Bible Commentaries
Galatians 1

Verses 1-17

GALATIANS

I

AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

Galatians 1:1-17.

The letter to the Galatians is one of the second group of Paul’s letters. The first group consists of 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and this group, mainly on the great controversy with Judaizing Christians, consists of 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans.

On the letter to the Galatians we have abundant, good and accessible literature. The best book is by Lightfoot, and every preacher ought to have it in his library. I also commend Luther on Galatians. Galatians was the storehouse of Luther from which he drew the weapon of the Reformation. In short homilies he commented on this letter. His comments make a book of considerable size. Luther’s Commentary on Galatians is very valuable in showing the crucial point at issue between the Protestants and the Romanists in the time of the Reformation. Its German style makes heavy reading to an Anglo-Saxon. John Wesley said it surprised him more than any other book of fame. Perhaps a large part of his surprise grew out of the fact that he and Luther were opposed on the doctrines of grace. The third book which I commend is Dr. Malcolm McGregor’s Divine Authority of Paul’s Writings. He uses the letter to the Galatiana more than any other part of the Scriptures.

This letter was evidently written A. D. 57 or possibly 56. It was written from Corinth or from Macedonia, with a strong probability in favor of Corinth. The letter to the Galatians bears the relation to the letter to the Romans that 2 Peter does to Jude, and that Colossians does to the Ephesians. The chief topic in Galatians and Romans is largely the same. It is as if the letter to the Galatians were a fiery, offhand sermon, and after the storm of combat had passed away the preacher had quietly and calmly prepared a masterly treatise on the same subject, Romans being the great treatise and Galatians the offhand discussion.

The occasion of the writing of the letter is very much the same as that of 2 Corinthians: Paul had been challenged as an apostle and his gospel assailed by the emissaries from. Jerusalem. There are shades of difference between the issue at Corinth on this subject and the issue in the churches of Galatia and the church at Rome. But the most pronounced form of Judaistic teaching as contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ is the form that he combats in this letter. He got word that these churches had apostatized from what he considered the gospel, and had gone over root and branch to the Judaizers.

Here arises an Important question which in modern times has developed considerable controversy. Does the New Testament use the word "Galatia" in its ethnological sense or in its political sense? If it means Galatia as a place where the Galatians proper lived, there is very little reference in Acts to Paul’s preaching there. If it means the Roman province, including Galatia proper and certain sections of Phrygia and Lycaonia, then the churches in Galatia were the churches at Lystra, Derbe, and Antioch of Pisidia. We have a full account in Acts of the establishment of these churches. Dr. Ramsay, a very brilliant modern writer, has written a book to show that when Paul uses the term, "Galatia," he uses it in the sense of the Roman province inhabited by the Galatians. About 25 B.C. Asia Minor fell under the power of Rome, which, disregarding the old-time ethnological boundaries relating to nations, established provinces for purposes of government, sometimes including three or four of these nations. Ramsay makes a remarkably strong argument which has never been satisfactorily answered. But he leaves unanswered some strong internal evidences on the other side. For example: (1) It is hard to harmonize the contents of this letter with the account in Acts of the establishment of the churches in Antioch of Pisidia, Lystra, and Derbe. (2) All the characteristics of the people addressed in this letter fit better the Celtic population of Galatia proper. Like other Celts, whether in Gaul, Wales, or Ireland, their emotions were easily excited and as quickly subsided. (See Conybeare and Howson’s Life and Epistles of Paul on this point.) They were intensely emotional, easily enthused, bubbling over like a mountain spring, variable, and illogical. So we commend the research and scholarship of Dr. Ramsay and respect his masterly argument, yet many, in view of the counter arguments, deny that he has fully sustained the contention. While I myself am charmed and delighted with his book, and sometimes carried away almost to the point of agreement with him, yet, in spite of my prepossessions in his favor, the pendulum swings back to the old position that Paul is writing to Galatians proper, and not to a different people artificially enclosed in the Roman province of Galatia. The silence in Acts concerning his establishing real Galatian churches is no more than its silence concerning much of his work in other places.

Now we come to a matter of history. How do we account for such a multitude of Gauls colonized in Asia Minor? There are three words used to describe these people: Celts, Gauls, and Galatians. The Galatians evidently came from the territory that we now call France. Caesar tells us much of these Gauls – a restless people, bent on changes, migrating to broader fields. Earlier Roman history tells us that a great wave of these people crossed the Alps, swept over Italy, and under Brennus captured Rome itself. Later they passed into Greece and Macedonia, and a strong band, managing to get shipping, crossed the Bosporus into Asia Minor and settled a strip of country northwest of Tarsus about 200 miles wide and of considerable length. They went even farther and fought a great battle with the king of the Syrians, but were defeated. They were unlike the Romans, the Phrygians, or the Greeks – they were Gauls. An Irishman is a Galatian – quick, passionate, fickle. We have in this letter to deal with a class of people unlike any other that the gospel has yet reached. It is strange that Luther in his commentary makes these Galatians Teutons, or Germans. The latter shows when Paul first preached to them how impressible they were, subject to quick, deep emotion. It was easy to get a foothold among them, and easy to lose it.

The occasion of Paul’s preaching among them, as we learn from the letter itself and other sources, was providential; that he was taken, when trying to get to another point, with a great sickness – that thorn in the flesh – so that he was unable to travel because of his almost total blindness and feebleness, and that his preaching to them resulted in marvelous manifestations. The account harmonizes with the marvels of the recent great revival in Wales or with what has been called "the sanctified row" in a Methodist camp meeting. Nowhere else in Paul’s ministry was there such enthusiasm – such demonstrations in receiving his message. We learn in Acts of two visits that Paul made to Galatia.

The genuineness of the book has never been questioned. Men who are ready to deny the authenticity of other books of the Bible all agree that this is genuinely Pauline. First and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans have never been questioned. The letter seems to be divided into the following outline:

1. Introduction (Galatians 1:1-5).

2. Historical narrative (Galatians 1:6-2:1-21) in which he defends his gospel and apostolic authority.

3. The doctrinal part of the epistle (Galatians 3-4), relating to justification by faith without works.

4. Galatians 5-6 are devoted to exhortations based on the doctrine.

Let us take up the introduction: "Paul, an apostle (not from men, neither through man, but through Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead)." Even in the introduction he strikes the keynote of the letter. In that parenthesis of the first sentence he marches square up against the opposition, the Judaizers having contended that he was neither one of the twelve, nor commissioned by them. He concedes the fact, but turns it in his favor. He is an apostle though not of men, not as Matthias, who was elected, but he received his apostleship direct from the Lord. Usually Paul leads up to his subject by gradual approaches, but here he abruptly leaps into the middle of things. This letter is like dropping a coal of fire into a powder magazine.

"I marvel that ye are so quickly removing from him that called you in the grace of Christ unto a different gospel; which is not another gospel: only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ." At the outset he recognizes that this revolt did not originate with them. It was superinduced, imported. Nor did he believe that it was merely human opposition. It was a matter of amazement to him that people who had welcomed him so lovingly, heard him so tenderly and obeyed him so joyously, should, in such a short time, be switched off completely from the true gospel. All through the letter we see that the wonder is in his mind, and he evidently attributes it to some power more than human: "O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you, that you should turn a somersault in theology and doctrine so quickly?"

He does not mince words: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema." There is but one gospel – the gospel of grace through Jesus Christ. Anything different is not gospel, though an angel brings it. It is to be rejected, and the one who brings it should be counted as accursed from God. Paul was a mild man, exceedingly courteous and patient, suffering a great many personal indignities, but when one struck at the gospel he preached he was full of indignation and fiery wrath, because he believed that gospel to be the only hope of the lost world: "As we have said before, so say I now again, if any man preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let him be anathema."

The skeptic argues against the New Testament because so much of it is devoted to issues local and transitory. But this is to misread and misinterpret human history. The natural man is ever ready to prefer works to grace. If he cannot have a salvation all of works, then he insists on a salvation partly of works and partly of grace. He will at any time prefer rites and ceremonies to spiritual things. In medieval time, the dark ages preceding and necessitating the Reformation of the sixteenth century, all Europe under Roman Catholicism, reverted to the old covenant with its priesthood, sacraments, types, burdensome ritual and imposing customs and ceremonies, mixed up with compromises and borrowings from heathendom around. Luther made this letter the banner of the reformation for Central Europe, and we need it now as much as when Paul wrote it or Luther used it. There are hundreds of pulpits today that do not preach the gospel, and even some Baptists are aping Rome.

I am reminded of the interview I had with Sam Jones when he came to Waco. He was sick and I called on him. The first thing he asked me was, "What do you think of me? What do you think of my gospel?"

"I think," I said, "you are a thousand miles from the gospel. I would suggest that when you get back to that big congregation you preach a gospel sermon for variety, just to show what a different thing it is from what you are preaching. You are preaching pretty good morality. Not only are you not preaching the gospel, but you are creating a false impression on the public mind, that heeding what you preach they will be saved."

