Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadWilliam Burkitt Notes and Observations - Acts 25:13 - 25:13
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Observe here, 1. How God will not be wanting to his servants in their greatest straits and sufferings, but will providentially dispose of all matters in order to their deliverance, when it may most conduce to his own glory and their good.
Thus here, King Agrippa comes to congratulate Festus; Festus declares the cause of God's oppressed servant to the king, and God makes use both of Festus and Agrippa to screen the apostle from the violence of his enemies: In the mount will the Lord be seen; the people's extremities are the seasons of his succour.
Observe, 2. How the very light of nature in and among the heathens condemns it as an act of manifest and notorious injustice in a judge to pass sentence upon a person unheard, and unallowed to make his defence.
This baseness was below the Roman gallantry whilst Pagans; Festus demands the accursers and the accused to appear face to face; and yet such a diabolical spirit of malice had so blinded the Jews, that, contrary to the law of nature, and the law of all nations, they would have had St. Paul here condemned, without knowing the cause, and hearing his defence.
Observe, 3. What base and vile, what low and undervaluing thoughts, and apprehension, have carnal men of the high and holy things of God.
Festus here calls the religion and worship, which was of God's own institution, most profanely and contemptuously by the name of superstition: They had certain questions against him of their own superstition. And how slightingly doth he also speak of our glorified Redeemer, styling him one Jesus; but no wonder that the dunghill cocks of the world know not the worth of the pearl of great price.