Acts 16:16-40: The Fortune-Teller’s Pesky Predictions

The Rev. Nabil Nour, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Hartford, SD and fourth vice president of the LCMS, joins the Rev. Dr. Phil Booe to study Acts 16:16-40. In the bustling streets of Philippi, Saints Paul and Silas encounter a slave girl with a mystifying ability to tell the future by means of a demonic spirit. Paul exercises the demon, leading them into a dramatic confrontation with her masters. As the city rises against them, they are thrown into prison, setting the stage for an awe-inspiring midnight act of faith and a miraculous twist. The Book of Acts takes us back to the earliest days of Christianity, unveiling the incredible acts of the apostles and the growth of the early church. Acts offers a firsthand account how the Apostles and Jesus’ disciples respond to his death and resurrection. It makes us witnesses to the beginning of fulfilling Jesus’s command to spread the Gospel from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. We encounter miracles and wonders, we see the church struggling to organize itself in the absence of Jesus, and we learn of the trials and tribulations the early Christians faced in a world that rejected them.