Acts 24

We may be surprised that so large a force was sent to secure the safety of one man; but we must remember that this man was a Roman citizen, while the garrison in Antonia, consisting of more than a thousand men, could easily spare such a number for one day on such a service. The utmost secrecy, as well as promptitude, was evidently required; and therefore an hour was chosen, when the earliest part of the night would be already past. At the time appointed, the troops, with Paul in the midst of them, marched out of the fortress, and at a rapid pace took the road to Cesarea. The foot-soldiers proceeded no farther than Antipatris, but returned from thence to Jerusalem. They were no longer necessary to secure Paul’s safety; but they might very probably be required in the fortress of Antonia. It would be in the course of the afternoon that the remaining soldiers with their weary horses entered the streets of Cesarea. The centurion who remained in command of them proceeded at once to the governor, and gave up his prisoner; and at the same time presented the dispatch with which he was charged by the commandant of the garrison at Jerusalem. H.

1. AND after five days Ananias the high priest descended with the elders, and with a certain 2 orator named Tertullus, who informed the governor against Paul. And when he was called forth, Tertullus began to accuse him, saying, Seeing that by thee we enjoy great quietness, 3 and that very worthy deeds are done unto this nation by thy providence, we accept it 4 always, and in all places, most noble Felix, with all thankfulness. Notwithstanding, that I be not further tedious unto thee, I pray thee that thou wouldest hear us of thy clemency 5 a few words. For we have found this man a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes: 6 who also hath gone about to profane the temple: whom we took, and would have judged 7 according to our law. But the chief captain Lysias came upon us, and with great violence 8 took him away out of our hands, commanding his accusers to come unto thee: by examin- ing of whom thyself mayest take knowledge of all these things, whereof we accuse him. 9 And the Jews also assented, saying that these things were so. 10 Then Paul, after that the governor had beckoned unto him to speak, answered, Foras- much as I know that thou hast been of many years a judge unto this nation, I do the more 11 cheerfully answer for myself: because that thou mayest understand, that there are yet but 12 twelve days since I went up to Jerusalem for to worship. And they neither found me in the temple disputing with any man, neither raising up the people, neither in the synagogues, 13 nor in the city: neither can they prove the things whereof they now accuse me. But this I 14 confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my 15 fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets: and have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of 16 the dead, both of the just and unjust. And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a 17 conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men. Now after many years I came 18 to bring alms to my nation, and offerings. Whereupon certain Jews from Asia found me 19 purified in the temple, neither with multitude, nor with tumult. Who ought to have been 20 here before thee, and object, if they had ought against me. Or else let these same here 21 say, if they have found any evil doing in me, while I stood before the council, except it be for this one voice, that I cried standing among them, Touching the resurrection of the dead 22 I am called in question by you this day. And when Felix heard these things, having more perfect knowledge of that way, he deferred them, and said, When Lysias the chief captain 23 shall come down, I will know the uttermost of your matter. And he commanded a centu- rion to keep Paul, and to let him have liberty, and that he should forbid none of his ac- quaintance to minister or come unto him. 24 And after certain days, when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, which was a Jewess, he

25 sent for Paul, and heard him concerning the faith in Christ. And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way 26 for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee. He hoped also that money should have been given him of Paul, that he might loose him: wherefore he sent 27 for him the oftener, and communed with him. But after two years Porcius Festus came into Felix’ room: and Felix, willing to shew the Jews a pleasure, left Paul bound.

Amid the superficial cares and pleasures of a worldly existence a man’s deeper nature may slumber; the surface-ripple of the stream of common life may fill the sense and lull the soul to sleep, but to almost every one there come occasions when the smooth current of the life of sense is interrupted, and his true self is roused to a temporary wakefulness. In the stillness of the lonely sick-bed, amid worldly reverses, in declining health, or under bitter bereavement—in such passages of man’s history, the soul, eternity, God, become for the moment real things, and the most thoughtless and worldly-minded is forced to pause and think. Or, again, when the man listens to some very earnest exhibition of divine truth, or is brought into contact with one who is living a very holy, pure, unselfish life, a painful impression of his own deficiencies—a transient glimpse of a nobler, purer ideal of life, to which his own presents a miserable contrast—may visit his mind. Instead of seeking true comfort by the steady, however painful, contemplation, and then, through God’s grace, by the deliberate, persevering correction of its evil self, the mind too often seeks a speedier but most unreal satisfaction, by forgetting its convictions, and seeing itself only in the false glass of the world’s opinions. Thus, with many, life is but a continuous endeavor to forget and keep out of sight their true selves—a vain eluding and outstripping of a reality which is still ever with them, and to the consciousness of which they must one day awake. Caird.

