Acts 8:26-39

The Ministry of Philip To The Ethiopian Eunuch (8:26-39).

Meanwhile God was now satisfied that the Samaritan church was sufficiently equipped to carry on and He calls Philip elsewhere to where there is a lonely searching soul. It was to a man, and a very important one, who had been visiting Jerusalem but was still unsatisfied. He held a high position under the queen of ‘Ethiopia' (Nubia), and was at the minimum a God-fearer, a man who respected the Jewish Law and, without being ready to be circumcised (possibly prevented in his case by the fact that he was a eunuch), worshipped in the local synagogue along with the Jews. He may even have been a proselyte or a true-born Nubian Jew. If he was a God-fearer this would be the first known overt example of a Gentile coming to Christ, an indication by God of what was to come.

This is not just to be seen as an interesting account of an unusual conversion. It is an integral part of the depiction of the spreading of the Good News as a result of the persecution. It is made clear that, through Philip, God, having worked through him to the north of Jerusalem among Samaritans, now purposed through him to wing the Good News to North Africa, to the south of Jerusalem (‘to Samaria and to the uttermost part of the earth' - Acts 1:8).

As the Ethiopian high official travelled he was reading the book of Isaiah. To possess such a document demonstrated both how devout, and how wealthy and influential he was. And his heart was taken up with the description of the Servant of God that he found described there (Isaiah 53), a description which he found very puzzling, so that he looked to God for help. But there was no one who could explain it to him. Until from the desert a man came, almost like an angel from Heaven. Luke undoubtedly wishes us to see here that the Temple and all the glory of Jerusalem had been able to accomplish nothing, while light and truth came to him from the wilderness, just as Stephen had said (Acts 7:38; Acts 7:44). And as he went back to Nubia his thoughts were now not on the Temple at Jerusalem, but on the Messiah to Whom he had been introduced in the wilderness.