Always Listen to the One Closest to God

This is the study page for the Thursday Night Study Group meeting on April 25 to study Acts 27.  This chapter is a lot like Luke's former narrative on Paul's voyage to Jerusalem.  The major differences are the events themselves, and the places...and the people involved actually.

Read through the chapter a few times, and feel free to go and include chapter 28 (we'll get to that next week).  Look for odd things whether explained or not.  Ask "why" questions; try to imagine who says what, what things and places look like, especially pay attention to Julius.

After reading through a few times read through again considering the questions below:

• What does "Augustan Cohort" suggest about the centurion?
• Where is Adramyttium?
• Who travels with Paul?
• Look at the route Paul takes from Caesarea (see map below). How much of this is familiar ocean for Paul?

• Where is the second vessel from?  Where is that?
• What seems different about the second part of the voyage right off the bat?
• When they reach "Fair Havens" what does Paul say, and how does he say it to them?
• Look up "admonish" in the Strong's Concordance.  What sort of emotion is Paul feeling as he speaks to the sailors and soldiers?
• Who does the centurion listen to instead of Paul?  What would you have done?
• What was wrong with Fair Havens?  What was so "great" about Phoenix (besides spring training baseball)?
• What was the storm called?  Look the name up in the Strong's Concordance. Be sure to "listen" to it pronounced.  What does it mean?
• What was done at Clauda?  What was it supposed to do?  What did they use to do it?
• After hope is abandoned, what does Paul say?
• Where does Paul find his hope?
• Where is the Adriatic Sea?  Does that seem to be where they were on the map?  What explains the difference (click through to the complete article)?
• In a huge storm, why would the sailors try to escape?
• What does Paul do?  What do the soldiers do? (so, now who's in charge of the ship?)
• What is Paul's next word and deed of encouragement?
• How many people are on the ship?  Do you need to revise how big you imagined it to be?
• Consider all three words used for "ship", what do you think of the third one?
• What does the ship hit on its way to the beach?  Look up 'a place where two seas met' or 'reef', 'sandbar' or 'shoal' in Strong's Concordance.  It's really made of two words, the other one is 'place' which may look or sound familiar if you like maps.  This is one of many technical nautical terms Luke uses.  So where do you think Luke learned all these terms?
• Why would the soldiers want to kill the prisoners?
• What does the centurion do to change their plans?
• Where do they all end up?

This should be a fun study, and we're almost done!  This is the exciting part though, the dramatic climax.  After this the account calms down, but also closes to a point (again, we'll get to that next week).  I look forward to studying with you Thursday!