Philip ran up to the [Ethiopian eunuch’s] chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked. “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So, he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. The eunuch was reading this passage of Scripture: “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer is silent, so He did not open His mouth. In His humiliation He was deprived of justice. Who can speak of His descendants? For His life was taken from the earth.” The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus. (Acts 8:30–35, NIV 1984).
My Musings – “The Rosetta Stone is a broken part of a bigger stone slab, known as a stela. It has an official message called a decree carved into it (196 B.C.), in three different types of writing. The most important thing about the Rosetta Stone is that the decree is inscribed three times, with three different forms of writing, which finally allowed scholars to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs. When it was discovered (1799 A.D.), nobody knew how to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Because the inscriptions say the same thing in three different scripts, including Ancient Greek that scholars could read, the Rosetta Stone became a valuable key to deciphering the hieroglyphs.” (British Museum.org, July 2, 2026).
In a sense, as the text in Acts suggests, the Gospel of Jesus Christ (since recorded by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) is the “Rosetta Stone” of the Holy Scriptures. Without Christ, the Old Testament is, at best, an unfulfilled prophecy dating back nearly four millennia (Genesis 18:18, ca. 1898 B.C.). Furthermore, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles and Revelation would be undecipherable. Making no sense. But “we have the Lord Jesus Christ as a guide – in fact our best guide, for interpreting the Bible. His approach, His hermeneutics, teaches that He is the key reference point of the OT. This is especially true of the NT.” (“Hermeneutics,” Robert W. Yarbrough, The Reformation Study Bible, 2015).
My Advice – “Now to you who believe, this [Rosetta] stone [of Christ] is precious. But to those who do not believe, ‘the stone the builders rejected has become the capstone,’ and ‘a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.’ They stumble because they disobey the message.” (1 Peter 2:7–8, NIV 1984). What message is disobeyed? “If you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.” (John 8:24, NIV 1984). Who did He claim to be? The One quoted of (Isaiah 53) in Acts 8 and the One prophesied in Genesis 18.
Do not allow yourself to stumble. Do not reject the capstone of salvation.
