19 When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities.
Profit is a powerful motive for doing evil. This can be true even in the face of God’s powerful intervention in someone’s life. Our text tells the results of just such a change. The slave girl was under the influence of some demonic forces connected to Delphi, an ancient place of worship. Her owner made profit from her predictions. I imagine a circus sideshow with her as the featured performer. People would come and listen to her rantings, and then when something similar happened to them they believed she predicted the future. Chinese fortune cookies, Zodiac signs, Tarot cards, astrology, and Nostradomus all fit in this category. If people are looking for superstitions to help them through life, they will certainly find them. I can predict the future with 50% accuracy. I can just predict that each team playing this weekend will win, and I will be right. Half will win. I can predict the future. Here is one: you will see a dangerous driver today! If you are superstitious, you will be looking for that dangerous driver. And when you see them, you will believe I can predict the future. But there are dangerous drivers around you every day. Maybe you are that dangerous driver! So this slave girl is delivered from the power of this demon, and her owner’s profits go down the tube. So, instead of having someone fake the predictions, he hauls Paul and Silas into court. Perhaps he believed in her predictions. Maybe he had been sucked in by her rantings. Maybe that is why he bought her in the first place. And now that she wasn’t guiding his life he didn’t know what to do. We do know that profit was his motive. He could care less about the customs that Paul and Silas were teaching. He just wanted his cash flow to continue. Do we ever ignore what God is doing because we have our hearts, minds and lives focused on the material world?
The Arnold Journey 