To Derbe and Return to Antioch.
THE next day after their dreadful experience at Lystra, Paul and Barnabas went on their way to Derbe. Here they are said to have secured many converts, and apparently without any demonstrative opposition. Then they returned, by the same route they had come (except that they passed by Cyprus), to Antioch, "whence they had been sent forth." On their return they preached the word at Perga, in Pamphylia, which place had previously been passed by. This journey, undertaken in A. D. 45, included about 1,400 miles of travel, and occupied in time about one year and a half. We can imagine the returned missionaries received a joyful greeting by the church at Antioch, "from whence they had been recommended to the grace of God for the work which they had fulfilled." And it is enough to arouse the dormant missionary spirit of the most careless Laodicean to contemplate the rejoicing over the results of that enterprise, as Paul and Barnabas "rehearsed all that God had done with them, and how he had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles."