of the world. When you see any columns over there in ancient Greece, in Egypt, here in the homeland or any where, any column I have ever seen-when you see any column, they are always belled out at the bottom-called a “drum”; unless it is an Ionic column, which lies flat-it stands flat on the pavement. And then the column is either plain or it is fluted. It either has a string around or it has no indentations-those flutings on the side. I have never seen any column different from that. The one exception is the columns of the Ephesian temple of Diana. They had sculptured sides-sculptured reliefs all the way up around to the height of about a man’s head. And those sculptured relief columns themselves were on the ground of the ancient world. On the inside of that glorious temple of marble and gold and silver-on the inside was the statue of Diana. Now you have it translated "Diana" here. Diana was a Roman word for the goddess of hunting- Diana. The word used here in the Greek is "Artemis." Artemis is a Greek goddess of hunting. In reality, the goddess at Ephesus was not either one. Artemis of the Greek and Diana of the Romans was a beautiful, graceful, gorgeous goddess. But this goddess at Ephesus looked like an ogre out of the dim past of man. It says here in the Bible that she was supposed to have fallen out of heaven from Jupiter. Apparently what happened back there in the day of Anatolian antiquity there was a meteorite that fell out of heaven. And they began to worship it way back in the dim ages. And then as time went on, the meteorite was placed to the side, and some crude image of a body was in the place instead. So in the passing of the centuries-this was the eighth temple built on that site-in the passing of the centuries, there came to be around that goddess all of the superstition and all of the dark magic and all of the heathen worship that had accumulated for centuries and for centuries. Now the goddess, I say, was not beautiful at all. Around the lower part of her body she looked like an Egyptian mummy-wrapped around and around and around. And then the upper part of her-the hands and face and body were of a woman. Now on her body was a multitude of little objects. Sir Ramsey Moore says that they are the ova of bees. Every body outside of Sir Ramsey Moore, the great antiquarian archaeologist-outside of him all of them say they were breasts. In any event, the goddess there in Ephesus was the goddess of fertility and fecundity. And she represented the proliferation of all life-animal, vegetable, and human. And she was worshiped as such. Now, they had a system of religion there in that Ephesian temple that was marvelous to behold. The sign, the insignia of ancient Ephesus was a bee. When you had an Ephesian coin, it had a bee on it and this goddess doubtless was the queen bee-the goddess bee. And she had a great retinue of servants, of men-of drone priests who dressed like women; and she had a great retinue of priestesses who were the worker bees; and then, beside them there was a vast concourse of flute players and trumpeters and acrobats and dancers and singers and everything else that went with a gorgeous Oriental ritual.

Now when Ephesus was in its prime and glory as Paul visited it, two thousand years ago. No body in this earth would ever have dreamed but that the city was invincible and impregnable and eternal. What is Ephesus today? It is a haunted, weird, mausoleum of the dead. No body goes there. Malarial mosquitoes for many, many years have driven all men away. And for centuries and for years and years-over a thousand years, the very site of the temple itself disappeared. Right in the day of its glory Ephesus was one of the remarkable cities of marble of the world. And one of the marks of the Hellenization of the Ephesian goddess was this-that once a year, on her birthday in May, they celebrated for a solid month the Artemisia. On that-in that month nobody worked for a solid month. The entire city was given over to play. And children came there from the ends of the earth, and they had a typical Greek holiday. One of the things you will find in the writings of Paul is this. He wrote to the Corinthians church, while he was there in Ephesus, and he said, "I will tarry in Ephesus until Pentecost. For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries" [1Co 16:8-9]. Now, when you read that, you do not see a thing in the world there. He is just going to stay until Pentecost. Oh, no. That is not what he was talking about. Pentecost, he was going to stay until Pentecost. Pentecost was a Jewish holiday that came about in June. Such time as that-the first of June. What Paul meant was that they-that he was staying in Ephesus through May. That was, through the Artemisia, because the pilgrims came there through the ends of the earth gave him an infinite opportunity to preach the gospel. I can give you a parallel to that. When the World Fair was held in Chicago, Dwight L. Moody carried on his tremendous revival services and he turned all America to God. By the people-by converting the people who were there on the Chicago World Fair. Now, that was what Paul was intending to do in Ephesus. During the days of the Artemisia, when the pilgrims were there and every where, he was going to preach the gospel so the entire world could hear about it.

Now, in those days in the glory of the temple and in the Artemisia, why they carried the effigy of the goddess through the city. And when the people left, why they wanted a prize, they wanted a memorial, and many of them wanted a god to place in their house to worship. So, this man Demetrius, a silversmith-he in his craft made little silver goddesses like that statue on the inside of the temple of Diana. And they made lots of money doing it. Well, the whole city was given over to idolatry, to black magic, and to superstition. And wherever Paul came along and began to preach the gospel-well, you know what happened. There was a certain inevitable conflict. There is no such thing as superstition and magic-necromancy, soothsaying, fortune telling, witchcraft-no such thing as that continuing by the side of the Christian faith. Let me tell you something, if you go to a fortune teller and a soothsayer and a palm reader, you are crazy-beside not being a Christian. You know that? You just are. You ought to go to have your head examined and not your palm examined. You just are. You just are. That is the craziest insane thing I know a body can do-go to a crystal gazer; go to a fortune teller. And my, they tell me-I never been to one in my life and I do not do that. But they tell me there are endless numbers of people who patronize those things.

