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STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

—INTERNATIONAL S.S. LESSONS—

SUGGESTIVE THOUGHTS DESIGNED TO ASSIST THOSE OF OUR READERS WHO ATTEND BIBLE CLASSES WHERE THESE LESSONS ARE USED; THAT THEY MAY BE ENABLED TO LEAD OTHERS INTO THE FULNESS OF THE GOSPEL. PUBLISHED IN ADVANCE, AT THE REQUEST OF FOREIGN READERS.

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PAUL BEFORE FELIX

III. QUAR., LESSON VIII., AUG. 20, ACTS 24:10-25

Golden Text—”Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.”—1 Cor. 16:13

The clamor against Paul, started at Jerusalem, was a determined one, and his enemies persistently sought his life. This lesson finds him in Caesarea (Acts 23:23,24) before Felix, the governor of the province; and Paul, in the presence of his accusers—the high priest Ananias, with a deputation from the Sanhedrin and a professional advocate, Tertullus—was permitted to speak for himself. The charges brought against him were, (1) that he was guilty of sedition, and so of disloyalty to the Roman government; (2) that he was guilty of heresy; (3) that he was guilty of profaning the temple, and thus of affronting a religion which was under the protection of the Roman government.

VERSES 10-13. The first and last charges Paul positively denies, and challenges them for proof of their impious assertions.

VERSE 14. To the charge of what they call heresy he freely pleads guilty; but intimates that their calling it heresy does not prove it to be such. In those days, as well as to-day, the truth is generally classed as heresy. The truth never was, and never will be, popular, until the Kingdom of God is established in the earth. And yet all that is termed heresy is not truth. For instance,

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while the so-called orthodoxy of to-day, with all its confusion and contradicting testimony, its unscriptural and unreasonable claims, and its poor human philosophies, however popular, is manifestly untrue, there are other vain philosophies and human speculations called heresies, as truly they are, which go even farther astray from the Truth. The Briggs doctrine is one of these, and their number is constantly increasing.

But Paul’s kind of heresy is the kind that all the saints should have—the kind which worships the one true God, believing “all things which are written in the law and in the prophets.” The teachings of the Lord and the apostles never conflict with these; but together they form one harmonious system of divine truth worthy of all acceptation.

VERSE 15. The doctrine of the resurrection, both of the just and the unjust, at the second coming of Christ, was the Apostle’s special theme. He defined it, showed it to be the legitimate result of the ransom paid for all mankind, and held it forth as the blessed hope for the Church and for the world, and bade the Church rejoice in the special privilege of the first resurrection. See our treatment of this subject in our issue of April 1st.

VERSES 17-21. With reference to the last charge, Paul brought forth the clearest proof of innocence. He was found in the temple purified, according to the Jewish ceremonial, which symbolized full consecration to God. And also in the presence of the Jewish council he had showed no disrespect, and this whole tumult had been excited by the strife of the two parties—the Pharisees and the Sadducees which composed it—when he declared his faith in the resurrection, which the Pharisees believe, but which the Sadducees deny.

VERSES 22-26. Paul improved his opportunity when brought before Felix, the governor—who was notoriously avaricious, cruel and licentious, and who, Josephus says, was one of the most corrupt and oppressive governors ever despatched from Rome to Judea—to reason of righteousness, self-control and judgment to come. And his reasoning was such as commended itself to the hardened sinner before him. Felix trembled with fear before his own self-accusations and in view of the judgment to come, although there was no repentance in his heart. The reasonable inference of a judgment to come is most manifest from the established truth of a just and holy and powerful God; but the world sees no reasonableness in the false doctrine of eternal torment, which Antichrist has invented to scare men into a profession of godliness and an assumption of its forms. But the true doctrine of a coming judgment, which will require men to render an account for all their sins against any measure of light, may well cause men to tremble when forced to consider their crimes, and the reasonable inference that God will not always permit sin to go unpunished, neither will he allow virtue to lose its reward.

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— August 1, 1893 —