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Felix (Acts 24)
The name Felix means “happy” but history reveals him as a man who “indulged in every kind of barbarity and lust” and “exercised the power of a king in the spirit of a slave” (Tacitus, The Histories, 5.9). His wife Drusilla, daughter of Herod Agrippa, was as wicked as her husband.
What the apostle did, every minister ought to do. He selected a topic appropriate to the occasion.
CHS, 4:51
[Paul] preached Jesus Christ at the very moment he was persecuted for having preached Him. He preached even when in chains. He did more; he attacked his judge on the throne. He reasoned, he enforced, he thundered.
Jacques Saurin, “Paul Before Felix and Drusilla,” in Treasury of the World’s Great Sermons, ed. Warren W. Wiersbe, p. 505
Paul struck the chord of righteousness and justice which underlie the universe. Righteousness and judgment are the habitation [foundation] of God’s throne [Ps. 89:14; 97:2].
CEM, Bible Epitaphs, p. 144
There are those who can preach to the crowd. It takes a man with a vision of the Cross to preach to two people….
Gipsy Smith, As Jesus Passed By, p. 137
What a surprising scene, my brethren, is here presented to your view. The governor trembled, and the captive spoke without dismay. The captive made the governor tremble. The governor shuddered in the presence of the captive.
Saurin, p. 506
O marvelous power of a preached gospel! O mighty truth that God is with the ministry, when the kings of the earth that take counsel together are yet dismayed by it! Who is he that does not see here something more than human eloquence, when a prisoner becomes the judge and the prince upon the throne becomes the criminal?
CHS, 4:52
The purpose of preaching is not to make people comfortable, to cast them into a moral stupor, to fill their mind with illusion, but to awaken their conscience.
CEM, Bible Epitaphs, p. 147
Thank God for pain! It keeps off death many a time. And in like manner thank God for a swift conscience that speaks. It is meant to ring an alarm-bell to us and make us, as the Bible has it, “flee for refuge to the hope that is before us.”
Alexander Maclaren, A Year’s Ministry, p. 168
His thought is to get rid of Paul and his disturbing message for the present. But he does not wish to shut the door altogether. He gives a sop to his conscience to stop its barking, and he probably deceives himself as to the gravity of his present decision by the lightly-given and well-guarded promise with its indefiniteness, “When I have a more convenient season, I will send for thee.”
Maclaren, A Year’s Ministry, p. 167
Felix trembled, but he did not repent. Felix was a victim of tomorrow. If today has slain its thousands, tomorrow has slain its tens of thousands.
CEM, Bible Epitaphs, p. 141
All the great opportunities of life are opportunities of today and not of tomorrow.
CEM, Bible Epitaphs, p. 149
The road of bye-and-bye leads to the house of never.
Spanish Proverb