All right. Let us go back to Ephesus. That Asiatic goddess brooded over the city and magic was in the air. Phrases, powerful phrases were in the air. All kinds of incantations-“hocus pocus”; hocus pocus. Grab those chains. All of that stuff was every where. And so, when Paul began to preach and the people began to see the true light of God, why they brought their little bees and their black magic-all of their superstition, and they dumped them in the fire and they had a big bonfire right in the city of Ephesus. Well, it did not stop there. You cannot be a Christian and go to fortune teller and palm readings and all of this other inanity. The future belongs to God; go to Him; go to Him. Nor can you be a Christian and worship insanity-be an idolater. So when the people began to turn to God, why they began to turn away from these shrines, and these little goddesses, and the temple. And this man Demetrius-when he saw that his craft was about to be destroyed by that preaching of the man of God-he gathered his people together and he said, "Listen here, listen here. Not only are you about to get out of a job, and not only are you and I about to lose our craft, but the great temple itself is about to be despised and destroyed and forgotten and rejected."

Now, when they had those big Artemisia, they sang hymns to Diana and went through the city-and you could just hear worship every where. -went through the city crying, "Great Diana of the Ephesians. Great is Diana of the Ephesians"; just like when the Arabs held a great political meeting, they repeated one sentence over and over again. I do not know what the sentence is, but they just say it over and over, and work themselves up into a frenzy. That is exactly what happened here. When Demetrius a called that group together and told them what was happening, why they began to shout, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians"; and poured out into the streets saying, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians"; and went up and down the streets of the city crying, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." And nobody knew what it was all about, but they were just working themselves into a frenzy, into a riot, into a mob. And the place for demonstrations in Ephesus was in the theater. The theater is still there. It seats twenty-four thousand people. In the excavation and rubble it was a tremendous place. And they poured in that theater and began to shout, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians."

Now, some of those Jews who were in the city were terrified by what was happening. They were afraid that the thing was taking anti-Semitic turn. That they would go to the Jews. That is the reason you do not see it here if the Book. You wonder what in the world is Alexander doing with the Jews? Well, the reason for that was this-I say those Jews were terrified. They were scared to death. That tremendous mob in a frenzy, chanting, "Diana of the Ephesians." Of course the Jew was [not] an idolater and he was not visiting Diana. So they were afraid that it would take an anti-Semitic turn and the mob [would] just wipe the Jewish population off of the face of the earth. So when they saw that vast concourse of people in the theater, they put before them Alexander to speak for the Jews, and tell them they did not cause all of that. They did not have anything to do with what had happened to the Christian religion. So Alexander the Jewish oracle stood up and beckoned with his hand and said he was going to make a speech to them and some body said, "He’s a Jew." And when they heard that, the whole crowd howled him down and for two solid hours they cried, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," and wouldn’t [listen] to him or any body else-just a liar. Then the town clerk came-the official of the city, and he stood up there and looked at that vast mob-twenty-four [thousand] or more people in that great semi-circle of those marble tiers-he looked at them and he made a typical Greek speech. And his cold logic was like ice on their heated spirits. And he just dismissed them and put them away, and said, "You go back. You go back. No body robbed the temple and every body knows that Diana is the goddess of the Ephesians and she is worshiped all over the world. Now seeing these things are true, just go on home and go about your business." And so he dismissed them. And those Asiarchs, those men who carried on the government of the city who were friends of Paul. Isn’t that remarkable? They counseled Paul, and then Paul said to the disciples, "Goodbye," and they sent him away. And he continued toward his next journey up into Macedonia.

Well, that is the background of this story. Now [I have] one or two things to say about it. First, all of mankind-all of mankind, with no exception to it-all of mankind. All of mankind-all of mankind has something in the head, or in the heart, or wherever you locate it-all of mankind does. And it is a spot that some thing is going to fill of the supernatural, of the other world-going to get into that. It always will. It always has. It is today. I cannot understand the spirit world. If you want to stop me good and hard, you just say, "Now Pastor, sit down there. I want to read to you out of this Bible." And then you just open and read to me any where it says-and it is a lot of places in the Bible-about the casting out of evil spirits. You take that story of the swine. The man who had the legions of devils in him and they wanted to be cast into the swine. Now, you just set me down any where any day and say, "Pastor, explain that to me." Well, I just do not know. I just do not know. There is a lot of that that I do not understand. But there is some of it I do understand. And what I do understand is this-that there is a vacuum in our cranium, in our heart, soul, wherever it is-there is a vacuum on the inside of us and it is going to be filled by some kind of a spirit. It will be either the spirit of superstition and magic, or it will be filled by the Spirit of the true and the living God. But there is something on the inside of me that is a vacuum and there is a spirit of some kind going to get in there-going to get in there.