He burst out laughing and said, "I like you. You come to hear me when I get well and I will preach a gospel sermon."

He did preach a really great gospel sermon on the blood of Jesus Christ. But he stopped at that. In his next sermon he was picking his teeth before the audience and said: "Look here, the thing to do is to join the church and then get religion. Join the church whether you have any more religion than a horse." Those were his exact words.

I turned to Dr. King, a Presbyterian, and said, "I think we just as well leave."

"Yes," he said, "I think so."

And I did not go back any more.

Paul felt just that way – that the salvation of men was a matter too important to be trifled with, and there was only one thing that could save men and that was the gospel of Jesus Christ; that the church and ordinances were for the saved, not for the unsaved; that the gospel of Christ is a distinct thing from the moral or ceremonial law of Moses; that the preacher should preach the gospel of salvation, grace, and freedom, and then go back to the weak and beggarly elements of the types was to Paul a matter of amazement.

He tells us how he got his gospel: “For I make known to you, brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by me, that it is not after man." In other words, "I did not educate myself into this gospel and did not get my conception of it from any man on earth, but by direct revelation Jesus Christ made known to me what the gospel is." Some men now get their conceptions from reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Paul did not; they were not then written. Some men get their conceptions from hearing others who had heard Christ. But the gospel facts were communicated directly to Paul, and that is why I insist on saying, "Five gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul" – and Paul’s gospel is the most comprehensive of all. Note the beginning and the end of each gospel: Mark commences with Christ’s public ministry and stops at Christ’s resurrection. Matthew commences at Abraham and stops with the resurrection. Luke commences with Adam and stops with Paul in the city of Rome. John commences in eternity before the world was and stops with the revelation of paradise regained. Paul commences where John does in eternity and goes beyond him to the turning over of the kingdom to the Father. Paul shows in Corinthians how he received his knowledge of the Lord’s Supper and his gospel: "For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread; and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, This is my body, which is for you: this do in remembrance of me. In like manner also he took the cup, after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood; this do, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 11:23-25). "I make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye received, wherein also ye stand, by which also ye are saved, if ye hold fast the word which I preached unto you, except ye believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). As bearing upon the history of Paul, and as bearing upon the nature of the gospel that he preached, the letter to the Galatians contains some historical facts of incalculable importance that can be found nowhere else.

He proceeds in the rest of chapter I to recite what had been his attitude before his conversion; that he persecuted the church; that he had advanced beyond others in the Jewish religion, and was exceedingly zealous in the traditions of the fathers. In other words, these Galatians were going back where Paul was before he was converted. He adds that his being an apostle and in the ministry was not an afterthought with God, as some people teach. He scouts any such idea. He said, "God set me apart from my mother’s womb." He was born about the time Christ was born. The mission of Paul was as clear to omniscience as the mission of Christ. To him all great things root back in eternity – in the divine purpose, in election, in predestination, in foreordination. He could not conceive of God as being surprised by some new set of events that had accidentally come to the front, necessitating a new adjustment to fit these unexpected events. "And called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles." Notice the connection of the thought: "I was set apart from my mother’s womb. When I got to be a man he revealed his Son to me, that is, in my conversion, and called me to preach to certain people."

He combats one of their objections that his information was secondhand: "Straightway I conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went I up to Jerusalem to them that were apostles before me; but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned into Damascus." There is a seeming conflict between Luke’s "Straightway he preached in Damascus" (Acts 9:20), and Paul’s "Straightway" (Galatians 1:16). He did commence to preach in Damascus, but he did not confer with anyone, nor go up to Jerusalem to know if the men there would approve of what had been done, but he says, "I went away into Arabia," that is, he went to Mount Sinai, and there, on the scene of the giving of the law, which these Jews are trying to persuade the Galatians is the way of salvation, he received his gospel and studied out the great problems of the meaning of the Sinaitic covenant and its contrast with the new covenant which he discusses in this letter in a way that we find nowhere else in the Bible.

The Galatian churches were going back to Mount Sinai to be circumcised, to keep the whole law as a way of life, to put themselves in bondage to a yoke that their fathers were not able to bear – going back to a covenant that gendered bondage and ended in death. He is compelled to say, "I went away into Arabia." In other words, "God sent me there before he sent me to preach, that I should understand the difference between the law and the gospel; that I should, on the scene of the giving of the law, comprehend the purposes of that law."

QUESTIONS

1. What books constitute the first group of Paul’s letters, and what books the second?

2. What are three books on Galatians commended?

3. What is the date of his letter?

4. Where written?

5. What relation does this letter bear to the letter to the Romana? Give examples of such relation.

6. What was the occasion of this letter?

7. Where was Galatia, what do we know from Acts about its people, and what churches were in Galatia?

8. What is Dr. Ramsay’s contention, and what your reply?

9. Who were the Galatians, and what their characteristics?

10. Give an account of their migration into Asia Minor.

11. What was the occasion of Paul’s preaching to them, and what the results?

12. Locate in Acts the account of two visits that Paul made to Galatia.

13. What of the genuineness of the book?

14. Give a brief outline of the book.

15. What charge against him may be inferred from his introduction, and how does he reply to it?

16. How did Paul regard his gospel?

17. What is the doctrinal importance of this letter, and what the author’s illustration?

18. What is the fifth gospel, and how does it compare with the other four as to their beginning and end?

19. What was Paul’s attitude before his conversion, and what great doctrine does he make the basis of his conversion and call into the ministry?

20. How does Paul answer their charge that his gospel was second band?

21. Where in Acts may we insert the history in Galatians 1:16-17?

22. Why did Paul go into Arabia before he commenced to preach, how long there, and what the bearing of these facts on Christianity? (See author’s sermon on, "But I Went into Arabia.")

Verses 5-24

XVIII

SAUL – FROM HIS CONVERSION TO HIS ORDINATION

See list of references below.

The theme of this section is the history of Saul from his conversion and call to the apostleship, up to his ordination as an apostle to the Gentiles; that is, it extends from Acts 9 over certain parts of Acts up to chapter 13, but not all of the intervening chapters of Acts. The scriptures are Acts 9:17-30; Acts 11:25-30; Acts 22:17-21; Galatians 1:5-24; Acts 15:23-41; 2 Corinthians 11:23-27; 2 Corinthians 11:32-33; 2 Corinthians 12:1-4; Acts 26:20, which you have to study very carefully in order to understand this section. The time covered by this period is at least nine years, probably ten years, of which we have very scanty history. We have to get a great part of our history from indirect references, and therefore it takes a vast deal of study to make a connected history of this period.

Two scriptures must here be reconciled, Acts 9:19-26 and Galatians 1:15-18. The particular points conflicting are that Luke in Acts 9 seems to say that immediately, or straightway, after his conversion Saul commenced to preach at Damascus, and the Galatian passage says that straightway after his conversion he went into Arabia and remained there a long time before he returned to Damascus. The precise question involved in the account is, Did Paul commence to preach "straightway" after his conversion, as Luke seems to represent it, or did he wait nearly three years after his conversion before he began to preach? Luke’s account in Acts 9 seems on its face to be a continuous story from Damascus back to Jerusalem, without a note of time, except two expressions: "And he was certain days with the disciples that were at Damascus," and then a little lower down he uses the expression, "when many days were fulfilled." Luke’s account says nothing about Saul’s leaving Damascus, his long absence and return there. In a very few words only he tells the story of three years. With his account only before us, we would naturally infer that Saul began to preach in Damascus "straightway" after his conversion, but we would also infer that this preaching was continuous there after he commenced, until he escaped for his life to go to Jerusalem. But the Galatian account shows that he left Damascus straightway after his conversion, went into Arabia, returned to Damascus, and then took up his ministry there, and, after three years, went to Jerusalem. This account places the whole of his Damascus ministry after his return there.

The issue, however, is not merely between Luke’s "straightway" and the Galatian "straightway," though this is sharp, but so to insert the Galatian account in the Acts account as not to mar either one of the accounts, and yet to intelligently combine the two into one harmonious story. In Hackett on Acts, "American Commentary," we find the argument and the arrangement supporting the view that Paul commenced to preach in Damascus before he went into Arabia, and in chapter II of Farrar’s Life of Paul we find the unanswerable argument showing that Paul did not commence to preach until after his return from Arabia, and that his whole ministry at Damascus was after that time, and then was continued until he escaped and went to Jerusalem.

The Hackett view, though the argument is strong and plausible in some directions, breaks down in adjustment of the accounts, marring both of them, and failing utterly in the combination to make one intelligent, harmonious story. The author, therefore, dissents strongly from the Hackett view and supports strongly that of Farrar. In other words, we put in several verses of the letter to the Galatians right after Acts 9:19.

