Acts 28:1 They found out they had
been shipwrecked on the island of Malta. The minimum distance between Cauda and
Malta is approximately 767 km. This would not have required two weeks to cover
with fair skies and following seas, but who knows where the ship had been
driven in the storm. Certainly the sailors did not.
Acts 28:2-6 The natives of Malta
showed great hospitality, this being the middle of the stormy season, and a storm.
The irony of a minor miracle when the snake bit Paul and he was not affected
(as promised by Jesus in Mark 16:18), the pagan superstition changed from
thinking Paul was a murderer being punished by the gods to thinking that Paul
was himself a god. The irony is that the storm demonstrated the power of the
one true God, whom Paul served. The workings of God's justice were in the
pagans' minds personified in a separate deity, but they had no concept of what
had really happened. Paul was not in his glorified body, but he was under the
protection of God and with the flow of the Holy Spirit, had been preserved with
all who were on the ship with him. Whether it is the deception of Satan or the
natural human tendency, it seems almost a universal tendency to assign the work
of God to other agencies or beings. Of course, Paul had not yet had the
opportunity to preach the gospel here, but he would over the next few months.
Acts 28:7-10 Paul's ministry that had
been so effective in Asia and Achaia continued in Malta. Publius' father was
healed, and then the rest of the people of the island came to Paul and were
healed. We have to infer that Paul also preached the gospel while he was there,
as this is not stated. But he would pray for healing in no other name than Jesus.
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