Paul the apostle Part 2.
Acts 8:3, “As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and haling (dragging off) men and women committed (committing) them to prison.” Paul had become a blood intoxicated zealot breathing out rebuke and slaughter, against all Christians, Acts 9:1. His religion was a destructive zeal, his anger was fierceness, and his fury required victims.
On his journey to Damascus to search out Christians, suddenly a light from heaven shined around him. Those with Saul did not see Jesus, yet they heard his voice. Apparently the light and the voice were both different from any ordinary phenomena with which he and his companions had ever encountered.
Yet it is implied in Scripture that they were especially significant to Saul, and not those with him. Whatever it was, Saul was made inwardly aware of a presence revealed to him alone. Paul in Galatians 1:15-16 speaks distinctly of his conversion, he wrote these words,
“When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him (Jesus) among the heathen (Gentiles),” What other words could possibly express more exactly the mysterious circumstances that led to his conversion?
The only mention in the Epistles of Paul of any outward phenomena is spoken of in,
1 Corinthians 15:8, “Last of all He (Jesus) was seen of me.”
The manifestation of Jesus as the Son of God is clearly the main point in the narrative. It would be correct to say that Saul was then converted. What he once sought to destroy, he now was part of. I cannot imagine the awe and expectation he must have felt inwardly, and including that he was three days without his sight.
He left for Damascus an enemy of the cross, but now entered Damascus as a servant of the Lord Jesus. He now sought after the house of a Christian, possibly one that he had originally intended to persecute. Ananias was “a devout man according to the law,” but a believer in Jesus was directed by the Lord to visit Saul.
No-one can know what Ananias was told concerning this notorious persecutor, yet he obeyed, and went to Saul in the name of “the Lord Jesus, who had appeared to him in the way.”
Ananias than put his hands on Saul so that he would receive his sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost. Immediately he received his sight, than received the washing-away of his sins in baptism. He than broke his three days’ fast and was again strengthened.
He was at once received into the fellowship of the disciples and began without delay the work to which Ananias has designated him; and to the astonishment of all his hearers he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, declaring him to be the Son of God. “
Paul not thinking it necessary to receive authority from the apostles to preach went after his conversion into Arabia, and returned from there to Damascus. We know nothing about his visit to Arabia; how long he stayed; and for what purpose the Lord had him go.
The narrative in the Acts tells us that he was occupied in this work in Damascus with increasing vigor for “many days,” up to the time when imminent danger drove him from Damascus. We learn that the “many days” were at least a good part of “three years after which he was driven from Damascus.
From this point on Paul became an object of intense hostility to the unbelieving Jews in Damascus, where they resolved to kill him. The Jews lay in wait for him, watched the gates of the city that he might not escape. Knowing this, the disciples took him by night, and let him down in a basket from the wall.
Paul now traveled on to Jerusalem and because of his reputation as one who persecuted Christians, the disciples at first received him with suspicion; but soon after he was received through the office of Barnabas who became his sponsor to the Apostles and to the Church at Jerusalem, assuring them because of his conversion and his loyalty to the gospel in Damascus. Barnabas’s introduction removed the fears from the apostles, and Paul “was with them coming in and going out at Jerusalem.”
His education made him, like Stephen, a successful debater against the “Grecians” He would now speak boldly in the name of Jesus Christ, disputing also against the “Grecians” as in the Hellenistic Jews obviously with great success, for they also sought to take his life.
He was again urged to flee; and by way of Caesarea took off to Tarsus. In the Epistle to the Galatians, Paul adds certain particulars. He tells us that his motive for going up to Jerusalem rather than anywhere else was that he might see Peter; that he abode with him 15 days; that the only apostles he saw were Peter and James the Lord’s brother. Afterwards he came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, remaining unknown by face, though will known for his conversion to the churches in Judea which were in Christ.
After leaving Damascus because the Jews resolved to kill him; and his friends had contrived a way for him to escape, he fled to Jerusalem. At first he was received with suspicion by the disciples, but afterward was received through the office of Barnabas. After a short visit to Jerusalem in the year of the famine, 44 A.D., Paul and Barnabas were sent by the prophets and elders to the church at Antioch for the evangelization of Jews who lived there, and in far off other places.
From Seleucia they proceed on their first missionary expedition to the southern district of Asia Minor, Pamphylia, Pisidia, and Lycanonia where they met with considerable success in the preaching of the gospel.
It’s interesting to note how gradually the light of Christianity dawned on the mind of Paul. He did not grasp at once all of its grand design. It was not even by abstract reflection that he arrived at it. Circumstances of quite an outward sort forced him to the sublime conclusions of his creed.
It was when the Jews at Pisidian Antioch, engaged at his preaching the gospel indiscriminately to their Gentile fellow-townsmen and themselves, “contradicted and blasphemed” him that he boldly announced Christ as the universal Redeemer, the Redeemer of both the Jews, and the Gentiles.
After the return of Paul and Barnabas to Antioch, they continued to labor in that city for a long time, till dissentions having arisen about the circumcision of Gentiles converts, he, along with Barnabas and others, were chosen to go up to Jerusalem to get the opinion of the apostles and elders there on the question of circumcision of Gentiles, this about 51 A.D.
Paul and Barnabas now returned to Antioch, where they continued to teach and preach, till a yearning grew up in the heart of Paul to revisit his Gentile converts in Asia Minor. In this second expedition, Paul was accompanied by Silas instead of Barnabas, and traversed the whole of Asia Minor form south to north, evangelizing with great success, after which the two missionaries crossed the Aegean and landed in Europe, planting at Philippi, the capital of Thracian Macedonia, the first Christian church in that continent. The details of his visits to Thessalonica, Berea, Athens and Corinth are familiar to most Christians.
Again Paul was obliged to flee going to Tarsus the place of his birth, where is seems that he remained until Barnabas brought him to Antioch to assist in the work of evangelization that was going on in the city.
Phillip LaSpino www.seekfirstwisdom.com