Let us take Acts 9, commencing with Acts 9:17: "And Ananias departed, and entered into the house; and laying his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, who appeared unto thee in the way which thou earnest, hath sent me, that thou mayest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And straightway there fell from his eyes as it were scales, and he received his sight; and he arose and was baptized; and he took food and was strengthened. And he was certain days with the disciples that were at Damascus." And Galatians 1:15 reading right along: "But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles; straightway I conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went I up to Jerusalem to them that were apostles before me: but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned unto Damascus." All of that must follow Acts 9:19. Then we go back and read, beginning at Acts 9:20: "And straightway in the synagogues he proclaimed Jesus, that he is the Son of God," that is, straightway after he returned from Arabia. Then read to Acts 9:25, and turn back to Galatians 1:18: "Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas." Then go with Acts 9:26: "And when he was come to Jerusalem, he essayed to join himself to the disciples." The following is a harmony of these scriptures:

It is intensely important that you have this harmony of all these scriptures. You divide all of this into four parts just like the Broadus method in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I have in four parallel columns made the harmony complete in the passages mentioned, showing how far to read, and then taking up the one that supplies, so that one can read the entire story without a break. In column 1 of this harmony read Acts 9:17-19; in column 2, Galatians 1:15-17; returning to column 1 read Acts 9:20-25 and 2 Corinthians 11:32-33; then in column 2, Galatians 1:18 (except the last clause); then back to column I and read Acts 9:26-27; in column 2, Galatians 1:18 (last clause) and Galatians 1:19-20; then back to column I, read Acts 9:28-29 (except last clause); then in column 3 read Acts 22:17-21; in column 1, Acts 9:29 (last clause) to Acts 9:31; in column 2, Galatians 1:21-24; in column 4, Acts 11:25-30; Acts 12:25. This is the harmonious story of Paul. Then read for purposes of investigation, Acts 15:23-41 in order to get the information about his Cilician work, also read 2 Corinthians 11:23-27 to find out what part of the sufferings there enumerated took place in Cicilia. Then read 2 Corinthians 12:1-4, as this pertains to Cilicia. Then read Acts 26:20 and ask the question, When did he do this preaching in Judea, and was it during his Cilician tour? This gives all the scriptures. Carefully read it over in the order in which the scriptures are given. It makes the most perfect story that I have ever read. It does not mar any one of the four separate cases. It does combine into one harmonious story and gives us an excellent harmony of these scriptures.

The value of this harmony is very evident. This arrangement mars no one of the several accounts of the story, but does combine them into one harmonious story, and provides an explanation for Luke’s "certain days," "many days," the Galatian "three years," Luke’s "straightway," and the Galatian "straightway."

With this harmony before us, we can see why Luke is so very brief on the account of Paul in Acts 9. His plan is to tell the story of the Jerusalem church up to the end of Acts 12. All matters apart from that are briefly noted, and only as they connect with Jerusalem, the center. But from Acts 13 he makes Antioch the center, and we are told of his arrest, and later on he shifts back to Jerusalem, and then back to Rome, and thus winds up the history. Remember the centers: First center, Jerusalem; second center, Antioch; third center, Jerusalem, and fourth center, Rome.

Saul did not commence preaching at Damascus immediately after his conversion because he had nothing to preach. He had not yet received the gospel. A man cannot by sudden wrench turn from propagating the Pharisee persecution to propagating the gospel of Jesus Christ. He must have the gospel first, and must receive it direct from the Lord. After you take up the New Testament passages showing how he received the gospel, you will see that he did not receive it while at Damascus. Indeed, we have the most positive proof that he did not receive it there.

But why did he go into Arabia, where in Arabia, and how long there? Being willing to accept Christ as his Saviour, he needs time for adjustment. He needs retirement. He needs, like every preacher needs after conversion, his preparation to preach and to know what to preach. He went into Arabia for this purpose, and, of course, Arabia here means the Sinaitic Peninsula, or Mount Sinai. Up to his conversion he had been preaching Moses and the law given on Mount Sinai. Now he goes into Arabia to Mount Sinai, the very place where God gave the law to Moses, to study the law and the gospel, and comes back to us, having received of the Lord the gospel as explained in Galatians.

There are some analogous cases. The other apostles had to have three years of preparation, and under the same teacher, Jesus. They would have done very poor preaching if they had started immediately after their conversion. Jesus kept them right there, and trained them for three years. Now Paul commences with the three years’ training, and he goes to Arabia and receives the three years’ preparation under the same teacher, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. He not only knows the facts of the gospel as we know them from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but as one that was there right at the time, and he gets it firsthand from the Lord Jesus Christ himself telling him all the important facts bearing upon the remaining of the incarnation of Jesus, where he came from in coming to the earth, how much he stooped, what the coming signified, of his death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension. We get the harmony of the gospel by studying the books, but he did not get it as we do, but by direct revelation from the Lord Jesus Christ. He introduces a statement concerning the revelation that he received, and he is careful to tell the Corinthian church how that Christ died, was buried, and rose again in three days. It took three years and a half in the analogous cases of other apostles.

Elijah went into Arabia and into this very mountain when he was perplexed; and there came an earthquake, and God was not in the earthquake; and there came a fire, and God was not in the fire, but there came a still, small voice showing Elijah what he must do. Take the case of Moses when the revelation was made to him that he was to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Egyptians. God told him the methods and the means and sent him into the same Sinaitic Peninsula. He stayed there forty years in study and preparation, and then delivered Israel.

John the Baptist remained in the wilderness thirty years in order to preach six months. Neither did Jesus open his mouth to preach a sermon until after his baptism, and was led into the wilderness and tempted of the devil, and then came back and immediately commenced to preach. More hurtful mistakes are made by unprepared people taking hold of the Scriptures than in any other way. A certain colonel, when asked by a zealous young preacher, "Well, colonel, what do you think of my sermon," answered, "Zealous, but weak."

We have only to read Galatians 4 to see the significance of Sinai and Jerusalem, which shows the revolutions which took place in his mind while he was in Arabia. If the apostle Paul had not gone into Arabia, but had been sent to Judea under the old covenant, which is Jerusalem, as Jerusalem now is, the Christian world would have been a Jewish sect. You have only to read to see how certain of the apostles clung to the forms and customs of the Jewish law and claimed that one could not be a Christian without becoming a Jew and being circumcised. What would have been the effect if God had not selected this great life and revealed to him the ministry of the gospel that had been rejected by the Jews and given to the Gentiles, so that foreigners and aliens might become citizens and saints? For a more elaborate discussion of this subject see the author’s sermon on the Arabian visit.

Just before the ministry at Damascus he went into Arabia and returned. He was in Arabia over two, perhaps three years. As he stayed about three years before he went back to Jerusalem, his ministry was not very long in Damascus. The record says, "straightway in the synagogues he proclaimed Jesus," etc. What kind of sermons did they have? The Jews over at Damascus that were still holding to the Mosaic law could not yet understand this revolutionary preaching, and right there at Damascus, he received one of the five Jewish scourgings that are mentioned in 2 Corinthians, which gives a list of the number of times he received the forty stripes save one, and the number of times beaten with the Roman rods, and the number of times scourged with the Jewish scourge. Finding the scourging was not sufficient, they laid a plot against him. They conspired and set a watch at every gate all around the city to kill him. The walls at Damascus have houses built on them, as you can see to this day. They put him in a basket and from a window in the upper story they letrbim down by the wall. Aretas was king of Damascus at this time) and he stationed soldiers at every gate to keep watch, and while they were watching the gates, Paul escaped from the window in an upper story, as given in the thrilling account of 2 Corinthians 11:32-33. Also Luke gives the account, saying that the brethren let him down in a basket by the wall. Now he being let down, started to Jerusalem. Three years have elapsed since he left there, a persecutor, and he returns now a preacher of the Lord Jesus Christ. That presents this connected account.

But why did he want to go to Jerusalem to see Peter? Commentaries say he wanted to get information from Peter; Catholics say that Peter was Pope. Whatever he wanted to get, I think he derived nothing from Peter. When he came there they expressed distrust of him. If he had commenced to preach at Damascus "straightway" after his conversion, in three years’ time some notice would have gotten to Jerusalem, and there would not have been this distrust when he got there. Only one had heard of this change and his beginning to preach, and that was Barnabas, of the Jewish church. When Barnabas related Paul’s experience, they received him and he went in and out among them. But he was there only two weeks.

He commenced immediately to preach to the Grecians, and it stirred up the people as it did at Damascus, and they were so intensely stirred that they laid a plan to kill him. So he left, and there are two reasons for his leaving. When the brethren saw the Jews were about to kill him, they sent him to Caesarea and over to Tarsus. That is one of the reasons for his leaving. Paul gives an entirely different reason. He says, "And it came to pass when I was come again to Jerusalem, even while I prayed in the Temple, I was in a trance, and Jesus came unto me saying, Make haste and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem, for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me. Get thee far hence and preach to the Gentiles," and he, therefore, went.

