DAD'S RAMBLINGS -- ASSUMPTIONS

DAD'S RAMBLINGS –  ASSUMPTIONS

"Now when the seven days were almost ended, the Jews from Asia, seeing him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd and laid hands on him, crying out, 'Men of Israel help! This is the man who teaches all men everywhere against the people, the law, and this place; and furthermore he also brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.' (For they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian with him in the city, whom they supposed that Paul had brought into the temple.)" (Acts 21:27-29)

Attacks against Believers are almost always based on lies – either outright lies or deliberate misrepresentations of what we believe. These Jews from Asia disputed with Paul because he taught that the Old Testament covenant was fulfilled in Jesus. Paul did not discount the Old Covenant, but showed that it was prophetic about the Messiah. With these Jews, the main sticking point of contention was regarding the Circumcision. Paul contended that Circumcision was not required under the New Covenant. But even in the case of circumcision, Paul had Timothy, whose father was a Greek and his mother a believing Jew, circumcised "because of the Jews who were in that region" (Acts 16:3). And nowhere did Paul speak against the Temple, except to say that God does not dwell in temples made with hands, and that we are the temples of the Holy Spirit.

Furthermore, the accusation that he had brought a non-Jew into the Temple was a baseless accusation. It was an assumption because they had seen Paul and Trophimus together.

Assumptions, or suppositions, are not a valid basis for making judgments. I remember the story of a woman who was active in her church as she stood looking out her frontroom window watching the children as they waited for the school bus. One boy was from the church she attended and she was disturbed to see that boy with smoke coming out of his mouth. She put on her coat to go out to confront the boy, but as she stepped out of the house, she noticed that her breath was producing steam in the cold crisp air. Chagrined, she stepped back into the house, feeling guilty for making the assumption that the boy was smoking based on what she thought she saw.

It should be a lesson to me that I need to be careful about jumping to conclusions based on assumptions. They can often be wrong.

Love, Dad