Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Acts 26:17

Acts 26:17. Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee. The memory of these words of the Son of God armed the apostle of the future against all the terrors which awaited him, and at the same time prepared him to bear his heavy cross.

It was no doubt that, trusting in this promise, Paul was comparatively careless in the midst of the most urgent perils which threatened his liberty and even his life. Strong in the conviction for had he not heard that Divine One, on whose radiant glory he for a brief minute or two once gazed, say it? that he had a mighty work to work, and that while engaged in it like Elisha the man of God of old he too would be encompassed with a heavenly guard so that no human hand raised against him should ever do him mortal injury; it was no doubt that, strong in the conviction that the arm of the Lord was ever stretched out between him and death, he resisted the repeated warnings of his dearest friends many of them endowed with the gift of prophecy who tried to dissuade him from this dangerous journey to Jerusalem which had resulted in this present captivity and its many fearful dangers, and which brought him in the end to preach his Master's gospel at Rome. How often in that strange harassed life of his, so touchingly painted in his own glowing words in 2 Corinthians 11:23-27; 2 Corinthians 6:4-10, must this sure promise of his Messiah reigning from His glory-throne in heaven have come up and cheered him with a voice not of this world!

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Acts 26:17

Old Testament

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