Bridge of Reason

  Isaiah 53 in the Great Isaiah Scroll It is in Acts 8:26-38 we find the story of Philip and the Ethiopian official from the court of Candace. The Spirit directs Philip to ‘go down from Jerusalem to Gaza’ and talk to the man. Here was the last watering hole before the desert on the route from Jerusalem to Egypt, from where he would go on to the ancient Nubian kingdom south of Aswan on the Nile. The man was probably a God-fearer – ‘he had come to Jerusalem to worship.’ He was ‘seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.’ This was unusual for an outsider, a Gentile. He had, nevertheless, been to Jerusalem and would have heard of the crucifixion, of the events at Pentecost, and might have witnessed the beginning of the Christian Diaspora. What would he have seen and heard that would draw him to Isaiah 53? Philip is instructed to join the man’s chariot, which he did and found himself invited to come up and sit with him. What if it had been Charles Russell in that...