Sunday, December 30, 2007

I see echoes

There is a facebook group called I see Chiasms. I am not so perceptive in my reading of the bible. However, I do see echoes, which are much easier. A recent one I noticed was in Acts 8:26-40 where Philip meets the Ethiopian Eunuch who believes in Jesus and is baptised. I have been reading Jeremiah where another Ethiopian Eunuch turns up, called Ebed-melech (Jeremiah 38:7-13; Jeremiah 39:15-18). Ebed-melech rescues Jeremiah from a cistern after the Jewish authorities reject his message of judgment and imprison him in it.

Seeing echoes is one thing but it is more difficult to work out why they are there. This one took me a while but I think Luke includes the incident with Philip in Acts as he has just explained how Stephen had been martyred (Acts 6-7) and how following that 'there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles' (Acts 8:1). Luke is comparing Philip to Jeremiah the faithful prophet who was rejected by his own people but believed by an Ethiopian Eunuch. Simultaneously he is challenging Theophilus and us whether we to will believe the messengers who give us the good news and go on our way rejoicing, or whether we will join the city of destruction (in the language of Jeremiah and Bunyan).

"Go, and say to Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, 'Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will fulfill my words against this city for harm and not for good, and they shall be accomplished before you on that day. But I will deliver you on that day, declares the Lord, and you shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid. For I will surely save you, and you shall not fall by the sword, but you shall have your life as a prize of war, because you have put your trust in me, declares the Lord.'" (Jeremiah 39:16-18)

BTW this is just further evidence that you don't have to be a Jew to believe and be saved in either the OT or the NT.

0 comments:

Post a Comment