Acts 8:39

Acts 8:39 . The Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip. These words clearly relate a supernatural disappearance of Philip. We possess instances of a similar miraculous rapture, in the history of Elijah (1 Kings 18:12; 2 Kings 2:11), in the writings of Ezekiel, where we read on several occasions that the Spirit lifted him up and took him away (see Ezekiel 3:12). On one occasion ‘the Spirit' put forth the form of a hand and took him by a lock of his head, and lifted him up between earth and heaven, and brought him in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the inner gate. The Greek word translated ‘caught away' is the same as that employed by St. Paul, where he speaks of his ‘rapture' into the third heaven and into Paradise ‘caught up to the third heaven,' ‘caught up into Paradise,' where he heard the unspeakable words (2 Corinthians 12:2; 2 Corinthians 12:4). The same remarkable word is used (1 Thessalonians 4:17) in the description of the Lord's second Advent, after the resurrection of the dead in Christ: ‘We which are alive and remain shall be “caught up” together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.'

He went on his way rejoicing. The sudden disappearance of Philip seemed to the Ethiopian eunuch a miraculous assurance that the message and instruction he had received was indeed from heaven, and thus strengthened, went on his way rejoicing. There is a tradition that this minister of Candace, whose name was Judich, preached the Gospel on his return to Ethiopia with great success, and that his royal mistress was among his converts; but we possess no certain records of the conversion of any number of the Ethiopians until the time of Frumentius in the reign of Constantine (fourth century).