When they came up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away, and the eunuch didn’t see him any more, but went on his way rejoicing. Philip, however, turned up at Azotus. He went through all the towns, announcing the good news, until he came to Caesarea. [Acts 8:39-40 (NTE)]
We don’t know how far Philip and the Ethiopian traveled together before the eunuch spotted water. The book of Isaiah is 66 chapters long and there was a lot to cover as Philip told him about the man called Jesus, so it may have been as far as Gaza. It is there that the road split—north to Caesarea and south to Egypt and Ethiopia. While we don’t know the location, we just know that the Ethiopian was baptized when they came to water.
After the baptism, the logical thing for Philip would be to continue south beyond Egypt to the Ethiopian’s homeland. With the support of a rich and powerful man like the Queen’s treasurer, Philip would have been remarkably effective in bringing the gospel to a new part of the world. God’s logic, however, is nothing like man’s. When the men emerged from the water, we’re told that the “Spirit of the Lord” snatched Philip away and the eunuch never saw him again.
The Greek word Luke used was harpazó which meant to seize, catch up, or snatch away. Often used when speaking of a robbery or an arrest, the power clearly belonged to the snatcher rather than the snatchee. Does this mean that Philip was supernaturally carried away north to Azotus? Or does it mean that Philip was carried away by a vision of the Spirit and he immediately changed direction and departed on another God-ordained appointment? It’s unclear whether Luke was writing figuratively or literally, but we do know that the men abruptly departed from one another.
After this significant episode in the advancement of the Gospel, what became of these two men? It hardly seems likely that the Holy Spirit would leave a new convert like the Ethiopian high and dry! Perhaps the scroll, Philip’s words, and the Holy Spirit’s presence were all the man needed. In the 2nd century, Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, wrote that the eunuch became a missionary to the Ethiopians and, in the 4th century, Eusebius (260-339), the man called “the father of church history,” asserted that, filled with the Holy Spirit, the Ethiopian planted a flourishing church in Ethiopia. All we know for sure, however, is that he “went on his way rejoicing.”
Scripture does tell us that Philip preached the gospel in the coastal cities of Palestine from Azotus north to Caesarea. Because Paul and Luke stayed with him some twenty years later, we know Philip eventually settled in Caesarea, married, and had four daughters. The men stayed with Philip several days and it may have been then when Luke learned of Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch.
Rather than an apostle, Philip was one of the seven men selected as a deacon for the early church. A deacon’s job was to distribute food to the widows and alms to the poor and to handle everyday church business so that the apostles could spend their time praying and teaching. Along with identifying Philip by his position as deacon, Luke identified him by his passion and called him “the Evangelist.” The Greek word translated as evangelist was euaggelisté. Used to mean “preacher of the gospel,” its literal meaning is “bringer of good news” or “bearer of glad tidings.”
Evangelism isn’t an occupation; it is a passion. While most of us don’t qualify as “preachers of the gospel,” all can be bearers of glad tidings! When we look at Philip, we see someone who had a passion for Christ—who, when given an opportunity to share the gospel, didn’t say it wasn’t his job. He didn’t doubt, negotiate, hesitate, or refuse—he simply followed the Spirit’s lead and was a “bringer of good news.” Can we do anything less?
Once day, the Holy Spirit told Philip to go south and then down the desert road between Jerusalem and Gaza. Although Scripture leads us to assume that Philip’s fortuitous encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch quickly followed, a look at the map tells us otherwise. At the time, Philip was in Samaria and, before he could walk the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, he had a 42-mile uphill trek south to Jerusalem before turning southwest onto the 50-mile stretch of road leading to Gaza, the southernmost of the five chief Philistine cities in southwest Palestine and the last settlement before the desert waste stretching away to Egypt. The trip to Jerusalem probably took at least two days and we don’t know how far down the Gaza Road he walked before the Apostle discovered his God-ordained task and met the treasurer of Ethiopia. In actuality, Philip was on this mission for several days before he knew why he’d been sent.
By the time of Isaiah, the Neo-Assyrian empire was the largest one the world had known. Famed for their incredible military strength, tactics, and ruthlessness, the Assyrians were a thorn in the side of both Israel and Judah and both kingdoms lived in fear of them. Assyria’s defeat of Samaria in 722 meant the end of the northern kingdom of Israel and Assyria remained a threat to Judah in the years that followed.
Today, when someone is called the “salt of the earth,” the speaker probably means he or she is a dependable, unpretentious and honest person—someone of moral integrity. That is well and good as far as it goes, but Jesus meant more than that when He called us to be “the salt of the earth.”
When God sent Jonah to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, it was to warn the people that they would be destroyed for their sins. While we tend to focus on the miracle of Jonah and the sea creature, the real miracle in the Book of Jonah is the city’s response to the prophet’s message—Nineveh immediately repented of its sinful ways. Some forty years later, however, the Assyrians were once again back to their old behavior: rejecting God’s authority and worshipping idols. Around 740 BC, they attacked northern Israel and, in 722, they invaded the remaining kingdom and took Samaria, just as both Hosea and Amos had prophesized they would. The northern kingdom’s population was resettled elsewhere in the Assyrian Empire and Samaria became the center of a new Assyrian province.
The first thing to clear up when writing about the Book of Jonah is whether it was a fish or a whale. Both the Hebrew word (dahg) and the Greek word (ketos) in later translations were used to describe this sea creature. In 785 BC, at the time of this story’s writing, neither language had a word that could identify the exact species so it could have been a fish, shark, whale or some other now extinct large sea creature. For those who choose to use this discrepancy to attack the Bible’s veracity, it’s probably wise to remember that Linnaeus’ classification of living things occurred in the 18th century and not 2,800 years ago when Jonah was swallowed by something huge in the sea. When learning the story in Sunday school, most of us were told it was a whale. Having seen Disney’s Pinocchio with Geppetto living in a whale’s belly, it was easy to picture Jonah doing the same.
