King James Bible
"And with these sayings scarce restrained they the people, that they had not done sacrifice unto them."
This refers to Paul and Barnabas's urgent protest against being worshiped as gods after healing a lame man in Lystra. Their words included declaring themselves as mere mortals and pointing the crowd to the living God who made heaven and earth. Even with their passionate objections, Paul and Barnabas barely succeeded in stopping the crowd's actions. This highlights how deeply ingrained pagan worship practices were in Lystra, where the people interpreted the miracle through their polytheistic worldview. The Lystrans had prepared to offer animal sacrifices to honor Paul and Barnabas as the gods Hermes and Zeus. This near-sacrifice demonstrates the dangerous misunderstanding of the gospel message when filtered through pagan religious assumptions.