Crowds

DEVOTION

THE BOOK OF ACTS

CROWDS

Acts 19:28-31

28 When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting: "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" 29 Soon the whole city was in an uproar. The people seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul's traveling companions from Macedonia, and rushed as one man into the theater. 30 Paul wanted to appear before the crowd, but the disciples would not let him. 31 Even some of the officials of the province, friends of Paul, sent him a message begging him not to venture into the theater.

NIV

One again we are in the middle of a rather lengthy narrative of what happened in Ephesus which started because of Demetrius being upset about his business being effected by Christianity. After his rant we see the people he was speaking to became furious. There got all work up over this, and as usual a crowd mentally is mostly all emotional and has little thoughtful content. We can see here how they were just a crowd, rushing these two traveling companions of Paul into the theater as if they were one. That is the crowd was acting as one man, one mind. But what can we learn from this? It would appear one truth we could take from this is to be an individual, not simply going along with the crowd because it is a crowd. That is to say just because a large number of people are like-minded does not mean their path is right. This crowd was using their supposed worship of Artemis to gather the following of the whole city when it was really about their income being affected by Christianity. If we are going to be followers of Jesus then we need to follow only Jesus. We should not allow the crowd to dictate what we believe. This might make a good case for anti-denominationalism. Perhaps denominations are nothing more than a crowd all worked up about their cause, their particular take on the scriptures, even to the point of many within the denomination, the crowd even knowing the fullness of that cause. They are simply being among the crowd mentality, chanting whatever the leaders chant. Crowds are not always right and we need to ensure we believe what we believe based solely on the scriptures as lead by the Spirit. We cannot believe what the crowd believes just because the crowd believes it.