1-9. Renewed Accusation against Paul by the Jews, before the Tribunal of Felix.**—Very promptly (within five days) was Paul followed to Cesarea by Ananias and some of the Jewish elders. They brought with them a professional Roman advocate, Tertullus, whom they had hired to prosecute Paul before the Roman governor. Among themselves there was no one competent to encounter Paul; and they would conciliate Felix by employing a Roman pleader. Flattery and falsehood characterized this man’s address to Felix. Abuse and falsehood made up his charge against Paul.

Artfully as his encomium is framed, it is false in all its points. Historical facts (mainly from the Jew Josephus and the Roman Tacitus) show the reverse of “quietness” in the nation, and of “worthy deeds” wrought by “the providence” of Felix; and that instead of “thankfulness,” Felix was followed to Rome with the sharpest accusations by the Jews. B.—Felix was appointed (A. D. 53) partly at the instance of Jonathan, the then high priest. He ruled the province in a mean, cruel, and profligate manner. Tacitus says, “By every form of cruelty and lust, he wielded the power of a king in the spirit of a slave.” S.

The charge against Paul is threefold: treason against the Roman power—“a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world”; heresy against the law of Moses—a ringleader of the Christians; and sacrilege—a profaner of the Temple. And Tertullus closes his address with the further falsehood, that the Sanhedrim would have judged Paul lawfully, if Lysias had not interfered. To all these false charges, stated vaguely and without a single specification, the high priest and his colleagues personally assented; “saying that these things were so.”

10,11. Introduction of Paul’s Defense.**—Although twice before Paul had spoken what he called a defense—first before a vast crowd of Jews in the Temple area, and again before the assembled Council or Sanhedrim—yet this is his first actual defense, as he now stands before an imperial tribunal, the governor representing the person and authority of the emperor.

Receiving the usual signal according him a hearing in reply, Paul frankly expresses his readiness to answer before Felix, because of his long residence among the Jews and of his consequent familiarity with the matters now in issue before him. Not a word of flattery here, but a proper recognition of the intelligent and unprejudiced character of the tribunal before which the apostle is now really on trial. For the comparatively long period of six or seven years Felix had been in Jerusalem and Cesarea. In both places were many Christian disciples. In Cesarea many Roman soldiers, after Cornelius, had received Christianity. He knew enough of these matters to appreciate the particulars of Paul’s answer, and to determine the case on its merits, as he did by not condemning Paul. His failure to acquit and release grew out of other selfish causes, as we know. And it may be added that with his opportunities of knowing the current events “among the Jews throughout the world,” Felix must have heard of such “a pest and mover of sedition” as Paul’s accuser alleged him to have been, if the charge had been true.

Paul notes another fact at the outset. He declares that Felix can readily ascertain that little more than a week had elapsed since the things directly complained of occurred. Including his journey to Cesarea and the five days’ imprisonment there, it had been only twelve days since Paul had gone to Jerusalem to worship; and only eight or nine days since his arrest in the Temple.

12,13. His Denial of Treason, and Challenge of his Accusers to the Proof.**—In terms of unqualified denial he meets the first charge—of sedition. Worship, not the plotting of insurrection, was the object of his so recent visit to Jerusalem; and while worshiping he was found and arrested. He had not even spoken in public, much less by artful harangue sought to gather disaffected persons either in the Temple, the synagogues, or the city. This particular and emphatic denial he enforces by a challenge to his accusers, there present, to produce proof of this, their only criminal charge against him.

