In Peter Allison's sermon 'Ministry on Malta,' based on Acts 28, he discusses the aftermath of Paul's shipwreck on the island of Malta. After surviving a severe storm and shipwreck, Paul and his companions are met with unusual kindness by the natives of Malta, who display hospitality despite their pagan beliefs. A significant event occurs when a viper bites Paul, yet he suffers no harm, leading the locals to believe he is a deity. Paul further demonstrates God's power by healing the father of the island's leading citizen, Publius, and subsequently many others on the island. This series of events highlights the providence of God, who brought Paul to Malta, facilitated the crew's survival, and prepared the islanders' hearts for the Gospel. The sermon emphasizes the importance of always being ready to share the Gospel and the power of God's miracles in transforming lives.

Our Scripture reading is Acts 28. Paul has And his companions have just been through a terrible hurricane, typhoon storm, that lasted two weeks without them being able to eat or see the sun or the stars. And they have just all escaped from this shipwreck safely to land. And we pick up the narrative of Luke in Acts 28, beginning at verse 1. Now when they had escaped, they then found out that the island was called Malta and the natives showed us unusual kindness for they kindled a fire and made us all welcome because of the rain that was falling and because of the cold.

But when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and laid them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand. So when the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom though he has escaped the sea, yet justice does not allow to live. But he shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm. However, they were expecting that he would swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But after they had looked for a long time and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a God.

In that region there was an estate of the leading citizen of the island, whose name was Publius, who received us and entertained us courteously for three days. And it happened that the father of Publius lay sick of fever and dysentery. And Paul went into him and prayed, and he laid his hands on him and healed him. So when this was done, the rest of those on the island who had diseases also came and were healed. They also honored us in many ways, and when we departed, they provided such things as were necessary." May the Lord give us understanding according to His Word.

Gracious Father in Heaven, please give to us the Spirit of illumination as you have given to us the Spirit of supplication. And as you have heard our cries to you for mercy, for forgiveness, may, Lord, we hear your word to us this morning with meek hearts, with humility. And Lord, we look forward and anticipate your instruction and your sanctifying work in us. To renew our thinking and to bring us to greater zeal and greater obedience. And I ask that you would sanctify my sinful lips, that they may faithfully and fully speak of the riches of Your grace in Christ.

In Jesus' name, Amen. And so it was, They all escaped safely to the land. In those words, God vindicated Paul to the ship's crew, to all 275 people with Him, by bringing to pass everything that Paul had prophesied would happen. Anything less, And Paul would have been shown to be a false prophet because New Testament prophets were held to the same standard as Old Testament prophets. Not one word of all that they say in God's name can fall to the ground unfulfilled.

Not one thing. It's not good enough to be 99.9999% accurate. A prophet that is only 99.999% accurate is a false prophet. 100% is the only standard for a prophet of God. Someone who had presumed to speak in God's name, everything had to come to pass.

Specifically, Paul had declared in verse 22 of the last chapter there, he said, first, there would be no loss of life. Everyone would be saved. Everyone. So not one person can be lost. Secondly, the ship would be lost.

No person would be lost, but the ship would be lost. And thirdly, the ship would first have to run aground. So it would be lost in a specific way, not just found her at sea, not just get swamped, but run aground and be lost. So it's a specific method in which it would happen. And this is exactly what did happen.

The ship ran aground and was destroyed by the waves from the joining of two seas. And I put a little picture, a modern picture, of the proximate spot where people think that the shipwreck occurred, which shows the joining of the two seas. It also shows a little statue of the Apostle Paul on that little island off of Malta. And so the ship runs aground right there. In that picture, the shipwreck site would be a little bit off to your right out of view of the camera.

But it shows there the area where these two seas come together. And the Bible says that the waves of these two seas broke the vessel apart. But everyone made it safely to shore, despite, you remember, the intentions of the sailors who were trying to desert and strand everybody before their expertise was over or no longer needed. And then the soldiers who wanted to kill everybody, God preserved everyone and brought them safely to shore. Even the people that couldn't swim.

So here you have a ship being destroyed, but people that can't swim are able to make it safely ashore and not one person is lost. That's a miracle. On landing the crew learns that they have come to Malta. Malta is a small island in the Mediterranean, just about 60 or so miles, I think, south of Sicily. It's just about 90 square miles.

