Lord of Heaven and Earth

How does Paul introduce "God" (Acts 17:24) to the pagan Greeks?
As the "Lord of heaven and earth" (Acts 17:24). The true God of the universe is the "Lord" - i.e., the Master and the Creator - of everything - "who made the world and everything" (Acts 17:24) - on earth and in heaven.

Who "dwells in temples made with hands" (Acts 17:24)?
Their man-made idols

What do their idols need?
Manual maintenance

What does the Lord of heaven and earth need?
Nothing, and it is the Creator who maintains His creation: "He gives to all life, breath, and all things ... for in Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:25, 28).

When do the various nations of the world turn to Christ?
When their time "preappointed" by God comes: "He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him" (Acts 17:26-27).

Has this been true in the world history?
When Paul, Silas and Timothy were in Mysia and tried to head east into Bithynia, the Lord stopped them and pointed them west instead (see Phrygia, Bithynia, Mysia). Ever since then, the main thrust of evangelization and harvest around the world has been westward, from Israel to Turkey, to central Europe, to western Europe, to the British Isles, to the Americas, to the continent of Asia, where China's 120+ million and growing number of Christians now comprise the world's largest national church. It's as if a giant bus has been going around the world on a westward route picking up people at their "preappointed times" (Acts 17:26). The Lord has begun to harvest in India, the Muslim nations of the Middle East, and in Israel. Once those nations have been harvested, the 'bus' will have made a complete loop around the earth.

What about the people who died before the 'bus' reached their region?
They never had a ticket to get on the bus. God declares that (1) He assigned the bus tickets (2) before the creation (3) according to His will: "just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will" (Ephesians 1:4-5).

Then is God unjust?
God is just: "... Have not I, the LORD? And there is no other God besides Me, a just God and a Savior; there is none besides Me" (Isaiah 45:21).

But how is it just to assign 'bus tickets' to some and not others?
First, when God's infallible declaration collides with fallible human reasoning, the latter must trust and submit to the former, for "Lord" is someone you submit to unconditionally. Second, "wheat" differ in origin from "tares" and one cannot become the other: Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn”’” (Matthew 13:24-30). As wheat and tares fundamentally differ, there is a fundamental difference in the spiritual realm between those to be saved and the rest - a difference whose nature we won't learn until we get to heaven.

Then should we share the Gospel only with those to be saved?
If someone asked you 24 hours before Jesus died on the cross, "Between a criminal in Pilate's prison to be crucified tomorrow and Judas Iscariot, whom do you think will go to heaven and whom do you think will go to hell," you would have replied that the criminal is hell-bound, while Judas - one of the top twelve disciples of Jesus - will go to heaven. Yet the reverse turned out to be true. Who will and won't be saved is the choice, knowledge and business of God. Our business is to obey Him and sow the seed - "the word of the kingdom" (Matthew 13:18) - on all soil, trusting that some of it will fall on the "good ground" (Matthew 13:23) as God has "preappointed" (Acts 17:26).

To which "poets" (Acts 17:28) is Paul referring?
The phrase Paul quoted is found in the 4th and 3rd century BC works of Aratus of Cilicia and Cleanthes of Mysia. Both regions are in what is Turkey today.