Does the Bible say anything about teleportation?

'And when they came up out of the water, [the] Spirit of [the] Lord caught away Philip, and the eunuch saw him no more, for he went on his way rejoicing. But Philip was found at Azotus, and passing through he evangelized all the cities till he came to Caesarea' (vers. 39, 40). The miracle only established the new convert's faith, as doubtless it was wrought of God to do; for there is not a hint that Philip wished it, still less sought it in prayer. It was God for the honour of His Son in virtue of that Spirit's power which was working on earth; but surely not without a wise and gracious intent for the witness of it (and he was not alone) returning to his native land with the gospel of salvation. Abyssinia was thus to have the glad tidings of God concerning His Son; as Philip transported to Azotus (or Ashdod) abides the same simple-hearted indefatigable preacher of divine grace (ver. 40). For passing through he was evangelizing all the cities till he came to Caesarea. It is there the inspired history shows him to have lived, and his four daughters, long afterwards (Acts 21:8).

350 The Spirit of the Lord catches away Philip, and by the miraculous power of God he is found at Azotus. Time and space are nothing to God. From Azotus he evangelises in all the cities till he comes to Caesarea. Further on we find him stationed with his family at this city. He had by this time obtained the fair name of Evangelist.

Chapter 8:39 first calls for special remark. And here, I doubt not, it is designed, in rapidity and abruptness, and intentionally, to drop the idea of the person. It is not as if the Holy Ghost as a person came and took him. He was rapt, not by man, nor by human means, but by the sovereign power of the Holy Spirit. This was the character and manner of his rapture. He was rapt in spirit from the eunuch's sight; hence it is only said, he was found at Azotus. The article is intentionally and expressly excluded. I do not think, when it is Πνεῦμα Θεοῦ, or Κυρίου, God's Spirit, Jehovah's Spirit, that the object is to present a person, but a power, or agent emanating thence, as the spirit of a man. Many would call it a Hebraism; but I cannot accept mistakes on important points induced by Hebraisms.

The effect was rapid and decided. Going on their way, they reached water, near, it would seem (if the Palestine Exploration Society's map is correct), to the modern Tell Hesy [29] and the eunuch at once proposed to be baptised with Christian baptism. "See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptised?" Anxious to profess himself openly a disciple of the Lord Jesus, he commanded the chariot to stand still; and the two, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and he baptised him (Acts 8:36-38). Philip's mission to him had now ended. He had preached unto him Jesus. He had baptised him at his own desire. Then "the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip." He disappeared as suddenly, or more so, than he had come. The two who had met in the desert never met again on earth. The eunuch continued his homeward journey without deviating from his path by endeavouring to find out Philip. "He saw him no more" is the sacred writer's statement, who assigns the following as a reason; "for," as we should read (not, and), "he went on his way rejoicing." Philip had done for him all that he had to do. The eunuch had received what he wanted. He had gone to Jerusalem to worship. He had left that city without any knowledge of Christian truth. He met Philip by the way, had Jesus preached to him, and went home a professed disciple of the crucified, risen, and ascended Lord. Of more than this we have no certain knowledge, so must await a coming day to learn what results, if any, attended him in his country on his return, supposing, as we must, that he sought to spread the Christian faith.

Philip is caught away; the mere human teacher is not to take the place of the Divine. His coming and his departure are both well fitted to assure the new disciple how safely he may rest in the all-sufficiency that has thus met and ministered to him. Philip on his part is found at Azotus, the Philistine Ashdod; and from thence, with the joy in his heart of one who is taking the spoil from the strong one whom a Stronger has overcome, he evangelizes all the cities as far as Caesarea.

The prophet began to see these "visions of God" when among the captives by the river Chebar in the land of the Chaldeans (Ezek. 1:1-3). Ezekiel says that in these visions "brought He me into the land of Israel," that is, Ezekiel was merely transported there in spirit. The apostle John speaks similarly in the Revelation: "I became in the Spirit on the Lord's day"; "he carried me away in spirit to a desert"; "he carried me away in the Spirit, and set me on a great and high mountain" (Rev. 1:10; Rev. 17:3; Rev. 21:10). So we may say that it was the power of the Spirit of God that brought Ezekiel from the land of the Chaldeans to the land of Israel (Ezek. 40:2).

The entire allusion is as peculiar as wise and suited. "I know a man in Christ fourteen years ago." Faith does not boast of visions and revelations of the Lord, any more than of its doings: of trials and sufferings one may speak if compelled, and so too of that which appertains to every man in Christ, though one alone got the vision. So David said not a word about the lion and the bear which he was enabled to kill while engaged in his lowly task, till it was needful to allay the fears of others to God's glory; and the apostle only spoke many years after a wondrous experience which others less spiritual would have talked of everywhere for as many years or more. What would not the Corinthians or their misleaders have made of it?

Prophets of old have known what it is to look on scenes outside man's experience. So Isaiah, the year in which king Uzziah died, beheld the Lord on His throne with the Seraphim in attendance on His glory, that he might fittingly to the people bear witness of their evil but of the virgin-born Jehovah-Messiah who should establish the kingdom and deliver the people from their sins to God's glory. Ezekiel too was lifted up between earth and heaven and transported to Jerusalem in the visions of God and the temple (Ezek. 8 - 11), as afterwards to Chaldea (ver. 24), and finally to the land of Israel (Ezek. 40 - 48) for the future temple and city and division of the land. Nor is it only in the great Apocalyptic prophecy of the New Testament that we trace the analogy of these ways of the Spirit, but we see His power in catching away Philip bodily to Azotus or Ashdod, from the neighbourhood, one of the roads leading from Jerusalem to Gaza. As for the apostle, he says "(whether [in the] body, I know not; or whether out of the body, I know not: God knows), such an one caught up to the third heaven." It was not dubious, but transcendent, knowledge; and God who gave it hid from the apostle whether it was in spirit only or in bodily presence also. Certainly, if caught up like Philip, there was left such a sense of the glory as was too deep and bright for human words or for present circumstances. Body there or not, he was not hindered from feeling the glory to be beyond the measure of man. There the glorified will be to enjoy all with Christ at His coming, in bodies like His own; and there the disembodied saint goes to be with Him; there too Paul as a man in Christ, but Paul actually as apostle and prophet that we might learn now, was taken up. "And I know such a man (whether in [the] body or apart from the body, I know not: God knows), how that he was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words which [it is] not lawful for a man to utter." In the mysteries of the old heathen there were "unspeakable words," but they were strange forms of language to alarm and overawe the mind. Here the things forbade communication as rising completely in their nature above all that surrounds or is natural to us.

There is at first no vision of anything beside, not even of the throne upon which He sits, no living creatures, no wheels. We shall come to these directly, but we have to notice that here, first of all, we have the Lord Himself. It is He who puts forth the form of a hand, and taking the prophet by a lock of his head, the Spirit lifts him up between earth and heaven, and brings him in the visions of God to Jerusalem. Thus it is plain that all that follows here is a vision simply. It is a vision according to the truth, necessarily, because it is a vision of God; nevertheless, we have to remember that God looks forward as well as back, and that the judgments which are seen now to take place may be, in fact, as in the slaughter of those in the temple-courts and in the city, that which takes place afterwards, and not necessarily at the moment in which they are seen.

Again, at the eighth chapter, at the 3rd and 4th verses, "And He put forth the form of a hand, and took me by a lock of my head; and the Spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the visions of God unto Jerusalem, to the door of the inner gate that looketh toward the North, where was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy. And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, according to the vision that I saw in the plain." Here you have God's glory and the image that provoked Him to jealousy side by side. He has already been outside of the land, but now he is going to bear witness to the righteousness of His being outside. He brings Ezekiel — lifts him up by omnipotent power, and sets him again in Jerusalem, as though He would say to him, "I will vindicate to you the reason of my absence from that city where I promised My name should be forever."

So, impelled by the same energy, the prophet says: "The Spirit lifted me up and took me away and I went in the bitterness of my spirit, and the hand of Jehovah was strong upon me." The bitterness of God's judgment upon His people is still felt and this is no discord, when we know the heart that is behind the judgment — not slackened by it, but rather impelled; the anger against the rebellion of the people of God burning all the more within him who realizes that these are the people of God, and that God is robbed of His glory in them. The hand of Jehovah, of the unchangeable One, known as the Unchangeable in His very covenant name, this hand is strong upon him to enable him for the execution of the commission which has been given him.