So it's not quite 17 miles long, and it's not quite eight miles wide. But it has been settled for millennia. The Phoenicians came to around 800 BC, but before they arrived there was a prior civilization there that built these large stone structures called megaliths. Megaliths. And there's a picture of one as well on the back of your bulletin.

Just an example of the structures we're talking about that probably date back to shortly after the flood, shortly after the Noahic flood, before the time of Abraham even. The people there, having recently been scattered from the Tower of Babel, which was building, remember, a large monument, came. Wherever they went, it seems like we have evidence around the world of these kind of structures that were built. Very, very old. Some of the oldest, that structure pictured there is one of the oldest freestanding structures that we know about in the world today.

There probably was some sort of land bridge between Sicily and Malta that facilitated the settlement. But for some reason, these civilizations had apparently died out before the Phoenicians arrived. Maybe because after the Ice Age, that land bridge disappeared underwater and they were stranded, and maybe didn't have the, for whatever reason. Probably also, certainly not to be discounted, is the fact that these were pagan cultures, many of them who engaged in human sacrifices. And God does not allow those nations, cultures, at that point to continue to exist, but in every single case throughout history, whenever nations and cultures get to that point, they are removed, and others and other people is given their land.

As the Pentateuch says, they are vomited out of the land. And so this apparently happened with the people at Malta before. But Malta has, before the Phoenicians, But Malta has remained a religious center over the centuries. They think that some of these megalith structures, these temples, were built like Stonehenge in England were built to be able to align with various solar events, the solstices and things. And at those particular times of the year, the light is perfectly aligned up.

I was trying to get a trash can to dry out one day this week. And I had to put it outside. But I wanted the sun to get all the way down. And so I had to set the trash can just right to catch the sun rays. And that's the way these structures are often built to be able to, at the right time, at these significant times of the year to have the sun shine in a perfect alignment or whatever they're trying to line up sometimes it's stars.

And so Malta has always been a very religious country and when Paul arrived the country is still in the grip of pagan superstition, as we'll see. These kind of island nations like Malta, especially those that are isolated, tend to regard foreigners with great suspicion. Even open hostility, sometimes killing visitors or shipwrecked sailors. However, these people, Luke says, treated them with kindness. And considering what they might have received on other islands, Luke calls it unusual kindness from the natives on the island.

And he uses the word in the Greek barbarians, where we get barbarian from. But the Greek word Babarast does not necessarily Contained the Carry the derogatory sense that the word in English does it just means they didn't speak Greek or participate in Greek culture as the Greeks and the Romans did it's it's like our word alien people that live in the in the United States that are not citizens are legally called resident aliens now alien just means a non citizen it's not a It's a statement of their legal status. And it has nothing to do with someone's character or their personality, their competence, their education. It's just their legal status. And so these were barbarians in that sense.

They were non-Greeks. But this word unusual kindness is probably worth a moment of consideration. It's the word from which we get our word, philanthropy. It's a different word than what's used of the fruit of the Spirit. See, these people extended favor to the crew and they performed an act of service or benevolence.

It's the same word that Luke uses when the centurion in the last chapter showed Paul this kindness and allowing him to go visit the saints in Sidon. This is the essence of hospitality, which is showing benevolence to strangers. That's exactly what that word means. And so they are showing hospitality here. The Greek expression, though, for unusual is an idiom called alitotes.

Now you probably all know what that is, but you don't probably know the word. That's, that's, alitotes is an expression that uses negative words to express a positive idea. And most of us do it all the time, probably not realizing what it's called. If we say, well that, you know, of our watch, well that watch wasn't cheap. What we mean by that is it was really very expensive.

It's a way of expressing the opposite. It's a way of expressing a positive using negative words. And so Luke literally is saying here, they received not that type of hospitality that would normally be obtained. This was then unusual. And so I think that's a good translation.

It captures what's happening here. This is unusual. It's not what you normally obtain. It's different. Pagan islands don't normally extend such warm hospitality to strangers, to total strangers who wash up on their beaches.

And there's countless, countless examples of this over the centuries. John Williams and another missionary were martyred and cannibalized in 1839 attempting to land on a Romangayo in what's now Vanuatu. This island is one of the is an island that's actually it's a little bit larger than Malta, it's not much different. It's isolated in the South Pacific part of what today might be the New Hebrides. And over the next 30 years, a total of six missionaries were martyred trying to evangelize these people.