14-16. His Confession of the Second Charge, the So-called Heresy of Christianity; and Justification, by the Jewish Law and Prophets, of his Avowed Christian Faith, Hope, and Life.**—He avows himself to be a conscientious adherent of the new, or Christian, way of believing and living. In denial of their accusation of heresy (or the introduction with schismatic spirit of a false religion—which was their meaning in using the term heresy or svet) he affirms that this was the way of their fathers. Boldly confessing his faith in Christ, he asserts the unity of the Christian belief with the old covenant and promises “written in the law and the prophets.” No apostate was he from his fathers’ God or faith, he assures Felix, who shared the Roman dislike to any one’s abandonment of his own national modes of worship. To Jew and Roman he uses his opportunity thus implicitly to declare that Christ was the center, soul, and substance of all the truths and promises given to Israel; that Christianity was the true outcome and ultimate fulfillment of spiritual and vital Judaism. As Christ its founder had said, it did not destroy but it fulfilled all the law and the prophets.

And in confirmation of his general assertion, he adds the specific declaration that in common with many of his accusers, and with the mass of his nation, he holds steadfastly to the fathers’ hope of a resurrection from death, through the promise and power of the fathers’ God. To this hope he had distinctly appealed a few days before, when standing before the Council in the Temple. In accordance with this belief and hope in the resurrection (common to Jews and Christians), he further affirms his conscientious endeavor to meet every obligation to God and man. He strives as the athlete or warrior, only his struggle and warfare is within the soul. His supreme aim and constant effort was to keep his conscience from striking against stumbling-stones of accusing purpose, wrong thought, or evil deed. Not that he always or ever perfectly attained, or succeeded in this high endeavor, but he always exercises himself—habitually practices—toward attainment, ever “pressing toward the mark.” B.—And if the Apostle of the Gentiles, a man great in the faith, found it necessary to maintain constantly a military watchfulness and practice, how presumptuous in any of us to count on keeping the course, and acquiring the crown, by an indolent wish to be safe, without a constant watchfulness, an energetic effort, and a more than military sternness in laying aside every weight, and the sin that doth most easily beset us! Arnot.

17-21. His Refutation of the Third Charge, of Profaning the Temple.**—One chief purpose of his visit to Jerusalem he states with great simplicity, as properly introducing his denial of this charge. He came as the almoner of help, not as the fomenter of disturbance and source of injury to his nation. And it is to be noted that this incidental statement, so drawn from him, is the only allusion in the Acts to the fact that Paul had been engaged for four years in gathering collections from all the Gentile churches in aid of the poor Christian Jews of Judea. In the Epistles, especially those to the Corinthians and Romans, Paul frequently refers to this matter (Rom. 15: 25, 26; 1 Cor. 16: 1-4; 2 Cor. 8: 1-4).

Repeating part of his previous assertion (in denial now of their third charge), that he had neither gathered a crowd nor stirred up tumult in the Temple, he impliedly and truthfully charges “certain Jews from Asia” with doing this very thing, and so profaning the sanctuary. These Jews, he yet further declares, found him engaged in appropriate temple worship, actually making offerings after undergoing ceremonial purification. And he makes a sharp point upon his present accusers, and a just argument in his own defense, in demanding that those Asiatic Jews, his real accusers, should meet him face to face, and sustain their accusation and assault upon him in the Temple. Since these, however, were absent, did not care or dare to appear against him, he turns with a bold challenge to the Jews present, the Sadducean members of the Council. He demands their own personal testimony upon the facts that occurred when he stood before the Sanhedrim. With a keen thrust that they could not parry, he asks if the utterance of the hated truth of the resurrection was not the only charge of evil-doing that they could bring against him.

There was no rejoinder to Paul’s fearless, simple, conclusive reply. As the accusation of Tertullus was artificial and vague, flattering and false, so the defense is natural and plain, specific, complete, and manifestly sincere. And, as always, he finds his opportunity to preach Jesus and the resurrection, and to testify his own Christian faith and hope, and his Christlike love to God and man.

