Acts 14:1

5. At Iconium Preaching of Paul , Acts 14:1-5 .

1. Iconium Driven from the capital of Pisidia, our two apostles betake themselves to the capital of Lycaonia. This, like Antioch, stood upon the great thoroughfare which we have described (Acts 16:10) as extending from the AEgean on the west through the Syrian Gates on the east, being the solely possible direct route to Syria and southern Asia. This was in the direction southeastwardly toward Tarsus, the native home of Paul, and therefore probably preferred rather than to go deeper into Asia Minor or farther toward Europe. Since that day Iconium has been distinguished in history as the capital of the Seljukian Turks, originally a Tartar race, but then working their onward way to the conquest of Constantinople and the attempted conquest of Christian Europe. It stands in a vast plain near the foot of Mount Taurus, about fifty miles from Pisidian Antioch. The synagogue Large as the city was, the Jewish population seems not to have been extensive, since the synagogue appears to have been but one. The population seems to have consisted of an upper stratum of Greeks and Jews, and an underlying mass of primitive Lycaonian people, probably of Syrian origin, mentioned in Acts 14:11. Over all these were a few haughty Romans, moving about with the air of masters by conquest.

So spake… multitude… believed They so spake, that is with such method and power as to attract the faith of the hearers. They appealed with spiritual power to the spiritual sympathies in man, and there would be those whose sympathies were awakened, and whose spirit, touched by the heavenly Spirit, would yield to the divine attraction.