In the previous entry on this topic, I
proposed reading the Bible as a means of “hearing” from God. Now I’d like to give three examples of how
this has happened in the past, with the hope that it helps you understand what
I am getting at. The first is from the
Bible, and describes the experience of a man from Ethiopia, which I will
describe in this entry. In future
entries, I will describe the second example, which is from the life of
Augustine. And finally I’ll describe an
example my own personal experience. I
figure that pretty well spans 2000 years of hearing God speak through the
Bible. And maybe, in the future, add
some other examples as well.
Example #1 – The Man from Ethiopia
As a note of context,
the person named “Philip” in this story is a disciple of Jesus. This event is described as taking place in
the few years after Jesus has died and resurrected.
“…Now an angel of the
Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from
Jerusalem to Gaza.” So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian
eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake
(which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to
worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of
Isaiah the prophet. The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near
it.”
Then Philip ran up to
the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand
what you are reading?” Philip asked.
“How can I,” he said,
“unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit
with him.
This is the passage of
Scripture the eunuch was reading:
“He was led like a
sheep to the slaughter,
and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
In his humiliation he
was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth.”
The eunuch asked
Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone
else?” Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the
good news about Jesus.
As they traveled along
the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water.
What can stand in the way of my being baptized?” And he gave orders to stop the
chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip
baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord
suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on
his way rejoicing.”
[Acts 8:26-39 (NIV)]
I know that there are
some unusual things that happen to Philip in this story, but I want to put
those aside for now. Instead, I would
like to focus on what happens in the story from the perspective of the man from
Ethiopia. He has traveled to Jerusalem
to worship, so he must at least be highly knowledgeable of the Jewish
faith. On his way back he is reading
through what I would call the Old Testament.
I think it is reasonable to presume that he has been reading through
what he has of the Bible and he comes across a particular passage that he
doesn’t understand. As he is pondering
this passage, some random guy comes up to him and asks him if he understands
the passage he is reading. An
interesting coincidence, no doubt, as presumably it isn’t often that someone
comes up to ask such a question. And, as
the story unfolds, he invites this stranger to explain the passage to him, and
he does so, leading to the belief in Jesus by this Ethiopian man.
The link between this
event and belief in Jesus may be lost unless you understand the particular uniqueness of the passage he “just happens” to be reading at the
time. The passage that begins “He was
led like a sheep to the slaughter…” is from the book of Isaiah, the 53rd
chapter. One of the basic tenets of
Christianity is that the Old Testament contains prophesies about the coming of
Jesus and describes what he will be like and what he will do. Jews, obviously, would dispute that, although
many would still consider a lot of the passages to be prophecy as well (just
not about Jesus). But the particular
passage that the Ethiopian man happens to be reading is the most extensive and
most obvious prophecy about Jesus in the entire Old Testament. I would say, without a doubt, it is by far the most extensive. If you have any question, read it for
yourself – Isaiah 53:1-12. For a
Christian who understands the context of the time, the Ethiopian man’s request
of “…explain [this passage in Isaiah] to me” is akin to saying “tell me about
Jesus.”
I look at it this
way. There are about 1000 chapters in
the modern Old Testament, and this single chapter would be on the top of
everyone’s list of passages related to Jesus Christ. Thus, the odds were ~1/1000 that the
Ethiopian man would be reading this passage.
That is, of course, ignoring whatever odds there might be that the book
he is reading is the Bible rather than some other book of the time. And what are the odds that someone would just
happen to come up to him and ask him if he understood that very passage? Pretty remote, I presume. We (Christians) would say that God used that
passage to speak directly to the Ethiopian man about Jesus and help lead him to
believe. The Ethiopian man immediately
believes and it is certainly reasonable to think that his immediate acceptance
of this new belief is based on his personal experience of what is an extremely
unlikely coincidence. To him it is
effectively a miracle.
Now, I must say that
this whole event could surely have just been coincidence. It surely could have. And belief in God is not determined by
experiencing some event in which the odds of it happening drop below some
pre-determined threshold. The reason I
am giving this example is that it shows how reading the Bible was used to “open
the eyes” of this particular individual. For the Ethiopian, this whole experience was
too much – he just had to
believe. The point is not that you
necessary believe his experience, or that his experience is sufficient for you
to believe. It happened 2000 years ago
and you weren’t even there to see it.
The point is to understand what that kind of experience is like, and to
consider what, if any, experience might
be sufficient for you to change your thinking. Remember, we claim that the same Jesus who
was alive an active then is alive and active now. As I have discussed before, if you are not
open to any such experience at all, then why should God bother? If the door is bolted from the inside, why
bother with the key?
By the way, this book
of Isaiah and this prophecy (along with some others in the book of Isaiah, such
as Isaiah 9:6-7 that is the basis for Handel’s Messiah) has an interesting modern
history. The “Great Isaiah Scroll” is
the most famous document from the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery in 1947. A complete scroll of the book of Isaiah was
part of this discovery and is dated ~300-200 BC. At the time of the discovery, the oldest copy
of the book of Isaiah was over 1000 years more recent and well after the time
of Christ, which obviously called into question whether these “prophesies”
might have been written after the fact.
But now we know for certain that they were not. I would love to see that scroll someday – it
is housed in a museum in Jerusalem – I think that would be pretty cool. But, for most of us, we’ll have to settle
with looking at it here: http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah
Well, hopefully these
examples will be helpful. The point is
that we Christians believe that God can use passages in the Bible to uniquely
address a person’s current situation in a way that is supernatural. This is the first “test tube.” Next we’ll look at another example of this
kind of thing, this one from the life of Augustine.
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