{Called to him} (metekalesato). Aorist middle (indirect)
indicative of metakale(935c), old verb to call from one place to
another (meta for "change"), middle to call to oneself, only in
Acts in the N.T. ( 7:14  10:32  20:17  24:25 ). Ephesus was some
thirty miles, a stiff day's journey each way. They would be with
Paul the third day of the stay in Miletus. {The elders of the
church} (	ous presbuterous t(8873) ekkl(8873)ias). The very men whom
Paul terms "bishops" (episkopous) in verse  28  just as in  Tit
1:5,7  where both terms (presbuterous, ton episkopon) describe
the same office. The term "elder" applied to Christian ministers
first appears in  Ac 11:30  in Jerusalem and reappears in
 15:4,6,22  in connection with the apostles and the church. The
"elders" are not "apostles" but are "bishops" (cf.  Php 1:1 ) and
with "deacons" constitute the two classes of officers in the
early churches. Ignatius shows that in the early second century
the office of bishop over the elders had developed, but Lightfoot
has shown that it was not so in the first century. Each church,
as in Jerusalem, Philippi, Ephesus, had a number of "elders"
("bishops") in the one great city church. Hackett thinks that
other ministers from the neighbourhood also came. It was a noble
group of preachers and Paul, the greatest preacher of the ages,
makes a remarkable talk to preachers with all the earmarks of
Pauline originality (Spitta, _Apostelgeschichte_, p. 252) as
shown by the characteristic Pauline words, phrases, ideas current
in all his Epistles including the Pastoral (testify, course,
pure, take heed, presbyter, bishop, acquire, apparel). Luke heard
this address as he may and probably did hear those in Jerusalem
and Caesarea ( Ac 21-26 ). Furneaux suggests that Luke probably
took shorthand notes of the address since Galen says that his
students took down his medical lectures in shorthand: "At any
rate, of all the speeches in the Acts this contains most of Paul
and least of Luke. ... It reveals Paul as nothing else does. The
man who spoke it is no longer a man of eighteen centuries ago: he
is of yesterday; of today. He speaks as we speak and feels as we
feel; or rather as we fain would speak and feel." We have seen
and listened to Paul speak to the Jews in Antioch in Pisidia as
Luke pictures the scene, to the uneducated pagans at Lystra, to
the cultured Greeks in Athens. We shall hear him plead for his
life to the Jewish mob in Jerusalem, to the Roman governor Felix
in Caesarea, to the Jewish "King" Herod Agrippa II in Caesarea,
and at last to the Jews in Rome. But here Paul unbosoms himself
to the ministers of the church in Ephesus where he had spent
three years (longer than with any other church) and where he had
such varied experiences of prowess and persecution. He opens his
heart to these men as he does not to the average crowd even of
believers. It is Paul's _Apologia pro sua Vita_. He will probably
not see them again and so the outlook and attitude is similar to
the farewell discourse of Jesus to the disciples in the upper
room ( Joh 13-17 ). He warns them about future perils as Jesus
had done. Paul's words here will repay any preacher's study
today. There is the same high conception of the ministry here
that Paul had already elaborated in  2Co 2:12-6:10  (see my
_Glory of the Ministry_). It is a fitting time and occasion for
Paul to take stock of his ministry at the close of the third
mission tour. What wonders had God wrought already.