Acts 19:10

10. All… in Asia In the vigour of his manhood, in the plenitude of the Spirit, in the tide of expanding success, did this mighty apostle now make a profound impression not only upon this idolatrous city of Diana, but upon all the border Asia. Aided by his faithful fellow ministers, and, perhaps, by his consecrated twelve, he could not only thunder the law and the Gospel from the academic hall of Tyrannus, but in the surrounding rural territory, and even the other great Asiatic cities. Thousands who came to Ephesus to worship in the cloisters of Diana, came to hear the Gospel of the Saviour at the school of Tyrannus. Other thousands heard that same Gospel from the apostle’s faithful missionaries; so that literally “all Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus.”

HISTORICAL NOTE III.

Nero It was in about the month of October, A.D. 54, that the news of the Roman Emperor CLAUDIUS’ death and of NERO’S accession found Paul in the second of his three years’ preaching at EPHESUS. (See Hist. Note 2 at Acts 9:31.) His reign more than covers the future years of Paul’s ministry. While he was thus planting the Gospel in the empire, Burrus, the statesman, and Seneca, the philosopher, were endeavouring to sow the seeds of wisdom and morality in the heart of the young future Emperor, NERO. Under the influence of those lessons, for the first five years of his reign Nero was one of the best of rulers. But he lived to destroy the lives successively of Burrus, Seneca, and Paul.