April 15, 2015 (Wednesday)
Our Wednesday evening Prayer Meeting and Bible Study will look carefully into Acts 9:1-19 tonight, and experience the excitement of Saul’s conversion and call to ministry.
Saul of Tarsus, a dedicated Pharisee, took the lead in persecuting those who believed Jesus to be the Messiah. He considered them heretics. With written authority from the Jewish High Priest, he headed for Damascus to arrest believers and bring them bound back to Jerusalem. On the road to Damascus, however, Jesus spoke to him from a blinding light, charging Saul with persecution of the Messiah himself.
Now temporarily blind, he was led by the hand to Damascus, where he was helped by a man named Ananias, a follower of Jesus Christ. Jesus had told him to do this. Ananias reluctantly obeyed the Lord’s order to go to Saul, baptize him, and help him get started in a ministry to gentiles.
This was the turning point in Saul’s life. He became a missionary to gentiles, and after several journeys to other lands, many years later returned to Jerusalem for worship. While there, he was attacked by a crowd that accused him of inciting hostility toward Judaism among the gentiles. He responded by telling the mob of his Damascus Road experience. They refused to listen and tried to kill him. Later, he told the story again to King Agrippa.
He had become known as Paul, his Roman name given to him at birth with his Jewish name, because he was born a Roman citizen. We may rest assured that these two accounts of Paul relating his conversion experience were not the only two times he did it. More than likely, Paul shared his testimony wherever he went, giving people the good news that Jesus is the Messiah. When he told his story, he always emphasized that this experience was his call from the Lord to tell gentiles about the Savior. He seemed to think of it more as his call to ministry than his conversion. It was a drastic conversion, however, and it was the pivotal event of his life.
Paul was sharing his own testimony when he wrote, “Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT).