Acts 26:1-32

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Mary’s Testimony at 1st Service

Adeline’s Testimony at 2nd Service

It has been our tradition on Easter Sunday to have a testimony following the message. This year we will be doubly blessed to have not one but two testimonies. By special invitation, the Apostle Paul has agreed to share with us the testimony he gave before the Roman Procurator Festus and King Agrippa. [for our readers, Paul’s testimony was acted out on stage] After three epic missionary journeys, Paul returned to Jerusalem to give a report to James and the elders “of the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry” (Acts 21:19) and to deliver the offering he had collected from the Gentile churches for the poor in Jerusalem. Shortly thereafter, Jews from Asia falsely accused Paul of defiling the temple by bringing a Gentile into it. That spark ignited the fury of the Jews, who rushed upon Paul in the temple, violently assaulted him and would have killed him had not the Roman tribune intervened and rescued him from the violent crowd.

Like his Master before him, Paul endured five trials after his arrest. The first took place before the angry mob at the temple, the second before the Sanhedrin, and the third and fourth before the Roman procurators Felix and Festus in Caesarea. Felix had “a rather accurate knowledge of the Way” (24:22) and knew there was no evidence to convict Paul, but he was unwilling to release him, “partly because he wanted to curry favor with the Jews and partly because was hoping for a bribe,”1 which was not forthcoming. Paul refused to play Felix’s game and remained in Roman custody without another public hearing for two years until Felix was recalled to Rome and replaced by Festus, who was more inclined to follow Roman protocol of justice. “Wishing to do the Jews a favor,” he asked Paul if he wished to go to Jerusalem to be tried (25:9). Paul, knowing he would not receive a fair trial in Jerusalem, responded, “I am standing before Caesar’s tribunal, where I ought to be tried…I appeal to Caesar” (25:10–11).

Shortly after Festus’ appointment, two members of the Judean royal family, Agrippa and his sister Berenice, came to Caesarea to pay their respects to Festus. Though of royal status in Judea, they are also Roman subjects and eager to make a good impression with their new procurator. Herod Agrippa II was the great grandson of Herod the Great, who “had tried to destroy the infant Jesus. His son Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, beheaded John the Baptist…[and] His grandson Agrippa I slew James the son of Zebedee with the sword. Now we see Paul brought before Agrippa’s son,”2 who was given the title the “friend of Caesar.”

Accompanying Agrippa was his sister Berenice, a royal figure whose wealth and beauty secured her prominence during these years. In today’s world her glossy photograph would have monopolized the glamour magazines. She had been married twice, but both husbands suffered pre-mature deaths. Since then she lived with her brother, which led to rumors about their relationship. To quell the rumors, she married the king of Cilicia, but the marriage proved intolerable and she quickly deserted him and returned to Agrippa, which started the rumors again. Years later she had an affair with Titus, the son of the emperor Vespasian, who crushed the Jewish rebellion and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem.

The timing of their visit was opportune for Festus, who was in a difficult position after Paul made his appeal to Caesar. In reviewing the case, he found no charges worthy of a crime, yet “how can he explain to the emperor why he is forwarding an appeal of a person who appears innocent yet cannot simply be freed?”3 Thus he solicits the advice of the Jewish king as to what he should write, which some suggest is really a ploy. As Craig Keener suggests,

If they [Agrippa and Berenice] concur with Festus’ suspicion that this was a purely a religious affa