Here was the Cilician ministry, its sufferings and its revelations. He was over there five years, and some of the sufferings enumerated in 1 Corinthians II are bound to have occurred in that period; some of the shipwrecks, some of the scourges, some of these stonings. In 2 Corinthians 12 he says, "I knew a man in Christ, fourteen years ago," so if you drop back fourteen years you find yourself there with Paul in Cilicia. In 2 Corinthians 12:1-4 we find the revelations that occurred there. One of the revelations there was that marvelous revelation that he received (2 Corinthians 12:4): "How that he was caught up into Paradise." Here the question arises, Was it in this tour that he preached on the coasts of Judea? In Acts he seems to say that he preached at Damascus first and then at Jerusalem, and in Cilicia, and on the coasts of Judea. We have no history of his preaching on the Judean coasts beyond his statement, and if he did not preach on the coasts of Judea at that time, when do we find a period in his life before that where he could have preached on the Judean coasts? On his way to the Jerusalem conference. Therefore, he says, "While I was in Cilicia, and the five years I was at Tarsus, and just a little way from Tarsus on the Judean coasts."

Let us consider the Antioch ministry. The record says Barnabas had gone to Tarsus in order to find Saul and bring him back with him, and that Barnabas and Saul preached a year at Antioch. A great many were brought into the church. It was the first time in the world where Jew and Gentile were in the same church together, socially, eating and drinking with each other. But Paul now makes his second visit to Jerusalem. The last of chapter II tells us that Agabus, one of the prophets, foretold a drought in Judea, and Paul and Barnabas took a collection over to them. Later, when Paul is making his last visit to Jerusalem, Agabus meets him and gives that remarkable prophecy which we find in Acts 21, about what would happen to Paul if he went to Jerusalem, he having received the revelation from the Holy Spirit. But the condition of Jerusalem when he arrived was awful. Herod, as we find in Acts 12, was persecuting the church, and had killed James and imprisoned Peter. Paul comes just at that time. On his return to Antioch he finds a new companion, Mark.

The Romanists place here Peter’s first visit to Rome. They take two passages of scripture, one Acts 2, where Peter visits all parts, and they say when he left Jerusalem this time he went to Rome, and got back to Jerusalem in time for that big council in Acts 15. So far as Bible history goes, there is not a bit of testimony that Peter ever saw Rome. I think he did, but we do not get it from the Bible.

Here arises another question, Did the shock of our Lord’s appearance to Saul on the way to Damascus, likely injure him physically in a permanent way, and permanently affect his sensibilities? My opinion is that it did. He was never a strong man after that. His eyes always gave him trouble. Though the scales fell from his eyes, and he was not entirely blind, his eyes were weak, and he had to grope his way in walking. There are two pictures of Paul which greatly contrast his physical appearance. Raphael gives us a famous cartoon of Paul at Athens, and one of the most famous pictures of the great apostle. We find a copy of it in most Bible illustrations, certainly in any Roman Catholic Bible. Another picture is by the artist, Albrecht Durer. It is called a medallion, a carved picture, and it presents a little, ugly, weak, bald-headed, blear-eyed Jew. Durer’s picture is the one that fits Paul’s account of himself, and not Raphael’s.

I here commend, in addition to Conybeare and Howson’s Life of Paul and Farrar’s History, Lightfoot on Galatians.

QUESTIONS

1. What is the theme of this section?

2. What is the scriptures?

3. What is the time covered by this period?

4. What two scriptures must here be reconciled?

5. What is the problem here?

6. What is the Hackett view of it?

7. What is the real solution of it?

8. Show how the scriptures are made to fit this scheme.

9. How may we show the harmony of these scriptures?

10. What is the value of this harmony?

11. Why did not Saul commence preaching at Damascus immediately after his conversion?

12.Why did he go into Arabia, where in Arabia, & how long there?

13. What are the analogous cases cited?

14.What was the added value of this preparation to Saul?

15.What sermon commended in this connection & have you read it?

16. Describe the ministry at Damascus.

17. Why did he want to go to Jerusalem to see Peter?

18. Explain the distrust there & its bearing on preceding question.

19. How long was he there?

20. What of his ministry while there?

21. What two reasons for his leaving?

22. How long was the Cilician ministry, and what its sufferings and its revelations?

23. Was it in this tour that be preached on the coasts of Judea?

24. Describe the Antioch ministry, and how long was it?

25. What carried Paul on his second visit to Jerusalem, and when does Agabus again appear in this history?

26. What was the condition of Jerusalem when he arrived?

27. Where do the Romanists place Peter’s first visit to Rome?

28. On Paul’s return to Antioch, what new companion had he?

29. Did the shock of our Lord’s appearance, to Saul on the way to Damascus likely injure him physically in a permanent way, and permanently affect his sensibilities?

30. What two pictures of Paul greatly contrast his physical appearance, and which is most likely true to nature?

31. What special authority on this period, in addition to Conybeare and Howson, and Farrar’s History, commended?

Verse 13

XVI

SAUL, THE PERSECUTOR

Acts 7:57-60; Acts 8:1-4; Acts 22:4-5; Acts 22:19-20; Acts 26:9-11; 1 Corinthians 15:9; Galatians 1:13; Galatians 1:22-24.

In a preceding chapter on Stephen we have necessarily considered somewhat a part of the matter of this chapter, and now we will restate only enough to give a connected account of Saul. In our last discussion we found Saul and other members of his family residents in Jerusalem, Saul an accomplished scholar, a rabbi, trained in the lore of the Jewish Bible and of their traditions, a member of the Sanhedrin, an extreme Pharisee, flaming with zeal, and aggressive in his religion, an intense patriot, about thirty-six years old, probably a widower, stirred up and incensed on account of the progress of the new religion of Jesus.

In considering this distinguished Jew in the role of a persecutor, we must find, first of all, the occasion of this marvelous and murderous outbreak of hatred on his part at this particular juncture, and the strange direction of its hostility. On three all-sufficient grounds we understand why Saul did not actively participate in the recent Sadducean persecution. First, the issue of that persecution was the resurrection, and on this point a Pharisee could not join a Sadducean materialist. Second, the motive of that persecution was to prevent the break with Rome, and Saul as a Pharisee wanted a break with Rome. Third, the direction of that persecution was mainly against the apostles and Palestinian Christians, who, so far, had made no break with the Temple and its services and ritual, or the customs of Moses. To outsiders they appeared as a sect of the Jews, agreeing, indeed, with the Pharisees on many points, and while they were hateful in their superstition as to the person of the Messiah, they were understood to preach a Messiah for Jews only and not for Gentiles. That is why Saul did not join the Sadducean persecution – because of the issue of it, because of the motive of it, and because of the direction of it.

1. Five causes stirred him up to become a persecutor: First, the coming to the front of Stephen, the Hellenist, whose preaching evidently looked to a Messiah for the world, and not only looked to a break with Jerusalem and the Temple, but the abrogation of the entire Old Covenant, or at least its supercession by a New Covenant on broad, worldwide lines that made no distinction between a Jew and a Greek. That is the first cause of the persecuting spirit of Saul.

2. Stephen’s Messiah was a God-man and a sufferer, expiating sin, and bringing in an imputed righteousness through faith in him wrought by the regenerating Spirit, instead of a Jewish hero, seated on David’s earthly throne, triumphant over Rome, and bringing all nations into subjection to the royal law. This is the difference between the two Messiahs. So that kind of a Messiah would be intensely objectionable to Saul.

3. Stephen’s preaching was making fearful inroads among the flock of Saul’s Cilicean synagogue, and sweeping like a fire among the Israelites of the dispersion, who were already far from the Palestinian Hebrews.

4. Some of Saul’s own family were converted to the new religion, two of them are mentioned in the letter to the Romans as being in Christ before him, and his own sister, judging from Acts 23, was already a Christian.

5. Saul’s humiliating defeat in the great debate with Stephen.

These are the five causes that pushed the man out who had been passive in the other persecution, now to become active in this persecution. They account for the vehement flame of Saul’s hate, and the direction of that hate, not toward the apostles, who had not broken with the Holy City, its Temple, its sacrifice, nor the customs of Moses, but against Stephen and those accepting his broader view. We cannot otherwise account for the fact that Saul took no steps in his persecution against the apostles, while he did pursue the scattered Christians of the dispersion unto strange cities.

We may imagine Saul fanning the flame of his hate by his thoughts in these particulars:

1. "To call this Jesus ’God’ is blasphemy.

2. "To call this convicted and executed felon ’Messiah,’ violates the Old Testament teaching of David’s royal son triumphing over all of his enemies.

3. "That I, a freeborn child of Abraham, never in bondage, must be re-born, must give up my own perfect and blameless righteousness of the law to accept the righteousness of another, is outrageous.

4. "That I must see Jerusalem perish, the Temple destroyed, the law of the Mosaic covenant abrogated, and enter into this new kingdom on the same humiliating terms as an uncircumcised Gentile, is incredible and revolting.

5. "That this Hellenist, Stephen, should invade my own flock and pervert members of my own family, Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen [Romans 16:7], and my own sister [Acts 23:16], and shake the faith of my other kinsmen, Jason and Sosipater [Romans 16:21], is insulting to the last degree.

6. "That I, the proud rabbi, a member of the supreme court of my people, the accomplished and trained logician, should be overwhelmed in debate by this unscholarly Stephen, and that, too, in my own chosen field the interpretation of the Law, Prophets, and Psalms, is crucifixion of my pride and an intolerable public shame. Let Stephen perish!