“Well, I do not know about that, Preacher.” You do not know about it? Then look at it just for a minute; look at it just for a minute. [Do] you think we are the only civilized people in the world? Listen here; you have not studied. Thousands and thousands and thousands of years before you were born, and before the American nation was conceived, hardly any body spoke the Anglo-Saxon-English language, they had a tremendously advanced civilization in China, where there was gunpowder-they invented it. Where did you get china? Well, it came from China, obviously. China came from China. They invented printing-writing, I do not know what all. They were cultured people thousands of years before we even came along. What is the matter with them? From the dynastic head to the coolie on the street, they filled with superstition and with fear-spirits, spirits, evil spirits. It was everywhere. And I told you the other day, when you see the architecture of the building, all of the philosophy-and the huge philosophy-so when the spirit falls on the house, they do not come back in but they shrug off from you in the house. That is China. That is in China. They are filled with all kinds of superstitions. My first contact in Africa was in Lagos, really. So I was walking over there and I said, "Listen here missionary, these folks look like they do in Birmingham, Alabama." I said, "preach to that fellow right there. Preach to that fellow right there." I said, "there are a thousand boys running across the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, that look exactly like that boy, just exactly like that." I was surprised. I do not know why, but I thought over there in Africa they would look different. They do not. They look just like the people over here. He said, "Yeah, that is right. That boy looks just like the boy on the streets of Birmingham, Alabama.” “But, he said, "the difference is this. The man in Birmingham, Alabama, has been reared under a Christian culture and a Christian civilization." He said, "This boy has been raised in humanagraphy. He looks the same on the outside." “But,” he says, "you do not know the fear and the superstition that lives on the inside of that boy’s head, and that boy’s mind"-a heathen, a heathen. And that is true all over the world. All over the world, men are going to worship some thing. Men are going to worship some body. And if we do not have God, and we do not have the true Spirit of God, and we do not have the enlightenment of the Lord, we are going to turn to ignorance and illiteracy-spiritual illiteracy and superstition of every kind and degree.

It is true of all people in all generations and in all time. I started out there were not any people more cultured than the Greeks. And they were filled with the unspeakable and indescribable superstition, and their gods and their goddesses were beyond description. The Romans were the same way. All humanity is the same way. We either give our hearts to God, the true and living God, or we give them to something else-live in fear; live in terror; live like animals; live like beasts, cringe before the future and groping for it as a blind man looking for the wall. Or, you live and walk in the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And it will be one or the other.

Now, I go on. One other thing here. As you look at this man Demetrius just a minute. Look at this man Demetrius. Well, he lived two thousand years ago. You think so? No, he did not. Demetrius never dies. Demetrius is always with us-always. He made that speech on the streets today some where. Demetrius did, and he made it yesterday some where. And he will make it tomorrow some where. Now you look at Demetrius and Demetrius’ spirit. He gets up there and he says-he says, "You know what? You know what? This great temple of Diana is in danger of being destroyed. This great temple of Diana is in danger of being obliterated and forgotten." So, ostensibly the appeal that he made was in behalf of the great temple of Diana. In reality, the reason he was making this speech was because he made money selling silver shrines to Diana. And he was losing his business. He was losing his trade. Well, he had made images for Olympian gold. He made images for the Aphrodite just as quick and as easy as he made them for Diana in Ephesus. As God’s Book says here, [Inaudible]* I want you to make me an image of Isis and Osiris. Make me an image of Isis. The leader said, Sure what does he look like? What does she look like? He did not care anything about the temple of Diana or any other thing like that-all he wanted was money. But when he made his great appeal to the people, what he was talking about was the temple here and the true religion of Diana-when in reality, what he was talking about is money. He is losing money.

Well, I say Demetrius makes those speeches today. I hear them all of the time. I remember when we were talking about prohibition. I remember in Kentucky, where I was leaving at that time, I never heard such speeches in my life on personal liberty. “Oh head of the United States of America, you cannot tell us what to do or not to do. We are free people and we are defending personal liberty.” And the brewers and the distillers all have the rights: “that breaks our liberty and freedom in America”; when all of the time all they were working for was to make money selling liquor. That is all it was to them. That is all it was. That is all they are interested in now. Ostensibly for a great principle; actually making money-making money. That is a dastardly thing, did you know that? Because of personal gain to defend a thing on account of an ostensible principle. When in reality, the reason you are for it s on account of personal gain. Personal aggrandizement. That is terrible. That is terrible.

Well, I have got to close. He is greatly worked up about the temple of Diana of the Ephesians-greatly worked up. Well, you say that is two thousand years ago-two thousand years ago.