In the case of John Williams and his colleague, just landing on the shore, They were trying to give them gifts and things, and they ended up being killed. H.A. Robertson, a Presbyterian missionary who was successful by the grace of God in bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to this island in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, titled his memoirs, Aromanga, the Martyr's Isle, for all the people that were killed trying to bring the gospel to these people, in some cases just merely landing on the shore. And even years after these murders, one in particular, where they were visiting a grave, a naval officer visiting the grave of one of these martyrs, said of these pagans who were present there, he said there was an entire absence of remorse. And in its place, a fiendish exaltation over the deed of blood.

You see, such is the disposition of unbelievers who are unrestrained by the grace of God. Like Proverbs 8 tells us, all those who hate Me, God says, love death. And I think this is exactly what we are witnessing today. I didn't plan this message today or this week, but this is exactly what we are witnessing with the murder of Charlie Kirk. Whether or not the Zionist Kabbalah is behind His death remains to be seen.

We don't know yet. But this is exposing in a dramatic way those who hate Jesus Christ. And it's doing it, and it's shocking a lot of people in two different ways. These people love death. They're rejoicing in it.

They're exalting in it. They're, as it were, dancing on the grave of this man. And it's shocking, a big part of the nation. Rightly shocking. As their eyes are being opened to the reality of the sinful human heart, it loves death and it hates Christ and it hates all his followers.

And too often over the years, we have fallen for the lie that man is basically good. And he basically wants what good people want. That's just not true. We are sinners. And apart from the restraining grace of God, we love death and we rejoice over it.

And so it raises the question then, Why? Why were these strangers, Paul and the crew, shown this unusual kindness? Well, certainly it was the providence of God that moved them to show such unusual hospitality. It certainly was the providence of God that brought them to an inhabited island, and to an island as opposed to an uninhabited one, and to an island that could support such a large number of people over the winter. They're coming in the middle at the start of winter.

It would have been very hard to be even on an uninhabited island and find enough food for that many people. Or shelter. So this is all the providence of God. And it was God's providence that brought them to a commercially significant island that had frequent ships that would be going to Italy once sailing became possible on the Mediterranean again. But I think there's a little bit more that we can say, although that's certainly a lot and enough.

But we read a little, a few verses later, that Publius showed hospitality to them. And he was, in Luke's words, a leading citizen of the island. He was some sort of chief. He was the preeminent citizen. And I think that the friendliness toward these strangers was, his friendliness toward them was the influence that made all the people, the natives, show hospitality to the crew that just washed up on the shore.

We don't know for sure, but similar incidents have been described in the missionary labors of others, particularly in the labors of John Williams on the island of Tahiti. He went there in the early 1800s. And years earlier, a number of chiefs from the neighboring society islands, so this, you know, in this French Polynesia, there are just these islands, these small islands, they're just all over, and the only way you get around is by boats. And you sail from island to island. And so, but they have their kingdoms, and they do exert influence at times over neighboring islands.

And years earlier, a number of chiefs from these neighboring islands had come to Tahiti to render a military assistance to the king there, who was seeking to regain his sovereignty and power over the region. And in their time at Tahiti, they were exposed to the gospel and favorably inclined to the gospel. So after their return to their native islands around there, there was a vessel that was driven by a hurricane from its moorings at one island, Aimeo, to land at Raiatea, another island 100 and some miles away. The storm just drove it there, lost its moorings, and ended up there. And the missionaries who happened to be on board and had taught the people who, they said, were already disposed to listen by what their chiefs had heard at Tahiti.

So these chiefs had been exposed to the Gospel, and just that exposure had made the people disposed to listen to the missionaries who get washed up on their shore in a storm. It actually goes on more this narrative. As a result of these missionaries getting washed up on the shore, there was a chapel that gets erected for Christian worship on this island. Island. And it turns out later that these chiefs from this island sent delegation back to Tahiti to ask for missionaries to come live on their islands.

And so a mission, these are the society islands, And so a mission was set up on the closest island to Tahiti. And Williams went there and started printing books and things. And some of these books got into the hands of the king of Raiat-Tiya. And he came and personally asked for missionaries to come to his country to bring the gospel to them. And of course, he had had a lot of difficulty in his land with the pagans accepting Christianity.

So he was converted, and there were a few other Christians that were converted under his influence. But by and large, the majority, the vast number of people on this island, continue to be pagans. And They resisted him and eventually looked for an opportunity to attack and wipe them out. Well, they did, but to their great surprise they lost. The few Christians heavily outnumbered easily overcame them.