7. "But more humiliating than all, I find myself whipped inside. This Stephen is driving me with goads as if I were an unruly ox. His words and shining face and the Jesus he makes me see, plant convicting pricks in my heart and conscience against which I kick in vain; I am like a troubled sea casting up mire and filth. To go back on the convictions of my life is abject surrender. To follow, then, a logical conclusion, is to part from the counsel of my great teacher, Gamaliel, and to take up the sword of the Sadducee and make myself the servant of the high priest. Since I will not go back, and cannot stand still, I must go forward in that way that leads to prison, blood, and death, regardless of age or sex. Perhaps I may find peace. The issue is now personal and vital; Stephen or Saul must die. To stop at Stephen is to stop at the beginning of the way. I must go on till the very name of this Jesus is blotted from the earth."

That is given as imagined, but you must bring in psychology in order that you may understand the working of this man’s mind to account for the flaming spirit and the desperate lengths of the persecution which he introduces.

Seven things show the spirit of this persecution, as expressed in the New Testament:

1. In Acts 8:3 (Authorized Version), the phrase, "making havoc" is used. That is the only time in the New Testament that the word "havoc" is found. It is found in the Septuagint of the Old Testament. But it is a word which expresses the fury of a wild boar making havoc – a wild boar in a garden: rooting, gnashing, and trampling. That phrase, "making havoc," gives us an idea of the spirit that Saul had, which is the spirit of a wild boar.

2. In Acts 9:1, it is said of Saul, "Yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter." How tersely expressed that is! The expiration of his breath is a threat, and death. Victor Hugo, in one place, said about a man, "Whenever he respires he conspires,” and that is the nearest approach in literature to this vivid description of the state of a man’s mind – that the very breath he breathed was threatenings and slaughter.

3. The next word is found in Acts 26:11. He says, "being exceedingly mad against them." That is the superlative degree. He was not merely angry at the Christians, but it was an anger that amounted to madness; he was not merely mad but "exceedingly mad." So that gives you the picture of that wild boar.

4. "He haled men and women." "Haled" is an old Anglo Saxon word. We don’t use it now, but it means "to drag by violence." He didn’t go and courteously arrest a man; he just went and grabbed men and women and dragged them through the streets. Imagine a gray-haired mother, a chaste wife, a timid maiden, grabbed and dragged through the streets, with a crowd around mocking, and you get at the spirit of this persecution.

5. The next word is "devastate." Paul used this word twice, and Ananias used it once (Acts 9:21). That word is the term that is applied to an army sweeping a country with fire and sword. We say that Sherman devastated Georgia. He swept a scope of country seventy-five miles wide – from Atlanta to the sea, leaving only the chimney stacks – not a house, not a fence – with fire and sword. And that word is here employed to describe Saul’s persecution.

6. Twice in Galatians he uses this word in describing it: "I persecuted them beyond measure," that is, if you want to find some kind of a word that would describe his persecution, in its spirit, you couldn’t find it; you couldn’t find a word that would mean "beyond measure."

7. The last phrase is in Acts 22:4, "unto death." That was objective in spirit, whether men or women. These seven expressions, and they are just as remarkable, and more so, in the Greek, as they are in English, give the spirit of this persecution.

The following things show the extent of this persecution:

1. Domiciliary visits. He didn’t wait to find a man on the streets acting in opposition to any law. He goes to the houses after them, and in every place of the world. The most startling exercise of tyranny is an inquisition into a man’s home. The law of the United States regards a man’s home as his castle, and only under the most extreme circumstances does the law allow its officers to enter a man’s home. If you were perfectly sure that a Negro had burglarized your smokehouse, and you had tracked him to his house, you couldn’t go in there, you couldn’t take an officer of the law in there, unless you went before a magistrate and recorded a solemn oath that you believed that he was the one that did burglarize your place, and that what he stole would be found if you looked for it in his house.

2. In the second place, "scourges." He says many times I have scourged them, both men and women, forty stripes save one; thirty-nine hard lashes he put on the shoulders of men and women. Under the Roman law it was punishable with death to scourge a Roman citizen. Convicts, or people in the penitentiary, can be whipped. Roman lictors carried a bundle of rods with which they chastised outsiders, but on home people they were never used. Cicero makes his great oration against Veres burn like fire when it is shown that Veres scourged Roman citizens. Seldom now do we ever hear of a case where a man is dragged out of his house and publicly whipped by officers of the law, just on account of his religion.

3. The next thing was imprisonment. He says, "Oftentimes I had them put in prison." A thunderbolt couldn’t be more sudden than his approach to a house. Thundering at the door, day or night, gathering one of the inmates up, taking him from the home and taking him to jail. What would you think of somebody coming to your house when you were away in the night, and dragging your wife and putting her in jail, just because she was worshiping God according to the dictates of her conscience? We live in a good country over here. We have never been where these violent persecutions were carried on.

4. He says that when they were put to death he gave his voice against them. He arrested them and scourged them, and then in the Sanhedrin he voted against them.

5. In the next place he compelled them to blaspheme. The Greek doesn’t mean that he succeeded in making them blaspheme, but that he was trying to make them blaspheme. For instance, he would have a woman up, and there was the officer ready to give her thirty-nine lashes in open daylight: "You will get this lashing unless you blaspheme the name of Jesus," Paul would say. Pliny, in writing about the Christians in the country over which he presided when he was ordered to persecute the Christians, says, "I never went beyond this: I never put any of them to death if when brought before me he would sprinkle a little incense before a Roman god. If he would Just do that I wouldn’t put him to death."

6. Expatriation, ex, from, patria terra, "one’s fatherland" – exiled from one’s country. It was an awful thing on those people at a minute’s notice either to recant or else just as they were, without a minute’s preparation, to go off into exile, father, mother, and children. The record says, "They were all scattered abroad except the apostles."

7. Following them into exile into strange countries, and cities, getting a commission to go after them and arrest them, even though they had gotten as far from Jerusalem as Damascus.

8. The last thing in connection with the extent of this persecution is to see, first, the size or number of the church. Let us commence with 120 (that is, before Pentecost), add 3,000 on the day of Pentecost, add multitudes daily, add at another time 5,000 men and women, add twice more, multitudes, multitudes, then we may safely reach the conclusion that there were 100,000 Jewish communicants in that first church at Jerusalem. That represents a great many homes. This man Paul goes into every house, he breaks up every family. They are whipped; they are imprisoned; they are put to death or they are expatriated; and over every road that went out from Jerusalem they were fleeing, the fire of persecution burning behind them. The magnitude of the persecution has never been fully estimated.

There are eight distinct references by him in two speeches and four letters that show his own impressions of this sin. One of them you will find in the address that he delivered on the stairway in Jerusalem when he himself was a prisoner (Acts 22); another one is found in his speech at Caesarea before King Agrippa (Acts 26). You will find two references in Galatians 1 of the letter to the Galatians (1:13, 23) ; there is one in 1 Corinthians 15:15; another in Philippians 3; still another, and a most touching one, when he was quite an old man (1 Timothy). We may judge of the spirit and the extent of a thing by the impression that it leaves on the mind of the participator.

Everything that he inflicted on others, he subsequently suffered. He had them to be punished with forty stripes save one; five times he submitted to the same punishment. He had them put in prison; "oftentimes" he was imprisoned. He had them expatriated; so was he. He had them pursued in the land of expatriation; so was he. He had them stoned; so was he. He attempted to make them blaspheme; so they tried to make him blaspheme under Nero, or die, and he accepted death. He had them put to death; so was he. Early in his life, before a great part of his sufferings had yet commenced, we find his catalogue of the things that he suffered in one of the letters to the Corinthians, and just how many particular things that he had suffered up to that time.

Two considerations would naturally emphasize his unceasing sorrow for this sin:

1. His persecution marked the end of Jewish probation, the closing up of the last half of Daniel’s week, in which the Messiah would confirm the covenant with many. From this time on until now, only an occasional Jew has been converted. Paul did it; he led his people to reject the church of God and the Holy Spirit of God, the church which was baptized in the Spirit, and attested by the Spirit. He, Saul, is the one that pushed his people off the ground of probation and into a state of spiritual blindness – judicial blindness – from which they have not yet recovered.

2. The second thought that emphasized this impression was that he thereby barred himself, when he became a Christian, from doing much preaching to this people. In Romans 9 he says, "I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren’s sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh." "I bear them witness," he says in the next chapter, "that they have a zeal for God," and in Acts 22 he says that when he was in the Temple wanting to preach to Jews, wanting to be a home missionary, God appeared to him, and said, "Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem; because they will not receive of thee testimony concerning me." That was one of the most grievous things of his life, and we find it, I think (some may differ from me on this), manifested in the last letter of his first Roman imprisonment – the letter to the Hebrews. He wouldn’t put his name to it. He didn’t want to prejudice its effect, and yet he did want to speak to his people.

