Gentiles

Knowing the Unknown God

Jun 13 2013

Knowing the Unknown God

As I climbed the flight of stairs I kept arriving at doors that had strange brass faces. Some faces were kind of smiley while others looked rather evil. A number of doors also had statues resembling weird creatures. One part of me wanted to leave, but another wanted to knock on doors and preach. I mean why would anyone worship these things? Was it a case of following a cultural superstition, or did they actually believe these things existed? Were you ever in this situation?
When the apostle Paul walked around Athens and saw all their objects of worship he felt ‘distressed’ (Acts 17:16-34). But instead of wanting to leave, he had a strong desire to convince the Athenians to turn from their false gods and worship the God of Israel. Paul was so disturbed by the images that he broke with his usual practice of preaching only in the synagogues and started preaching openly in the marketplace. He didn’t want to just speak to Jews; he wanted to reach these Athenian Greeks. More

Cornelius’ House

Jun 6 2013

Cornelius’ House

Acts 10:1-11:18

As Peter entered the house he was shocked to see that it was crowded with Romans. These were Cornelius’ friends and family; a mixture of military personnel and civilians with their wives and a few others. Never before had Peter preached to Gentiles, and certainly not this type. Romans! But this was Caesarea, the military headquarters of Judea, and this was Cornelius the Centurion’s house, a man who was in command of a hundred soldiers. God had told Peter to respond to Cornelius’ request to come, but he did not expect such an audience.
Now these Romans had served long enough in Judea to know that a Jew wasn’t supposed to enter a Gentile’s home, so Peter quickly explained that had God had spoken to him and had shown him that he was not to consider a Gentile impure or unclean. Just the day before God had given Peter a vision More

When Jesus Answered Africa

May 30 2013

When Jesus Answered Africa

An imaginative but possible rendering of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26-40

The Ethiopian man left Jerusalem with mixed feelings. It had been great to see the holy city and he was thankful he could purchase a scroll of Isaiah. But he had not been able to achieve his main objectives. He wanted to be baptized as a Jew and worship at the temple with all the others. “Sorry sir, we don’t baptize eunuchs” said the priest “It’s in our Law; you can read it for yourself” (Dt 23:1). The priest’s verdict read like a sentence of death. The castrated man had missed out on marriage, on children, and had suffered the stigma that came with emasculation most of his life, and here was one more thing for him to add to his rejection list. It was all becoming a bit much.
He was really looking forward to seeing the temple of Yahweh, but he wasn’t allowed to go through the courtyard gate. He only managed to get a narrow glimpse of the sacred door when the gate was opened momentarily to allow all the ‘real’ Jews in.
Now the long journey back to Africa had begun, More