Acts 19
v.2
and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
v.4
Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.”
v.5
On hearing this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.
v.9
But some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way. So Paul left them. He took the disciples with him and had discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus.
v.10
This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.
v.11-12
God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, 12so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
It is certainly strange to read of healings occurring through sweat-cloths and work-aprons. But Ephesus was the home of all sorts of magic and superstition, and the phrase “Ephesian writings” was common in antiquity for documents containing spells and magical formulae. So Paul was likely just meeting his audiences at a point of common ground in order to impress them and lead them on to the Good News of salvation in Christ.
v.13
Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.”
v.16
Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.
The name of Jesus, like an unfamiliar weapon misused, exploded in their hands; and they were taught a lesson about the danger of using the name of Jesus in their dabbling in the supernatural.
v.23
About that time there arose a great disturbance about the Way.