Let us compare this persecution with Alva’s in the Netherlands, and the one following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In a few words, it is this: There were two great bodies of Christian people, so-called, in France – the Romanists and the Huguenots. Henry of Navarre was a Huguenot. He became king of France, outwardly abjuring his Huguenot principles, but on the condition that liberty of conscience should be allowed to the people. His grandson, Louis XIV, revoked that great edict of toleration, and by its revocation, in one moment, commanded hundreds of thousands of his people to adopt the king’s religion. If they didn’t, troops or soldiers were placed in their homes with the privilege of maltreating them, and destroying their property, without being held responsible for any kind of brutal impiety that they would commit. Their young children were taken away from the mothers and put in the convents to be reared in the Romanist faith; the men had their goods confiscated, and in hundreds of thousands of instances were put to death. They were required to recant or leave France at once. Before they got to the coast an army came to bring them back, and when some of them did escape, my mother’s ancestors, the Huguenots, when that edict was revoked, came to South Carolina. Some of them went to Canada, some to other countries where there was extradition. The Romanists pursued them, and when they were able to capture them, brought them back to France to suffer under the law. Some of those that reached Canada left the settlements and went to live among the Indian tribes. There they were pursued.

When Alva came into the Netherlands (Belgium and Holland), the lowlands, under Philip, the King of Spain, the inquisition was set up and he entered the homes; he made domiciliary visits; he compelled them to blaspheme; he put to death the best, the most gifted, those holding the highest social and moral positions in the land, to the astonishment of the world. With one stroke of his pen he not only swept away all of their property, but anyone that would speak a kind word to them, or would keep them all night in the house, such a person was put to death. All over that country there was the smoke going up of their burning, and the bloodiest picture in the annals of the world was what took place when Alva’s soldiers captured a city. I would be ashamed before a mixed audience to tell what followed. The devastation was fearful.

This persecution illustrates the proverb, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." Whenever Saul put one to death, a dozen came up to take the place of that one. Indeed, he himself caught on his own shoulders the mantle of Stephen before it hit the ground, as God put the mantle of Elijah on Elisha, and as God made John the Baptist the successor in spirit to Elijah. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

The effect of this persecution on the enlargement of the kingdom, and on missions, was superb. Those Jewish Christians in Jerusalem – those terrapins – would never have crawled away from there, if Saul hadn’t put fire on their backs, but when the fire began to burn and they began to run, as they ran, they preached everywhere. It was like going up to a fire and trying to put it out by kicking the chunks. Whenever a chunk is kicked it starts a new fire. When that persecution came, then Philip, driven out, preached to the Samaritans. Then men of Cyrene, pushed out, preached to Greeks in Antioch, and they opened up a fine mission field. Peter himself, at last, was led to see that an uncircumcised Gentile like Cornelius could be received into the kingdom of God. So it had a great deal to do with foreign missions.

The effect of this persecution in bringing laymen to the front was marvelous. They never did come to the front in the history of the world as they did in this persecution. The apostles were left behind. The preachers right in the midst of the big meeting in which 100,000 people had been converted, were left standing there, surrounded by empty pews, with no congregation. The congregation is now doing the preaching. A layman becomes an evangelist. These people carry the word of God to the shores of the Mediterranean, into Asia Minor, to Rome, to Ephesus, to Antioch, to Tarsus, to the ends of the earth, and laymen do an overwhelming part of this work.

It is well, perhaps, in this connection to explain how Saul, in this persecution, could put to death Christian people, since they, the Jews, had no such authority. In the case of Christ we know that it was necessary for the Jews to obtain Roman authority in order to put to death, but just as this time Pontius Pilate was recalled, the Roman Procurator was withdrawn, and a very large part of the Roman military force and the successor of Pilate had not arrived, so the Jews were left pretty much to themselves until that new procurator with new legions came to the country.

QUESTIONS

1. What of Saul already considered in a preceding chapter?

2. Why did not Saul participate actively in the Sadducean persecution?

3. What five causes stirred him up to become a persecutor?

4. How may we imagine Saul fanning the flame of his bate by his thoughts?

5. What seven things show the spirit of this persecution as expressed in the New Testament?

6. What things show the extent of this persecution?

7. What eight distinct references by him in two speeches and four letters which show his own impressions of this sin?

8. What were his own sufferings, in every particular? Were they such as he inflicted?

9. What two considerations would naturally emphasize the unceasing sorrow for this sin?

10. Compare this persecution with Alva’s in the Netherlands and the one following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

11. How does this persecution illustrate the proverb, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church"?

12. What was the effect of this persecution on the enlargement of the kingdom, and missions?

13. What was the effect of this persecution in bringing laymen to the front?

14. How do you explain that, in this persecution, Saul could put to death Christian people, since they, the Jews, had no such authority?

Verses 13-14

XV

PAUL’S EARLY LIFE BEFORE HE ENTERS THE NEW TESTAMENT STORY

Acts 21:39; Acts 22:3; Acts 23:6; Acts 23:34; Acts 26:4-5; 2 Corinthians 11:22; Romans 11:1; Galatians 1:13-14; Philippians 3:4-6; 1 Timothy 1:12-13; 2 Timothy 1:3.

This discussion does not make much headway in the text book, but it covers an immense amount of territory in its facts and significance. This section is found in Goodwin’s Harmony of the Life of Paul, pages 15-17, and the theme is Paul’s history up to the time that he enters the New Testament story. Saul, now called Paul, a Jew, of the tribe of Benjamin, of the sect of the Pharisees, yet a freeborn Roman citizen, by occupation a tentmaker, by office a rabbi, and a member of the Sanhedrin, was born in the city of Tarsus, in the province of Cilicia, about the time of our Lord’s birth. Tarsus was situated on the narrow coast line of the eastern part of the Mediterranean, just under the great Taurus range of mountains, and on the beautiful river Cydnus, which has a cataract just before it reaches the city, and a fall, beautiful then and beautiful now, coming down into that fertile plain where the city goes into a fine harbor, which opens the city to the commerce of the world through the Mediterranean Sea. It was on the great Roman thoroughfare, which was one of the best roads in the world. There were two of these mountain ranges, one of them right up above the city through the Taurus range into the coast of Asia Minor, the other following the coast line, which leads into Syria. This is the way that the mountains came down close to the sea, making a certain point very precipitous, and there was a typical beach between those mountains and the sea. That road into Syria was called the Oriental way. Over the Roman thoroughfare passed the land traffic, travel and marching armies for centuries. It was in that pass that Alexander fought his first great battle against the Persians, and thus obtained an entrance into the East. It was through that pass that, marching westward, and before Alexander’s time, Xerxes the Great, the husband of Esther (mentioned in the Bible), marched his 5,000,000 men to invade Greece. I could mention perhaps fifty decisive battles in ancient history that were set and were successful conquests by preoccupation of that pass. That shows the strategical position of this city – that it commanded the passes of the Taurus into Asia Minor, and the pass into Syria, and through its fine harbor came in touch with the commerce of the world on the Mediterranean Sea.

Paul says that it was "no mean city," in size or in population. It was notable, (1) for its manufacture, that of weaving, particularly goat’s hair, for on that Taurus range lived goats with very long hair, and this was woven into ropes, tents, and things of that kind; (2) because it was the capital of the province of Cilicia; (3) because, under Rome, it was a free city, i.e., it had the management of its own internal affairs, which constituted a city a free city, like the free city of Bremer in the early history of Germany. Other cities would be under the feudal lords, but there were a number of cities free, and these elected their own burghers, and governed their own municipal matters – a tremendous advantage.

Tarsus received from the Roman Emperor the privilege of being a free city. Keep these facts well in mind, especially and particularly as regards the land and sea commerce. (4) Because it possessed one of the three great world-famous universities. There were just three of them at that time: One at Tarsus; one at Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile; and one at Athens. It was not like some other cities, remarkable for its great buildings, its public games and its works of art. You could see more fine buildings in Athens or in Ephesus or in Corinth than you had any right to look for in Tarsus. It celebrated no such games as were celebrated in the May festivals at Ephesus, and in the great Greek amphitheater in that city, or in such games as the Isthmian, celebrated in Corinth. It was not remarkable for any of these. Its popular religion was a low and mixed order of Oriental paganism. There is this difference between the Oriental and Occidental heathen – the former in the East, and the latter at Rome, and the West. Ephesus had an Oriental religion, though it was a Greek city. Tarsus, too, was a Greek city, but was partly Phoenician and partly Syrian. There were more arts and intellectuality in western paganism than in the Oriental, which was low, bestial, sensual, in every way brutal, shameful, immodest, and outrageous. The Phoenicians, who had a great deal to do with establishing the city of Tarsus, had that brutal, low form of paganism. That infamous emperor, Sargon, celebrated in the Bible, the Oriental king of the original Nineveh, was worshiped in that city. There never lived a man that devoted himself more than he to luxury in its fine dress, gorgeous festivals, its gluttony, its drunkenness, its beastiality. Paul was born in that city, and he could look out any day and see the heathen that he has so well described in chapter 1 of the letter to the Romans.

