33. Archdeacon Stephen, His Preaching and Martyrdom. The Persecution of the Disciples and Their Dispersal From Jerusalem. The Spread of the Gospel. The Preaching of Philip in Samaria. Simon Magus. The Conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch. The State of the Church at the End of the Reign of Tiberius

The chosen deacons, having taken upon themselves the management of charitable affairs, not only provided the Apostles with greater freedom for preaching, but at the same time proved to be worthy helpers to them in this great work. Particularly remarkable in this regard was Stephen, who represents one of the remarkable personalities in the primitive church.

Having been chosen among the seven deacons, St. Stephen—“full of faith and power” (Acts 6:8)—at once became the most prominent among them. He “did great wonders and signs among the people” (Acts 6:8), so that in this respect he stood as it were on the same level with the Apostles. Possessing extraordinary gifts along with a high degree of education, he could of course not limit himself in his ministry to the distribution of alms. He was drawn to a wider and more fruitful field of preaching, and he did indeed step forward onto it. The distributor of alms naturally had frequent occasion to encounter persons of every kind and often to engage in discussions about Christianity and its relation to Judaism. Until now the Christians, consisting in the majority of converted Jews and Hellenists, differed little from Jews and continued to observe the external forms of Jewish worship, gathering in the temple and synagogues. But this connection was of course temporary, and as independent forms were developed in the Christian Church, it was bound to break completely—something that the more spiritually enlightened people were now beginning to perceive. In the forefront of these stood the deacon Stephen, who began his preaching precisely in this spirit. The place of his preaching was the synagogues of the Hellenists. Being himself a Hellenist, he directed his preaching primarily to his fellow members. His preaching attracted attention, but at the same time met with opposition. Hellenists from various countries usually had their own separate synagogues, of which there were up to four hundred in Jerusalem; and in one of these synagogues—to which belonged the Libertines (that is, freedmen), Cyrenians, and Alexandrians—a heated dispute broke out with Stephen. Others also became involved in this controversy—namely “some from Cilicia and Asia”—so that the dispute took on an extremely heated character. The result of this dispute was the complete triumph of St. Stephen over his opponents. The Hellenists were unable to “resist the wisdom and the Spirit by which he spoke” (Acts 6:10). The arrogant scribes were forced to see with amazement that the preacher was not the ordinary villager they were accustomed to seeing as a preacher of Christianity, but a man who possessed not only a Greek education but also Jewish learning. The dispute was of course about the Messiah, and the Jewish scribes, with their distorted conception of the Messiah, must have been enraged to hear that St. Stephen with irresistible force proved to them from Holy Scripture and history that this Messiah had already come, and that the Jewish people—and especially the highly learned lawyers—had not only failed to recognize and acknowledge Him, but had crucified Him on the cross as a criminal. And this Messiah was Jesus of Nazareth, whose preacher Stephen came forward as.

