• Defending Our Faith
    The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom—1998

    • 12. What were the circumstances that moved Paul and Barnabas to speak with boldness in Iconium?

      12 Consider also the example of Paul and Barnabas. Acts 14:1, 2 states: “In Iconium they entered together into the synagogue of the Jews and spoke in such a manner that a great multitude of both Jews and Greeks became believers. But the Jews that did not believe stirred up and wrongly influenced the souls of people of the nations against the brothers.” The New English Bible reads: “But the unconverted Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the Christians.” Not content with rejecting the message themselves, Jewish opposers embarked on a smear campaign, trying to prejudice the Gentile population against Christians.* How deep their hatred of Christianity must have been! (Compare Acts 10:28.)

  • Defending Our Faith
    The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom—1998

    • Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible explains that the Jewish opposers “made it their business to go purposely to such [Gentiles] as they had any acquaintance with, and said all that their wit or malice could invent, to beget in them not only a mean but an ill opinion of Christianity.”