Lystra of Asia

Brief Overview of Paul's Visit to Lystra on His First Missionary Journey

# 6 To Paul and Barnabas, Lystra seemed to be a good place to wait out the storm of opposition stirred up in Iconium. In Lystra they starting preaching again and when Paul healed a crippled man the people thought they were gods and said "The gods have become like men and have come down to us", and they called Barnabas - Zeus, and Paul - Hermes. Paul and Barnabas corrected them and preached the gospel. But Jews from Iconium and Antioch of Pisidia came to Lystra and turned its citizens against the missionaries. Paul was stoned, dragged out of the city, thinking he was dead. When the disciples came to him he rose up and he and Barnabas left for Derbe.

Lystra is located about 18 miles southwest of Iconium and it was not positively identified until the discovery of an inscription in that area in 1885. The town now a place of fallen ruins lay in a small valley watered by a small river flowing to the east. Lystra had once been a military outpost of Rome but declined in population and importance after the area was subdued. It was off the main roads, and its inhabitants spoke their native Lycaonian language rather than the Greek used by most citizens of the Roman Empire in Paul's day (Acts 14:11).