Pressed on Every Side

WEB Acts 17:24 The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands,

What Paul tells the pagans is one of the things that earned the early Christians the label of "atheists" (seen post-New Testament, mostly, although you do see a hint of it in Acts 19:26).

The Greco-Roman world could not conceive of a god that didn't live in a physical temple, and the lack of a physical temple amongst the Christians led the Greeks and Romans to conclude that whatever these new "Christians" were, they must be atheists.

On the one hand, the Jews were "hearing" the message from Christians that they had rejected their long-sought after Messiah (who looked nothing like what they had expected), and that this Messiah had put an end to the necessity of Law-keeping, and that God was an entirely different Being than they "knew" him to be, while on the other hand the Greco-Romans were "hearing" strange new things they had never heard before (Acts 17:19-20) which threatened their own Deities and livelihoods (Acts 19:27).

The push-back from both Jews and Gentiles drove Paul to say (twice):

We are pressed on every side.... (2 Cor 4:8)

... we were afflicted on every side. (2 Cor 7:5)

Originally published at:
https://kentwest.blogspot.com/2019/04/pressed-on-every-side.html