And so what they were they thought they would have an easy victory killing off all the Christians that ended up being defeated by them. But here's the point. These Christians showed the defeated pagans kindness. And that was very significant because these are people that normally ate their enemies that they defeated and so king king tamatoa that was his name actually john williams named his oldest son after this guy, Samuel Tamatoa Williams. He asked for help, and when John Williams and a few others agreed to go, because of its importance, and this island was considered a religious capital in the region and the abode of gods, because of the kindness that Tamatoa had shown the people who attacked them, it predisposed them to regard the gospel with great favor.

And so when, therefore, on the 11th of September 1818, the missionary party landed in Ritea, they were met with a cordial reception. And according to John Williams, this rendered the task of missionaries much less difficult than it otherwise would have been. He said kindness is the key to the human heart. And he saw a proof of it when he reached Raiatea. And he himself could supply many other illustrations of this truth after his work there and in many of the other islands.

And so Luke doesn't explicitly say, but I have to think that something like this, given the proximity to Rome and the church in Rome and so on, there must have been, there may have been, behind this cordial reception that the Lord providentially arranged for them all, there may have been some exposure by Publius to the Gospel that predisposed these people. We don't know, but it's the Lord's providence, and He could have done that. So the people then make a fire for the crew. And Paul, the now aged apostle, this venerable missionary, is helping to put wood on the fire. What a beautiful example.

He wasn't sitting back letting everyone else do the work, but he helped with this mundane task. It's a sign, an expression of gratitude That shouldn't be overlooked. But in the process of him gathering sticks and putting them on the fire, a snake that had probably been motionless in hibernation due to the cold is warmed up by the fire and comes out of the fire and bites Paul on the hand. And the way Luke describes it, Paul nonchalantly shakes it off into the fire and suffers no harm. I think I would have been slightly less calm to use a liturgy.

Some commentators have suggested that the snake was not poisonous because there are no poisonous snakes in Malta today. However, this was 2, 000 years ago, and Luke uses the word for poisonous snake. So it was a poisonous snake. If the Bible says it was, then it was. Plus, If the island had no poisonous snakes at the time, then why would the natives expect him to puff up and die?

So obviously they weren't surprised by a poisonous snake. But Paul is able, by the grace of God, to respond as he does because God had told him that he would stand before Caesar. And so no snake bite is going to stop him. God had also promised though that these signs would follow believers, not just apostles, but believers. These signs will follow those who believe in Me.

What are those signs? In My name they will cast out demons, They will speak with new tongues, they will take up serpents, and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them. They will lay hands on the sick and they will recover." Jesus said, These signs will follow those who believe in me." Notice though that Paul does take action to kill the snake. He doesn't save the snake and say, oh, this just doesn't deserve to die. No, it's poisonous.

It's not wrong to kill it, as some would teach. Like Albert Schweitzer refused to kill anything. Even the cockroaches that lived in his piano and made it inoperable, he wouldn't kill them. No, it's not wrong to kill poisonous snakes and cockroaches and flies. But you see, through this encounter with a snake, God is vindicating His messenger.

God is vindicating Paul to these people. See although he's been vindicated by every Roman court that heard him over the past two years, these Maltese natives don't know that. They just see a prisoner show up on Malta with all the other prisoners that are headed to the Coliseum. They see a viper bite this prisoner, and they automatically assume that he must be guilty of some capital crime like murder. Now this is a very common association, a very common connection among religious people, among pagans and Christians, believe it or not.

James Ellis mentions a time on Mangaya where people ascribed a pestilence, a measles probably, that broke out among them to the anger of the God of the strangers. The strangers were missionaries. They ascribed to the anger of the God of the strangers. Job's friends made this assumption about Job. Jesus' disciples made this assumption about the blind man that Jesus healed in John 9.

His disciples asked Him, saying, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? They made an assumption there, and neither of those assumptions were true. But Jesus answered and said, neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. But it is something that we should ask ourselves. Is our affliction the result of sins in our life that we have not dealt with?

Because there are just as many times that afflictions are the means the Lord uses to bring us to deal with sins in our life to which we are blind or to which we've refused to deal with Jesus Told his disciples that the sin of unforgiveness will cause us to be delivered to the torturers And he told a parable member about the servant who was forgiven a massive debt that he could never have repaid in his lifetime, in five lifetimes, who after being forgiven this debt, refused to forgive a tiny little debt to somebody else, to someone that owed to Him. A debt that could have easily been repaid with a little bit of time. And Jesus said when that Master's servants heard about this, He delivered them to the torturers until He should pay all that was due to Him. And then Jesus said, So my heavenly Father will also do to each of you, if each of you does not from his heart forgive his brother his trespasses. So it's always appropriate to ask that of ourselves, not other people necessarily.

