Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Acts 8:14

The Sanction of the leaders of the Church is given to the Work of Philip among the Samaritans. The Samarian Mission of Peter and John, 14-25.

Acts 8:14. Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God. To formally sanction this work of Philip in Samaria, and the subsequent general admission of the Samarian people into the Church of the Master, was for the College of Apostles in Jerusalem no slight matter, for it signified a complete breaking down of the old barriers of prejudice, behind which the orthodox Jew had rigidly entrenched himself. We can hardly understand now what a painful struggle it must have been for pious Jews like James, the Lord's brother, and John to concede that even the hated Samaritan had a right to the kingdom of heaven that the bitterly hated, the ‘accursed people,' as they deemed them, might join the Church of Christ on the same terms as a Hebrew of the Hebrews. And yet this is what the College of Apostles conceded when they sent two of their most distinguished members to lay hands on the baptized of Samaria. ‘He who eats the bread of a Samaritan,' says the Talmud, ‘is as one who eats swine's flesh. This accursed people shall have no part in the resurrection of the dead.' To be a Samaritan, in the eyes of an austere Jew, was to have a devil (John 8:48).

They sent unto them Peter and John. In accordance with the Master's first mission, when He called the Twelve unto Him, and began to send them forth by two and two (Mark 6:7), so we find two together, Peter and John, in the Temple (Acts 3:1); so Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13:2) are associated to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles; so later we find together Paul and Silas (Acts 15:40) and Barnabas and Mark (Acts 15:39).

John is not mentioned after this in the Acts of the Apostles.

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Acts 8:14

Old Testament

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