22, 23. By the Decision of Felix, Paul is held in Easy Confinement.—The after-statements show conclusively that Felix virtually decided the case in favor of Paul. But he wished to retain, as far as possible, the favor of the Jews. He therefore pronounced no actual decision, simply putting off the two parties upon a pretext of seeking further information from Lysias. Verses 26 and 27 disclose his real motive in declining to release Paul.

The apostle’s condition, however, was not a hard one. He was simply kept in a custody that protected his threatened life, and provided for his needs; while his friends in Cesarea (including Philip and Luke), and those from abroad, had free access to him. So the word of God was not bound. Freely and abundantly did Paul preach the faith in Christ. That this was with the full knowledge and consent of Felix, we clearly infer from his sending for the apostle to “hear him concerning that faith.” And this state of things continued for two years. So that we may regard Cesarea as another great working-center of Paul, to be classed with Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus, and afterward Rome.

24-26. Paul’s Faithful Reasoning with Felix and Drusilla, and its Effect.—Drusilla was a daughter of Herod Agrippa I. (Acts 12: 1, 21), and sister of Agrippa II. and Bernice (25: 13). She left her husband, the King of Emesa, to live with Felix. The suggestion of sending for Paul, doubtless, came from her. “A Jewish princess must necessarily have been curious to hear some account of what professed to be the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy.” As curious, too, she may have been to hear about this widely bruited religion of the Nazarenes.

Never did this master of skill and fitness in discourse more conclusively prove this mastery than in the bold, faithful reasoning whose main drift and conclusion is here recorded in three words. In these words, after expounding the faith in Christ (which they asked to hear about), or the scheme of redemption foreshown in the Jewish Scriptures, he sums up a suitable application to these hearers. Before him sat an unjust judge—a cruel, rapacious governor. To him he discourses about righteousness, i. e., “rightness, justness, in thought, word, and deed toward all—toward God and toward man.” To a Roman libertine noble and a profligate Jewish princess cess he expounds the Christian gospel of purity. And upon both, self-condemned by conscience, he presses the fearful fact of a judgment to come, which each must meet. Yet this Christian apostle makes no personal charge, utters no personal denunciation. He only leaves the truth to work in the soul. Hence no anger against Paul was stirred in the breast of Felix. The fear awakened in him was wrought, not by Paul, but by the Holy Ghost through the truth. The object, as well as the cause, of his dread was the Divine Law and the Divine Judge now so vividly disclosed by the apostle. That Felix was alarmed showed that he was not past feeling, not dead to the appeal of saving truth. In his alarm we read sure evidence of the convincing power of the Holy Ghost, reproving of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.

And in the feeble, palliative half-purpose of future response with which he appeases the sharp demands of a troubled conscience, in the postponing reply with which he turns aside the faithful appeal and dismisses the friendly appellant and preacher, we find the precise point and form of his resistance to the Holy Ghost. The terrified prison-keeper at Philippi was ready and willing for the instant saving response, “What must I do?” The alarmed governor was neither ready nor willing now. And though the convenient season came, though he often called for Paul and “communed with him,” yet the same state of feeling never returned. His avarice and other lusts regained their mastery. Every salutary fear and impulse was forgotten, and all spiritual sensibility for ever crushed out. He only sought, with Paul’s connivance, to gain selfish advantage by the apostle’s release. B.

How has the intimidated and yet unrepentant Felix become the living and most striking type of millions! Again and again is repeated the same pretext, and with the same self-deception. There is no set purpose to harden the heart against receiving the truth; there is merely absence of determination immediately to surrender. The word of truth is not rejected, but obedience to its dictates is put off to a more convenient season: the child puts off till he shall be a youth, the youth till he shall be a man, the man till hoary-headed age; the gray-beard till he shall be stretched upon his deathbed. So innocent and natural appear many of the pleas on which men excuse themselves from compliance with the highest demands, that many a sinner shall himself stand utterly dismayed when before the judgment-bar of God the last covering of shame shall be flung aside for ever. Van. O.

27. Though convinced of Paul’s innocence, Felix left him in custody, that he might induce the Jews to withhold complaints at Rome against his administration. But this unprincipled procedure