But more importantly, I think in this whole event, God is demonstrating His power over creation and over everything in it. See, when God conquers a land in His grace, He demonstrates His power over the gods of that culture. And that's a significant part of mission work. This was at the heart of the ten plagues against Egypt. Each plague, you see, was a direct attack on the Egyptian gods.

And even though the Egyptian magicians were able to duplicate some of those plagues, They couldn't remove any of them. They could only add to them. God was demonstrating His power over these gods. And this is a very important part of missions, that God's power is demonstrated over all the idols and even the demons. And it's when that power is demonstrated that many people are brought to believe.

And so when Luke, sorry, when Paul doesn't die, then these pagans assume that he is a god, which of course is equally wrong. That assumption was made by the Lycians years ago when they tried to worship Paul, and Silas or Barnabas put an immediate stop to it. But here God is vindicating His messenger and protecting him and preparing these people to hear him. You know, if they think He's a God, they might be much more willing to listen to Him and to take care of Him. But it does bring out the idolatry of these people.

They're not just innocent people who haven't heard the truth yet. They are sinners under God's wrath and curse. They are prone to idolatry and they worship idols. And apart from their grace of God, they don't want to hear. They would rebel against the truth.

In verse 7, In verse 7, Publia shows hospitality to Paul's company. Now most modern commentators assume that this was just extended to Paul and a few of his companions. But most older commentators believe it was extended to all 276 souls on board the ship and I think it was. Both Chrysostom and Jerome understood this to be what Luke is saying. Jerome said, What Publius once did in the island of Malta for one apostle and for a single ship's crew.

And he then goes on to say this other contemporary couple did on a regular and extended basis in showing hospitality to large numbers of people. And Christostom says, quote, Publius, this is in his homily on Acts, lodged them courteously, 276 persons. Consider how great the gain of his hospitality, not as of necessity, not as unwilling, but as reckoning it again, he lodged them for three days." So I do think that Publius did, whatever he did, lodge the entire crew for three days. That's not impossible for a wealthy man at this time in the age of Rome. He could have easily done that if he was the leading and wealthiest man on the island.

When Paul then stays with Publius, He hears about his sick father. And he laid hands on him and prayed for him. And Publius' father is healed of this dysentery that he had, which is a very serious illness. And then when the news travels, the rest of the people on the island who are sick, they come and they're healed. The rest sounds like nearly everybody on the island, if not everybody that was sick, comes and gets healed.

Now Paul told the Corinthians in his second letter, actually third, but second canonical letter, that these were the signs of an apostle. He said, truly the signs of an apostle were accomplished among you with all perseverance in signs and wonders and mighty deeds." And so some have maintained that, well, these kinds of healings don't happen anymore, or can't happen anymore. But I think we have to separate between the apostleship, which has ceased, because to be an apostle required one to be an eyewitness of the glorified body of the resurrected Son of Man. And there are no more eyewitnesses to the glorified body of the resurrected Jesus Christ. Paul was the last one.

So apostleship has ceased. And prophecy has ceased. The canon is closed. There is no more word of God being written anymore. But God didn't cease to heal or to work miracles.

In fact, James instructed the early church about what to do when someone got sick. He said, is anyone among you sick? James 5.14. Let him call for the elders of the church and pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith will save the sick and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Confess your trespasses to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. There is a connection between some sickness and sin. The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. And so God still heals through prayer and means. See, the oil there is the application of means.

And the prayer is the asking of God for healing. And the healing is received by faith. See, we need the right means. These oils that were applied, I think were therapeutic. The oil is the application of means.

Prayer is asking of God for the healing. The Bible commands both. Not one without the other. Means without faith, without prayer, doesn't accomplish anything. But we are also told to work for that for which we pray.

And so we need to use means as well. It's not trusting God to simply pray and sit idly back. That's not how our food is supplied. That's not how we are healed. You know, I think these substances, these oils that James is talking about, they're therapeutic.

Every substance has a frequency attached to it, a natural frequency. Molecules have natural frequencies attached to them. And those frequencies can be received by the body and have often have a healing beneficial effect if they are the right ones and you know our entire medical field has been dominated by corrupt and wicked people for many decades now. I started calling public schools government schools because that's what they are. They're not public schools.

They're government schools. And I more recently have started recognizing that medicine that's practiced today should really be called, I started calling it government medicine. Because what government education has done for morals in our country, producing assassins like the one that shot Charlie Kirk, government medicine has done to our bodies, producing one of the sickest nations in the world, if not the sickest nation in the world. We spend orders of magnitude more money on medicine than any other nation in the world and we are without a doubt the sickest nation in the world by terms of diseases. Just there was a study done between vaccinated children and unvaccinated children years ago, but it was never published until just this month.

Just this month it's to be published. But it shows that some of the results are out. And the difference between vaccinated children and unvaccinated children is catastrophic. It's not even close. Orders of magnitude difference in disease between the vaccinated children and the unvaccinated ones.

Orders of magnitude. Hundreds, thousands of percent increase in all kinds of diseases. And a number of diseases were not even found in the unvaccinated children. Like ADHD, entirely made up disease. There wasn't even one case in the study of over 18, 000 people.

So it was not a small study. It was done by a pro-vaccine doctor. And he refused to publish it. And when it comes out, he could lose his job over it. I don't know how they got it out, published, but apparently it will be.

You see, the truth is just starting to come out. Government medicine. It's taken us Christians a lot longer to recognize it, but God is bringing out the truth about medicine. And so what Paul is doing here in healing these people, he's laying hands on them and he's praying. And that's what we're called to do and to apply the means that God has ordained.

We need to study the means that God has ordained because we've lost it in this country. And when Paul leaves, they honor him. He's honored. They honored us in many ways, and they provided such things as were necessary. Signs and wonders that Paul did always accompany the preaching of the word.

And I should mention what Paul did and is able to do as an apostle is different than what we do. Paul was able, Peter and John could know that they were going to heal somebody. They could say to a man, stand up. And he did. We don't have that ability, that gift.

We don't have that. But we are still told to lay hands and pray and anoint with oil. And so, but what Paul was doing was a sign of an apostle. And they always accompanied the preaching of the Word. And so even though Luke does not mention any preaching here, You know, it's the only time, probably in the entire book of Acts, that no preaching is mentioned.

But I think these signs and wonders and this result indicate that there was a conversion on the island. Tradition says that the island became converted. Now, I could not find, and everybody says that, but I searched, I don't have access to all the resources of others. I searched, I could not find any credible source that said there was entire conversion of the island. But tradition says, and there is evidence going back a long way for that tradition.

Chrysostom did say, so he's writing very early, a couple hundred years or less after this, he said this, It is plain that having thus received them, they also received the word of the preaching. For it is not to be supposed that during an entire three months they would not have had all this kindness shown them, had not these persons believed strongly, and therein exhibited the fruits of their conversion, so that from this we may see a strong proof of the great number there was of those that believed." So he's supposing this. But I think it's a valid assumption that these people on this island were saved. But it wasn't in the entire island because we know that along with the signs of Christianity, so by the third, we have records now that go back to the third and to the sixth century of catacombs in Malta that contain numerous evidences of occupation by Christians, using them to hide and using them for burial. And so this indicates that by that time, there was a highly developed church that's been around a while.

But this conversion wasn't immediate because even in those times there's evidences of paganism. And so these two would have continued there for a time, as gradually the pagans were converted and brought to faith. But it was sufficient. There was a conversion, I believe, and enough people that there was kindness and honor shown to Paul and the crew and provisions given to them. So, it's one charge coming out of this.

Paul got on a trip, thought he was going to Rome, but he ended up going somewhere else. And he ended up having an impact on an entirely different group of people that he wasn't planning to. So I think that the lesson to be learned is always be ready. Always be ready to give an answer to everyone that asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear, having a good conscience that when they revile you for evil deeds, those who revile your good conduct defame you. Your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame.

Always be ready. Always have a track. Always be ready. And at times I have done that and I need to renew that myself. Always Be ready.

There are so many opportunities where you have to simply say thank you for that, and hand somebody something. They'll be willing to read it. Always be ready to give an answer. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for this example of one who was always ready, Always ready to proclaim the Gospel, always ready to pray for those who were sick and needed healing.

Always ready to preach. Lord, may we have as Christians, as believers, this kind of influence on all those who are around us. We ask this through Jesus Christ. Amen.