Enraged by such preaching and feeling themselves no longer able to continue resisting it, the Hellenists resorted to violence. They stirred up the people and the elders against him, spreading through suborned false witnesses the rumor that he “spoke blasphemous words against Moses and God, against this holy place” (the temple) “and the law” (Acts 6:11,13). Taking advantage of this support, they unexpectedly seized St. Stephen and brought him before the Sanhedrin for trial. There followed the usual proceedings of that tribunal, which had already stained itself with flagrant injustice and bloodthirstiness. The inevitable members of that tribunal appeared—the false witnesses, who declared that the accused had said “that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs which Moses delivered to us” (Acts 6:14). These false testimonies were all the more dangerous in that they were based on a distortion of the truth. St. Stephen had indeed preached about the complete abolition by Christ of all Old Testament economy, but this abolition was to take place not through violence but through the inner action of the Spirit of God—as it had indeed already begun to take place now. And this truth he wished to set forth solemnly before the very Sanhedrin, which, for all its prejudice against the preacher of the hated name, could not help being struck by the beauty and the God-enlightened countenance of this man, and they “saw his face as the face of an angel” (Acts 6:15). When the false witnesses had exhausted their fabricated testimonies, the question of the high priest followed: “Are these things so?” (Acts 7:1); and to this question St. Stephen replied with an inspired defense speech in which the origin of Christianity was set forth as a new and higher stage of God’s economy compared with Judaism. Recalling all of Old Testament history from the call of Abraham, he proved through his very exposition of it that in the overall course of the formation of the Jewish religion and law there was a gradual development of the covenant and its better promises, to which, however, the chosen people constantly resisted. Having thus shown on the basis of history that it was precisely his accusers who had constantly proved to be violators and opponents of the divine law, St. Stephen set forth the history of their fathers’ resistance to Moses himself, and at the same time prophetically pointed to the possibility of their resistance also to that higher prophet whose coming Moses had foretold. Then, turning to the accusation of him for blaspheming the temple, he showed again historically how they themselves were the greatest blasphemers of God’s temple and from the time of Moses had constantly deviated from true worship to idol worship. But the temple itself was not the sole place of God’s presence. Although Solomon had built Him a house, he had in his very dedicatory prayer expressed the great thought that “the Most High does not dwell in temples made with hands, as the prophet says: ‘Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool’” (Acts 7:48–49). The general conclusion from these proofs was the self-evident truth that at the base of their supposed zeal for the law and the temple lay the most vile hypocrisy, combined with gross sensuality and misanthropy. Carried away by holy indignation, the accused became the accuser and boldly cried out: “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers. You who received the law as it was administered by angels and have not kept it!” (Acts 7:51–53). So fearless and terrible a denunciation inflamed the fury of the members of the Sanhedrin, who, like wild beasts, “were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth” (Acts 7:54). Then St. Stephen saw that the lot of following his Teacher along the sorrowful path of martyrdom awaited him, and his gaze turned to heaven. There he “saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55). Enraptured by this wondrous theophany beyond all thought of danger, he cried out, as if wishing to make his enemies partakers of this vision: “Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” (Acts 7:56). But these elevated words were more than the feelings of his hearers could bear. Stopping up their ears, as if to protect them from defiling blasphemy, they rose en masse from both sides of the semicircle in which they sat and with a wild roar rushed upon Stephen. Of a lawful resolution of the matter there was now no question. In their fury they forgot every law and dragged St. Stephen outside the city gates to stone him there. When the execution began, the martyr cried out: “Lord Jesus! Receive my spirit!” (Acts 7:59). And when, wounded and bleeding, he could still fall to his knees, he prayed for his killers in the spirit of his Lord, and even the cry of his suffering sounded with forgiveness, showing how little malice there was in his stern words uttered before: “Lord, do not charge them with this sin!” (Acts 7:60). With this cry he departed from the wrath of men into the peace of God and “fell asleep.” His body was buried by some devout men who at the same time “made great lamentation over him” (Acts 8:2).

This was the first martyr for the name of Christ, and in him was first proved the great truth that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christianity.” Among the Hellenists of Cilicia who had disputed with Stephen in the synagogue was “a young man named Saul” (Acts 7:58), from the city of Tarsus, a disciple of the famous Gamaliel. For all his learning, he could not withstand St. Stephen and like the others burned with hatred toward him, watching his martyrdom with malicious satisfaction. Saul not only approved this vile murder but assisted the murderers, at whose feet they laid their garments in order to cast the first stones, as the law prescribed. And it was precisely this fierce enemy of Christianity who at this terrible occasion first felt in his heart the tormenting spark of self-condemnation which, gradually kindling into an all-consuming flame, finally led him to become himself a “chosen vessel” (Acts 9:15) of the persecuted Christ—the greatest Apostle and propagator of Christianity.

Meanwhile the success of the enemies of Christianity in the killing of St. Stephen served as a signal for a general persecution of Christians, and they were obliged for the preservation of their lives to scatter from Jerusalem. This involuntary scattering, however, served to spread the Gospel even further—and specifically beyond the borders of Judea—since those “who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word” (Acts 8:4). “Thus Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ to them” (Acts 8:5), confirming his preaching with signs and miracles that caused the people to give unanimous heed to the preacher. There took place among other things an encounter of the Christian preacher with the famous sorcerer of his time Simon, who, claiming to be the Messiah, was deceiving the simple-hearted people with his sorceries. But his magic—consisting of wretched tricks and pretended miracles—immediately lost its power before the actual signs and miracles of the Christian herald, at whose word the people began to be baptized in the name of Christ. Simon, seeing that his sorceries were no longer capable of deceiving the people who had recovered from their spiritual blindness, decided himself to receive baptism, hoping thereby to obtain new power for deceiving the people. Meanwhile news of the success of the preaching of the Gospel in Samaria reached Jerusalem, and the Apostles sent Peter and John there to establish the newly converted in the faith; and arriving there, they brought down upon all the believers through the laying on of hands the abundant gift of the Holy Spirit. The latter aroused extreme envy in Simon the sorcerer, and he, from his pagan point of view, began to offer the Apostles money so that they too might give him the power to bring down the gifts of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands. In response to this criminal simony (as all attempts to obtain the grace of holy orders by purchase came thereafter to be called) the Apostle Peter addressed Simon with a stern rebuke that had such an effect on the sorcerer that he began to beg the Apostles to pray for him. The Apostles themselves, “when they had testified and preached the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans” (Acts 8:25).

Shortly after this Philip had occasion to carry out yet another important conversion that was to prove still more decisively that the day had come when the rules of Judaism were to lose their force. Guided by divine prompting and the voice of an angel, he set out southward along the desert road leading from Eleutheropolis to Gaza, and there encountered the retinue of a wealthy Ethiopian eunuch who held the high position of treasurer of Candace (the queen) of the powerful Ethiopian monarchy of that time, whose capital was the city of Meroe. There is reason to think that this country had been converted to Judaism to some degree by Jews who had penetrated into it from Egypt in the time of Psamtik, whose descendants still exist under the name of Falashas. The eunuch, faithfully fulfilling the obligations of a proselyte of the gate—which in his position was more than possible—had traveled to Jerusalem on pilgrimage to be present at one of the great feasts, and was now returning home; riding in a chariot accompanied by his retinue, he was—in accordance with the rules of the rabbis—spending the time reading Holy Scripture, and at that very moment was reading aloud in the Greek translation of the Seventy the prophecy of Isaiah: “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so He opened not His mouth. In His humiliation His justice was taken away, and who will declare His generation? For His life is taken from the earth” (Isa. 53:7–8; Acts 8:32–33). Philip asked him whether he understood what he was reading. The eunuch confessed that all this was obscure to him; and inviting Philip to sit in his chariot with him, he asked him who the One was of whom the prophet was speaking. Philip thus received the opportunity to unfold the Christian interpretation of this great prophecy and had such an effect on his listener that when they came to a body of water, the eunuch asked Philip to baptize him. Philip said to him: “If you believe with all your heart, you may” (Acts 8:37). And when the eunuch solemnly confessed his faith, saying: “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God” (Acts 8:37), he ordered the chariot to stop, and Philip immediately baptized him. “Now when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more; and he went on his way rejoicing” (Acts 8:39). According to tradition, the baptized dignitary became a preacher of Christ in his country; and Philip found himself at Azotus, from where he began his preaching in various coastal cities all the way to Caesarea. In the latter city he apparently settled permanently and later had four daughters who possessed the gift of prophecy.

Thus by this time—coinciding approximately with the death of the Emperor Tiberius (around 37 A.D.)—the Church had begun to spread successfully among Jews of all denominations: pure Jews and despised Samaritans, among Jews of the Diaspora—Hellenists and proselytes of the most distant lands. And by this same time the chief perpetrators of Christ’s death had experienced upon themselves the deserved wrath of God. Pilate, upon the complaint of the Samaritans, was deprived of his office and sent to Rome for trial; and the high priest Caiaphas in the same year was deposed by the Syrian prefect Vitellius, who began to strictly prosecute the abuses of the Jewish authorities.