Citizenship in a free city under Rome did not make one a Roman citizen, as did citizenship in Philippi, a colony. To be born in a free city did not make one a Roman citizen. It conferred upon its members, its own citizens, the right to manage their own municipal affairs. To be born in Philippi would make one a Roman citizen, because Philippi was a colony. The name of its citizens were still retained on the muster roll in the city of Rome. They had all the privileges of Roman citizenship. Their officers were Roman officers. They had processions, with the magistrates, and the lictors and with the bundles of rods. But there was nothing like that in Tarsus. The question came up in Paul’s lifetime, when the commander of a legion heard Paul claiming that be was a Roman citizen. This commander says that with a great sum of money he did purchase his citizenship in Rome. Paul says, "But I was freeborn." If freeborn, how then could he have obtained it? In one of two ways: Before Christ was born, Pompey invaded Jerusalem, and took it. He was one of the first great triumvirate, with Julius Caesar and Marcus L. Crassus. Pompey’s field of labor was in the East, Caesar’s was in the West, and he (Pompey) took Jerusalem and led into slavery many Jews of the best families. When these slaves were brought to Rome, if they showed culture, social position, educational advantages, they were promoted to a high rank or office, among slaves; and if they particularly pleased their owners they were manumitted, either during the lifetime of their owner, or by will after his death. In this way many noble captives from all parts of the world were carried as slaves to Rome. They were first set free and then had conferred upon them the rights of Roman citizenship. It could have been that Cassius, who with Brutus, after the killing of Julius Caesar, combined against Mark Anthony, and Octavius (Augustus), who became the emperor and was reigning when Christ was born, captured this city of Tarsus and led many of its citizens into Rome as slaves. Paul’s grandfather, therefore, or his father, might have been led away captive to Rome, and through his high social position and culture may have been manumitted, and then received as a citizen. Necessarily it occurred before this boy’s time, because when he was born, he was born a Roman citizen. It could be transmitted, but he had not acquired it.

There is a difference between the terms – Jew, Hebrew, Israelite, Hellenist, and a "Hebrew of the Hebrews." All these are used by Paul and Luke in Acts. We get our word, "Hebrew" from Heber, an ancestor of Abraham. Literature shows that the descendants of Heber were Hebrews, and in the Old Testament Abraham is called "the Hebrew." That was not the meaning of the word in New Testament times. We come to the New Testament meaning in Acts 6, which speaks of the ordination of deacons, and uses the word "Hebrew" in distinction from "Hellenist." They both, of course, mean Jews. While a Hebrew in the New Testament usually lived in Palestine, but not necessarily, he was one who still spoke or was able to read the original Hebrew language and who practiced the strict Hebrew cult. A "Hellenist" was a Jew who had either been led into exile, or who, for the sake of trade, had gone into other nations, and settled among those people and had become liberalized, lost the use of the Hebrew tongue entirely, and neither spoke nor wrote the Hebrew language, but who spoke and wrote mainly in Greek. "Hellenist" is simply another term for "Greek." Whether used in the New Testament Greek or the Hellenistic Greek, it means Jews living among Greek people, and who had acquired the language, and in the many respects had followed more liberal Greek customs. Then a Hebrew living in Palestine would not allow himself to be liberalized.

Paul lived out of Judea. He, his father, and indeed his grandfather, adhered strictly to all the distinguishing characteristics of the Hebrews. The "Israelite" and the "Jew" mean anybody descended from Jacob. "Israelite" commenced lower down in the descent. "Hebrew" gets its name from the ancestor of Abraham, but an Israelite was a descendant of Jacob. The distinction of "Jew" came a little later to those descendants of Jacob living in Judea. The "Hebrew of the Hebrews" means a Jew-who went to the greatest possible extreme in following the Hebrew language, cult, habits, training, and religion. He was an extremist among them.

Some people would suppose from Paul’s occupation – tentmaking (he worked at that occupation, making tents with Aquila and Priscilla) – that from this unskilled labor his family were low in the social position, and poor. The inference is wholly untenable. In the first place, every Jew had to have a trade, even though he were a millionaire, and Paul’s old teacher, Gamaliel, used this language: "Any kind of learning without a useful trade leads to sin." Paul took up this trade because he lived at Tarsus. There anybody could go out and learn the trade of weaving ropes and check-cloth made out of the long hair of Mount Taurus goats. The trade would not simply satisfy the Jewish requirement, but a man could make his living by it. We see Paul a little later making his living just that way. Well for Paul that he knew something besides books.

I am more and more inclined to follow an industrial idea in systems of education. We have our schools and universities where the boys and girls learn a great deal about books, and the girl goes home and does not know how to make bread. She does not know how to rear a brood of chickens; she does not know how a house is to be kept clean, nor how to keep windows clean. The floors in the corners and in places under the beds and sofas are unswept. Boys come home that cannot make a hoe handle. They have no mechanical sense, no trade. They can neither make a pair of shoes nor a hat nor a pair of socks, nor anything they wear. And thus graduates of universities stand with their fingers in their mouths in the great byways of the world – practically beggars – not knowing how to do anything.

The Jews guarded against that. Let Paul fall on his feet anywhere, and withdraw from him every outside source of financial support, and he would say, "With these hands did I minister to my necessities." He could go out and get a piece of work. He knew how to do it. All this is bearing on the social and financial position of Paul’s family. Everything indicates the high social position of his family, and that it occupied a high financial position. They did not take the children of the lowest abode and give them such an ecclesiastical training as Paul had. They did not educate them for the position of rabbi, nor let them take a degree in the highest theological seminary in the world. Paul’s family, then, was a good one.

Paul’s religious and educational advantages were on two distinct lines: Purely ecclesiastical or religious, and I can tell just exactly what it was. A little Hebrew boy five years old had to learn the Ten Commandments, and the hallelujah psalms. When six, he advanced to other things which could be specified particularly. His education commenced in the home and went on until he entered the synagogue, which trained him in all the rudiments of biblical education. When he was twelve or thirteen years old he was called "a son of the commandments." Just like the occasion suggests when Jesus was twelve years old he had them take him to Jerusalem, and he was allowed to go into the Temple and to be with the great doctors there.

When Paul was twelve or thirteen his influential father sent him to the great theological seminary. There were two of these seminaries. One had a greater influence than the other in the city of Jerusalem. Therefore, he says, "I was brought up in this city. I was born in Tarsus, but brought up in the city of Jerusalem, at the feet of Gamaliel." He was a very noble character. The opposite seminary differed from this one. It was the Shammai Seminary, differing from the other on this point: The Shammai Seminary was very narrow; did not allow its pupils to know anything about literature whatsoever except religious literature. But the aged Gamaliel said to Paul and to all his other students, "There are certain classical lines along which you may study and learn." This is the kind which Paul attended, the school of Gamaliel, graduating there and becoming a doctor of divinity, or a rabbi. He studied profoundly. This religious part of his education he got in the original Hebrew. When he and Jesus met at the time of his conversion, they spoke in the Hebrew tongue to each other. "There came a voice which said in the Hebrew [the old Hebrew tongue], Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" And he answered in the Hebrew. Then, of course, he spoke and wrote in the Aramaic, which was the common dialect in Judea, and different from the Hebrew, since the Hebrew had gone altogether out of use in the ordinary speech, and almost in the ordinary reading.

The New Testament abounds in evidence of Paul’s general educational advantages. The city of Tarsus possessed one of the three great universities of the world. Did Paul take a course in that? There is no evidence that he did, and no probability that he did. For the universities in that day did not mean as much as they do today in a certain line, though I am sorry to say that the great universities of the present day are dropping back and adopting the old utterly worthless studies of the universities of that day; that is, speculative philosophy about the origin of things, and they do not know anything more when they get through than when they began. Also the Epicurean philosophy, which we now call "Darwinism," making a speculative study of biology, botany, geology, etc., trying to prove that everything came from a primordial germ, and that man not only developed from a monkey, but from a jellyfish, and that the jellyfish developed from some vegetable, and that the vegetable is a development of some inorganic and lifeless matter.

There never was at any time in the world one particle of truth in the whole business. None of it can ever be a science. It does not belong to the realm of science.

Saul never had a moment’s time to spend in a heathen university, listening to their sophistries, and to these philosophical speculations, or vagaries. If he were living now he would be made president of some university. We learn from the Syrians that one of these universities, the one in Tarsus, had a professor who once stole something, and was put in "limbo." Their university professors were also intensely jealous. They had all sorts of squabbles, one part in a row with another part; so that after all there was not much to be learned in the universities of those times, and after a while there will not be much in ours, if we go on as we are now going. I am not referring to any university, particularly, but I am referring to any and all, where philosophical speculations are made thee basis of botany, zoology, natural history of any kind, geology, or any kindred thing. Paul struck it in the city of Athens, its birthplace, and smote it hip and thigh.

