Sometimes what seems like a side trip to us, is a major part of the mission of God. In the Bible book of Acts chapter 8 Philip seems to have been forced to move from Jerusalem to Samaria due to a “great and severe persecution” of the church brought about by Saul. Philip was a leader of a phenomenal spiritual revival for the Samaritans that eventually led the church apostles Peter and John to come to Samaria to baptize the Samaritans in the Holy Spirit. When the appointed number of Samaritan converts were revealed, the apostles went back to Jerusalem, but not Philip. God led Philip to encounter an Ethiopian. What seems like a side trip is probably a major explanation for the Christian church in Africa.Sometimes what seems like a side trip to us, is a major part of the
mission of God. In the Bible book of Acts chapter 8 Philip seems to
have been forced to move from Jerusalem to Samaria due to a “great and
severe persecution” of the church brought about by Saul. Philip was a
leader of a phenomenal spiritual revival for the Samaritans that
eventually led the church apostles Peter and John to come to Samaria to
baptize the Samaritans in the Holy Spirit. When the appointed number of
Samaritan converts were revealed, the apostles went back to Jerusalem,
but not Philip. God led Philip to encounter an Ethiopian. What seems
like a side trip is probably a major explanation for the Christian
church in Africa. For the Ethiopian that Philip encountered was a man
of great influence. He worked for Ethiopian Queen Candace. Acts 8:27
tells us that he was “in charge of all her treasure.” God was
determined to spread the Gospel to the Gentiles (non-Jewish people), so
He sent Philip and the Ethiopian treasurer on a mission to make it
happen. God was determined to spread the Gospel to the Gentiles for a
long time. Hundreds of years before Philip and the Ethiopian treasurer
met, God says through His prophet Isaiah in the book of Isaiah 42:6-7
(Amplified Bible) “I the Lord have called You [the Messiah] for a
righteous purpose and in righteousness; I will take You by the hand and
will keep You; I will give You for a covenant to the people [Israel],
for a light to the nations [Gentiles], To open the eyes of the blind,
to bring out prisoners from the dungeon, and those who sit in darkness
from the prison.”
When it is your time to come out of the
kingdom of darkness ruled by Satan, the enemy of God and human beings,
and into the kingdom of God, the Holy Spirit has been working on you to
prepare your inner person for God. The Ethiopian treasurer had come to
Jerusalem to worship, but he did not know the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob. Yet God put a hunger inside of him. The Ethiopian treasurer was
even reading Isaiah 53 when Philip found him.
After the
treasurer accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord, he probably
shared his faith with his employer, Candace the queen of the
Ethiopians. Candace is not the name of an individual but rather the
title for female rulers of the ancient African state of Kush, which
extends far beyond modern-day Ethiopia. The capital region of the
Kushite empire was centered in Sudan, but the empire extended all
through Africa and including Egypt. The Candaces formed a series of
Nubian warrior queens, queens regnant, and queen mothers that ruled
Kush for more than one thousand years. Candace Amanitore, daughter of
Candace Amanishakheto, was likely the Candace referred to in Acts 8.
God may have used the witness of Philip and the Ethiopian treasurer to
save multiplied groups of Gentiles spread across the African continent
for if the Ethiopian treasurer shared the Gospel with Candace
Amanitore, she may have been converted from Isis worship to the worship
of Jesus Christ and used her position of influence to spread the Gospel
throughout Africa. So what seems like a side trip in Acts 8 is actually
a major mission.
It is a mission where we see part of the
Godhead working in unison as is always the way of God. God is a
multiple of one as in 1 X 1 X 1 = 1 (God the Father, His Son Jesus
Christ and the Holy Spirit.) An angel of the Lord (a title for Jesus
Christ) and the Holy Spirit worked in unison to bring Philip to the
Ethiopian treasurer (Acts 8:26 and Acts 8:29).
When the Holy
Spirit speaks to you, do not quench the Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19).
Who knows how God is going to move through you to reach people in the
kingdom of darkness who need to be called out into the kingdom of God.
Philip probably never knew the impact of his witness until he met Jesus
Christ in heaven, and heard Him say well done good and faithful
servant.
It is not always the big leaders like the apostles
that are used by God to bring about large numbers of conversions.
Philip was not an apostle. He was a deacon. A deacon is an assistant
leader. When Philip preached in Samaria earlier in Acts 8, he preached
to crowds. When he preached to the Ethiopian treasurer, he preached to
only one man, but probably changed the destiny of a continent. Do not
despise small things. Remember what Jesus Christ taught us through the
parable of the mustard seed. Jesus said about the kingdom of God
(heaven) and the mustard seed in Matthew 13:31-32 (Amplified Bible), “.
. . The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man
took and sowed in his field. Of all the seeds it is the smallest, but
when it has grown it is the largest of the garden herbs and becomes a
tree, so that the birds of the air come and find shelter in its
branches.”
Whether the Gospel is preached from an Old
Testament or New Testament perspective, all the Bible centers on Jesus
Christ. God had the Ethiopian treasurer in Acts 8 reading Isaiah 53
from the Old Testament. Isaiah 53 tells us that the Messiah has to die
for sin (wrong thoughts and wrong behaviors). Jesus is the Messiah who
had to die in payment for the debt owed God the Father for the sins of
God’s chosen children by going to a cross in Calvary, Israel, more than
2,000 years ago as a supposed criminal. God the Father accepted Jesus’
sacrificial death as payment in full for the sin debt by raising Jesus
up from the dead three days later. The gift of eternal life with God is
available freely to all who accept, confess and obey Jesus Christ as
their Savior and Lord. God also gives these people the gift of the Holy
Spirit living on the inside of them. Since God is a multiple of one,
God the Father and Jesus Christ also live inside true believers.
When the Ethiopian treasurer was reading from Isaiah 53, he was reading
from a prophet who talked about Jesus Christ hundreds of years before
Jesus visited the earth and added to His God nature, the nature (the
flesh) of a human being. Isaiah wrote some time approximately between
700 BC and 690 BC in chapter 53:8-10 (Amplified Bible) in the book
named after him, about the Messiah (Jesus Christ), “By oppression and
judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who among them
considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living [stricken
to His death] for the transgression of my [Isaiah's] people, to whom
the stroke was due? And they assigned Him a grave with the wicked, and
with a rich man in His death, although He had done no violence, neither
was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to bruise
Him; He has put Him to grief and made Him sick. When You and He make
His life an offering for sin [and He has risen from the dead, in time
to come], He shall see His [spiritual] offspring, He shall prolong His
days, and the will and pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.”
The rich man in this prophecy is Joseph of Arimathea (Luke 23:50-53).
Jesus was buried in Joseph’s grave. But Jesus did not stay there. He
got up from the grave. Have you accepted Jesus’ sacrificial death? Is
your name written down in the Book of Life, the Book that records all
those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord? If God
is calling you into His kingdom, say yes Lord. His mission is to save
His chosen children from the second death (hell, a place of torment),
to transform them into His image, and to live eternally with them
starting now and in heaven (a place of delight) after this earthly life
is over. If Jesus Christ is already your Savior and Lord, share Him
with someone else.
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