Bible Journey > Acts 18-19 > The Dao of Jesus

As background for studying Ephesians, Kara and I started in Acts 18, when Paul leaves Corinth to set sail for Jerusalem. Apparently, the boat needed to make multiple stops, which makes sense, and one of those was Ephesus. Here Paul spoke for a couple of weeks, but promptly left to finish fulfilling his vow.

This vow is not completely described, but it was most likely a vow of consecration to God, as outlined in Numbers 6. This is an optional act of devotion that Jewish men and women are able to do, but one of the parts of it is to not cut hair until after the vow is over. The hair is then to be cut at the end of the time and taken to Jerusalem as a burnt offering. And so, this is where Paul was bound.

But he returned to Ephesus and remained there for about 3 years, which was longer than any other one spot in his missionary journeys. In this time, churches were planted all over Asia, which meant that he was sending others out and of course, those coming into Ephesus were returning to their homes to spread the Gospel.

By the middle of chapter 19, we're seeing the spiritual battle between the magicians in Ephesus and the followers of the Way. Because the Spirit of God was so powerful, many magicians revealed their secrets and burned millions of dollars worth of witchcraft paraphernalia. Pretty amazing things.

But one of the things that we loved the most was that Christians were called Followers of the Way. I guess we liked this cause it sounded cool, but as we discussed other culture-related issues (Kara and I can never quite stay on task, and that's what makes our times so much fun!), we talked about the idea of "redeeming" the things of this world for God. That said, it was our newest idea to proclaim ourselve Daoist (a.k.a. Taoist, Follower of the Way). It's a lot more acceptable to be part of an Eastern religion these days, so calling ourselves Daoist reminds us that Christianity, too, is an Eastern religion, that has been taken over by Westerners.

Sure...we're heading over to the far east in our terminology, but that's just a cultural thing, right? People in America today are more tolerant of Buddhists than anything else, so we figure being Daoists will gain us a better audience to share our faith. Ohhh....so sneaky.