Today’s introduction comes via Peter Grant and relates to the riots. They are a no win situation. It explains why the disciples would not let Paul speak to the crowd.
The best way to handle any potentially injurious encounter is: Don’t be there. Arrange to be somewhere else. Don’t go to stupid places. Don’t associate with stupid people. Don’t do stupid things. This is the advice I give to all students of defensive firearms. Winning a gunfight, or any other potentially injurious encounter, is financially and emotionally burdensome. The aftermath will become your full-time job for weeks or months afterward, and you will quickly grow weary of writing checks to lawyer(s). It is, of course, better than being dead or suffering a permanently disfiguring or disabling injury, but the “penalty” for successfully fighting for your life is still formidable.
Crowds of any kind, particularly those with an agenda, such as political rallies, demonstrations, picket lines, etc are good examples of “stupid places.” Any crowd with a high collective energy level harbors potential catastrophe. To a lesser degree, bank buildings, hospital emergency rooms, airports, government buildings, and bars (particularly crowded ones) fall into the same category. All should be avoided. When they can’t be avoided, we should make it a practice to spend only the minimum time necessary there and then quickly get out.
I work in a hospital. It has not reached the point where we have demonstrations and race riots: Black Lives Matter has stayed out of NZ to this date. We already have guards escorting nurses on night shift to their cars.
Because ferals.
To the text: note the crowd. Rationality had left the city. It was about ten kilometers down the road. And it took the magistrate reading the equivalent of the riot act *and the threat of the legions descending on Ephesus) to stop it.
Now after these events Paul resolved in the Spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia and go to Jerusalem, saying, “After I have been there, I must also see Rome.” And having sent into Macedonia two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while.
About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the Way. For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsmen. These he gathered together, with the workmen in similar trades, and said, “Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth. And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship.”
When they heard this they were enraged and were crying out, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” So the city was filled with the confusion, and they rushed together into the theater, dragging with them Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul’s companions in travel. But when Paul wished to go in among the crowd, the disciples would not let him. And even some of the Asiarchs, who were friends of his, sent to him and were urging him not to venture into the theater. Now some cried out one thing, some another, for the assembly was in confusion, and most of them did not know why they had come together. Some of the crowd prompted Alexander, whom the Jews had put forward. And Alexander, motioning with his hand, wanted to make a defense to the crowd. But when they recognized that he was a Jew, for about two hours they all cried out with one voice, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”
And when the town clerk had quieted the crowd, he said, “Men of Ephesus, who is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple keeper of the great Artemis, and of the sacred stone that fell from the sky? Seeing then that these things cannot be denied, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rash. For you have brought these men here who are neither sacrilegious nor blasphemers of our goddess. If therefore Demetrius and the craftsmen with him have a complaint against anyone, the courts are open, and there are proconsuls. Let them bring charges against one another. But if you seek anything further, it shall be settled in the regular assembly. For we really are in danger of being charged with rioting today, since there is no cause that we can give to justify this commotion.” And when he had said these things, he dismissed the assembly.
(Acts 19:21-41 ESV)
Mobs ain’t rational. And they can happen quickly. The gun in the car will not save you, for you don’t have enough bullets. Move laterally. Re enter as a legion.
We were in Rome walking through the streets in a nearly empty quarter one day when we heard a dull roar. It was hard to tell what it was, or exactly from what direction it was coming. I was curious, since it could have been anything from immigrants to ultras, so my friend and I had the women and children stay back while we went to see what was going on. It kept getting louder, but there was nothing to see until we turned a corner to encounter a large mass of several hundred dark-skinned people who looked like Bangladeshis or Sri Lankans. They were loudly demonstrating against deportations or the lack of work permits or something,, and while it wasn’t even remotely dangerous, I won’t forget the shock of suddenly encountering such a loud and overpowering mass of humanity without much in the way of warning besides that dull roar.
And I can attest that having a handgun wouldn’t have accomplished a damn thing. Frankly, a belt-fed .50 caliber might not have been enough without a minefield. If I heard that sound these days, I’d do my best to figure out where it was coming from, then move quickly the opposite way. And if I couldn’t tell, I’d start backtracking. Fast.
Regardless, the key to successfully surviving everything from a one-on-one fight to a mob scene is lateral movement. You not only don’t want to be where they are, you don’t want to be where they are going.
Be not where the mob is. Paul’s friends did the correct thing. I predict this will get far worse: if the left is being horrid, historically the white terror that follows the red has been far, far, more violent and far more effective. Because the right, at that point, have stopped caring.
It is time to be where the crowds are not.