<p>16:16 <i>And it came to pass, as we were going to the place of prayer, that a certain slave girl met us</i>- See on 16:15. We can imagine the gossip this provoked as Lydia, her family and the foreign men walked to the river. Note that after baptism, she continued to attend the religious meeting place she had attended previously. The Lord spoke of how the time would come when His followers would be cast out of the synagogues, but following Him did not immediately require ceasing attendance at synagogue, despite the terribly wrong theologies preached there.</p><p><i>Who had a spirit by which she predicted the future and who brought her masters much gain by fortune-telling<em>- </em></i>Acts 16:16&ndash;18 are the words of Luke, under inspiration: &ldquo;a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of Python met us&rdquo; (Gk.). As explained in the footnote in the Diaglott version, Python was the name of a false god believed in during the first century, possibly the same as the god Apollo. It was believed that the &lsquo;spirit&rsquo; of Python took over the &lsquo;immortal soul&rsquo; of the person being possessed. Seeing that the Bible strongly opposes the idea of an immortal soul, there is no way that a spirit of Python can possess anyone. So Python definitely did not exist, but Luke does not say the girl was &lsquo;possessed with a spirit of Python, who by the way, is a false god who does not really exist&hellip;&rsquo;. In the same way the Gospels do not say that Jesus &lsquo;cast out demons which, by the way, do not really exist, it is just the language of the day for illnesses&rsquo;. The demons cast out of Legion went &ldquo;into the abyss&rdquo; (Lk. 8:31 Gk.); the pagan concept of the abyss is a nonsense, yet if we believe that the record of Legion&rsquo;s cure teaches the existence of demons, then we must logically believe in &lsquo;the abyss&rsquo; too.</p>