More than one man has suggested that Paul went off to some sort of Arabian Desert School of Preaching shortly after his conversion. What exactly happened during that wilderness sojourn, we don’t know. But as much as I doubt that Paul went away to collect a Preaching Diploma, I am willing to concede that he probably needed time with the Lord to perfect his transformation from Pharisee to Preacher. Afterall, the other apostles spent three years with Jesus, why not Paul?
As a Jew, Paul’s dream of outpacing his contemporaries was exactly on track. He was trained by the best, established amongst the most conservative, and the most determined to stamp out the cult of Christianity. He believed that the teachings of the Galilean Carpenter were a collection of blasphemous sayings that had to be eradicated, and he was the man who was going to achieve it.
His Glory Train was on track and picking up speed.
Paul’s Damascus Road encounter with Jesus must have been the last thing he ever imagined would happen to him. At the moment of impact he would have preferred it to have been anybody else but Jesus. But there he was, sprawled out on the ground and face-to-face with the man whom he had blasphemed and whose followers he had terrorised.
Paul’s glory train was suddenly derailed and he knew it!
Luke reported:
Falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
“Who are you, Lord?” Saul said.
“I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting,” he replied. (Acts 9:4-5).
If ever a total paradigm shift was set in motion in the whole heart, soul, and mind, it was in Saul of Tarsus on that day. Of course, this was no accident. Paul was a man who, though originally absolutely wrong about Jesus’ identity, had always sort the will and righteousness of God in his heart.
Which goes to prove—”Seek and ye shall find!”
John Staiger
0 Comments