The elation among the Christians at Antioch lasted "no little time." We can only guess how long. But in the early church the storms and sunshine, the happy days and the dark days of controversy, the good times and the bad seemed to alternate in rapid succession. How quickly the ecstasy of the people at Lystra, in their zeal to make Paul and Barnabas into gods, changed into violence and threats!

Now the same sudden storm comes to Antioch. Some men came down from Judea - from Jerusalem itself, in all likelihood - and renewed an old argument. "Unless you are circumcized according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved." These people claimed to be Christians, but still saw Christianity as a Jewish sect, fettered by the ancient law. Their arrival cast a dark shadow over the Antioch church…