Demetrius's audience reacts in angry defiance, with a cultic chant of adoration: Great is Artemis of the Ephesians! (compare Bel and the Dragon 18, 41). This throws the whole city into confusion. The craftsmen and workers become the core of a mob that rushes violently into the theater, having laid hold of two of Paul's traveling companions, Gaius and Aristarchus (Gaius is otherwise unknown; Aristarchus is mentioned at Acts 20:4; 27:2; Col 4:10; Philem 24).

The theater (capacity twenty-four thousand) was the largest and most impressive of all structures in ancient Ephesus. Built into the steep western slope of Mount Pion with a view of the city and the broad street to the sea, it was used for large gatherings of inhabitants, as well as the citizens' assembly (Finegan 1981:162). This gathering is probably an unofficial meeting of the city assembly in which Demetrius hopes to put pressure on civic authorities to take action against the apostolic group (Sherwin-White 1963:83). The declaration of the truth has wounded religious and ethnic pride, which reacts with a destructive mixture of mindless zeal and fury (compare Lk 4:28; 8:33; Acts 5:17; 7:57; 13:45). Today the same reaction to the gospel from zealots of the world's great religions or of antireligious ideologies should be no surprise.

Whether to witness or to show solidarity with his arrested fellow workers, Paul wanted to appear before the crowd (literally, "purposed to go into the demos" [popular assembly]), probably emboldened by the way his Roman citizenship and the Empire's authorities have protected him (Acts 16:37-40; 18:12-16). But his fellow disciples shield him this time by not permitting him to go to the theater (9:24-25, 30; 14:5; 17:10, 14). Further, some of the officials of the province, "Asiarchs" by title, beg him not to go. An Asiarch was an aristocrat, a member of the provincial council. Made up of representatives from the major cities, this council had particular responsibility for the work of the temples devoted to the imperial cult. For such men to be Paul's friends and take such an interest in him shows not only the high levels of society to which the gospel had penetrated but also that Christianity evidently was not yet viewed as a threat to the imperial cult. In fact, the educated classes seemed to treat it with greater tolerance than did the masses.

Paul again balances prudence and bravery, and so should all witnesses for Christ. When the church body functions with Spirit-endowed wisdom, there is a good source of guidance. There may be times when Spirit-directed personal conviction will override the church's counsel (Acts 21:13-14), but the church's word must always be received gratefully.

The assembly was confused, divided (some were shouting one thing, some another) and ignorant of its purpose (most of the people did not even know why they were there). Here is an apt picture of the disorienting nature of misguided religious fervor. We find it today not only in the frenzied rituals of traditional religions but also in the verbal pounding that combatants in the postmodern "culture wars" inflict on each other.

In the end, the Artemis cult's opposition to the gospel proves futile. The Jews in the crowd push forward Alexander to determine the cause of the tumult. When some from the crowd tell him it is the Christian "Way," he seeks to speak to the assembly to make a defense for the Jewish community, presumably to distance it from "the Way," if not also to provide ammunition to the Gentiles in their persecution of this "self-excommunicated" group. But the crowd will have none of it. They draw no distinction between Jews and Christians, for both groups are monotheistic and oppose idolatry. Recognizing that Alexander is a Jew, they drown out his attempted defense with a two-hour chant: Great is Artemis of the Ephesians! (compare 19:28). And today we know that a culture's religious lies are asserting themselves against the truth when in response to the calm and clear proclamation of the gospel, all the culture's proponents can do is shout louder. Does Christianity kill culture? It exposes what is not true in order to cleanse and transform culture.