I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Acts 7-8

I think that it is important for us to look at Stephen as described here.  He did not back down from confrontation.  In fact, when he was standing trial before the Sanhedrin, he called them out for having Jesus crucified and compared that action to the ways in which the prophets of old had been killed.  Stephen accused to members of the Sanhedrin of hypocrisy and idolatry.  He made no attempt to defuse the situation.  Instead, he called men who considered themselves exemplars of righteousness persecutors of the righteous.  Luke’s account seems to suggest that Stephen’s testimony here served to radicalize Saul against the Church, leading Saul to persecute Believers.  Of course, Saul’s pursuit of that persecution led to his encounter with Christ, which resulted in his conversion.  We are not always called to calm passions, sometimes we are called to inflame them.

I love the account given here of Philip.  It shows that while Philip was appointed to the same office in the Church as Stephen the ministry to which he was called was different.  In particular, I want to look at his encounter with the Ethiopian.  This was essentially a chance encounter, although Luke makes clear that there are no such things as chance encounters.  Philip was walking along the road when he heard the Ethiopian reading Scripture out loud.  I suspect that was what clued Philip to the idea that the Ethiopian might be receptive to the Gospel.  It seems likely that the Ethiopian was reading out loud in an attempt to better understand what he was reading.  Whatever the case, Philip took the opportunity to show how the passage which the Ethiopian was reading was fulfilled in Jesus.  We, also, should take advantage of chance encounters to preach the Gospel.