I do not suppose at all that Paul was a student in the university of Tarsus, but that while he was at Jerusalem, and under the teaching of Gamaliel, he did study such classics as would be permitted to a Jewish mind. Hence we find in his letters expressions like this: "One of themselves, a prophet of their own said, Cretans are always liars," and when at Athena he says, "Certain, even of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." How could he become acquainted with those classical allusions if he had never studied such things? That chiliarch, who commanded a thousand men – a legion – said to Paul, "Do you speak Greek?" He had heard him speaking Greek. Of course he spoke Greek, and wrote Greek, All of his letters were written in Greek. He had learned that Greek language somewhere. He had not learned it in that university at Tarsus, but in the Seminary at Jerusalem. Take his letters and see his profound acquaintance with the Greek games of every kind. Some of them he may have attended, but he certainly knew all about them as though he had witnessed them. He may have seen only an occasional game. So he must have learned it from the literature, for he discusses every phase of it, especially the foot-racing, the combats in the arena between the gladiators, and the wrestling with the lions in the arena. His letters are full of allusions that indicate his acquaintance with the Greek literature. At Alexandria there was one of the other universities, a much greater one in its Greek literature than the university of Tarsus. Alexandria was founded by a Greek, Alexander the Great. One of the Ptolemies had a great library, the greatest library in the world, which was destroyed by the Saracens. But notice also how Paul puts his finger right upon the very center and heart of every heathen philosophy, like that of Epicureanism – our Darwinism; that he debated in Athens; and note the Stoics whom he met while there, and the Platonians, or the Peripatetics. You will find that that one little speech of his, which he delivered in the city of Athens, contains an allusion which showed that he was thoroughly and profoundly acquainted with every run and sweep of the philosophic thought of the day, and anybody not thus acquainted could not have delivered that address. This is to show the general culture of his mind.

Take the mountain torrent of his passion in the rapid letter to the Galatians. Take the keen logic, the irresistibility of its reasoning, which appears in the letter to the Romans, or take that sweetest language that ever came from the lips or pen of mortal man, that eulogy on love in 1 Corinthians 13. Then take the letter to Philemon, which all the world has considered a masterpiece in epistolary correspondence. It implies that he was scholarly. Look at these varieties of Saul’s education. He was a man whose range of information swept the world. He was the one scholar in the whole number of the apostles – the great scholar – and I do not see how any man can read the different varieties of style or delicacy of touch, the analysis of his logic or reasoning, which appear in Paul’s letters, and doubt that he had a broad, a deep, a high, and a grand general education.

As to Paul’s family the New Testament tells us in Acts 23:16 that he had a married sister living in Jerusalem, and that that sister had a son, Paul’s nephew, who intervened very heroically to help Paul in a certain crisis of his life. And in Romans 16:7-11 are some other things that give light as to his family: "Salute Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners . . . who also have been in Christ before me." Here are a man and a woman, Andronicus and Junias, Paul’s kinsfolk, well known to the apostles in Jerusalem, for he says, "Who are of note among the apostles." They were influential people, and they had become Christians before Paul was a Christian. Take Romans 16:11: "Salute Herodion my kinsman," and Romans 16:21: "Timothy, my fellow worker saluteth you; and Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen." So here we have found six individuals who are kinspeople to Paul, and who were all members of the church at Rome. We know that much of his family, anyhow.

The things which distinguished a Pharisee from a Sadducee were of several kinds: (1) The latter were materialists, whom we would call atheists. They believed in no spirit; that there was nothing but matter; that when a man died it was the last of him. (2) There were Epicureans: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die," they said. (3) Also in their political views they differed from the Pharisees. The Pharisees were patriotic, and wanted the freedom of their nation. The Sadducees were inclined to the Roman government, and wanted to keep up the servitude to the Romans. (4) The Pharisees also cared more about a ritualistic religion. They were Puritans – stern, and knew no compromise, adhering strictly to the letter of the law, in every respect. If they tithed, they would go into the garden and tithe the cummin and the anise. The phrase, "Pharisee of the Pharisees," means one who would whittle all that down to a very fine point, or an extremist on that subject. He said (Galatians 1:14), "I advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond many of mine own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers." They were just Pharisees – he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He went all the lengths that they would go, and he topped them. It meant something like this: "I am a son of Abraham; I am freeborn; I have never sinned; I need no vicarious expiation for me; I need no Holy Spirit; I was never in that bunch; you need not talk or present regeneration to me; I am just as white as snow." It followed that they were not drunkards, they were not immoral; they were chaste, and did not have any of the brutal vices.

Paul had perhaps never met Jesus. They were about the same age. Paul went to Jerusalem when he was thirteen years old, and stayed there until he graduated in the same city. Some contend from certain expressions, as, "I have known Christ after the flesh; henceforth I will know him . . . no more," that he had known Jesus in the flesh. It will be remembered that in the public ministry of Christ he was very seldom in Jerusalem. He stayed there a very short time when he did go. His ministry was mainly in Galilee. Even in that last mighty work of his in Jerusalem – there is a big account of it – but it just lasted a week. And Saul may have been absent at Tarsus during that time. I think when he saw Jesus the fact that he did not recognize him is proof enough, for if he had known him in the flesh he would have recognized him. But he said, "Who art thou?" when he saw him after he arose from the dead.

Paul, before conversion, was intensely conscientious in whatever he did – free from all low vice, drunkenness and luxurious gluttony and sensuality of every kind. He was a very chaste man, a very honest man, a very sincere man, a very truthful man, and all this before conversion. I take it for granted that he was a married man. An orthodox Jew would not have passed the age of twenty unmarried. He could not be a member of the Sanhedrin without marrying; and in that famous passage in Corinthians he seems to intimate clearly that he was a married man. Speaking to virgins (that means unmarried men and women and includes both of them that had never married) he says so and so; and to widows and widowers, "I wish they would remain such as I am." It seems to me that the language very clearly shows that at that time he was a widower. Luther says that no man could write about the married state like Paul writes if he was an old bachelor. I think Luther is right; his judgment is very sound. Paul did not marry again; he remained a widower, and in the stress of the times advised other widowers and widows to remain in that state; but if they wanted to marry again to go ahead and do so; that it was no sin; but the stress of the times made it unwise; and he boldly took the position that he had a right to lead about a wife as much as Peter had, and Peter had a wife.

QUESTIONS

1. What the theme of this section?

2. What Saul’s name, nation, tribe, sect, citizenship, occupation, office, birthplace, and date of birth?

3. Give an account of Tarsus as to its political, strategical, commercial, manufacturing, educational advantages, and its popular religion.

4. Did citizenship in a free city under Rome make one a Roman citizen as did citizenship in Philippi, a colony?

5. How, then, could one obtain it?

6. Distinguish the difference between these terms: Jew, Hebrew, Israelite, Hellinist, and a "Hebrew of the Hebrews."

7. What the social and financial position of Paul’s family, particularly in view of his occupation?

8. What Paul’s religious and educational advantages?

9. What New Testament evidences are there of Paul’s general educational advantages?

10. What do we know about Paul’s family as seen in the New Testament?

11. Was Paul a rabbi? If so, where did he probably exercise his functions as a rabbi?

12. What is the meaning of the phrase, "Pharisee of the Pharisees?"

13. Did Paul ever meet Jesus before his death? If not, how account for it in view of the interest and publicity of the last week of our Lord’s life?

14. What was Paul’s character before conversion?

15. Was he a married man, and what the proof?

Verses 18-21

II

PAUL’S VISIT TO JERUSALEM

Galatians 1:18-2:21.

This discussion commences at Galatians 1:18 and extends through chapter 2, completing the historical part of the letter. It is evident that there is a relation between Paul’s visit to Jerusalem, the headquarters of the apostles, and his independent authority as an apostle and his special gospel. There is a special value of this letter to the Galatians in that it gives definite information concerning matters more briefly and more generally given in Acts, which certainly saves us from erroneous inferences that would necessarily be deduced from the account in Acts alone. This is most evident in the history of Paul’s visits to Jerusalem after his conversion, and the intervals between the visits. Five of these visits are recorded in Acts, as follows: First visit – Acts 9:26-30; Acts 22:17-21; second visit – Acts 11:27-30; Acts 12:25; third visit – Acts 15:1-30; fourth visit – Acts 18:22 (this one we would not know if we did not look closely at the Greek); fifth visit – Acts 21:15-23:25.

These are the five visits, so far as Acts records them, of Paul to Jerusalem after his conversion. I raise two additional questions: (1) What visits had he made to Jerusalem before his conversion? And (2) did he ever visit Jerusalem after the history in Acts closes? The answer to which is that while he lived at Tarsus he received his theological education at Jerusalem; that was doubtless his first visit, at least it is the first of which we have any account. But as he did not know Christ personally, he evidently was not in Jerusalem during the lifetime of Christ; therefore he must have gone back to Tarsus. But we do find him again in Jerusalem a rabbi of the Cilician synagogue, an opponent of Stephen, and a member of the Sanhedrin, and the object of his second visit was to become a member of the Sanhedrin, but that is all before his conversion.

After the history in the book of Acts closes we have no means of knowing that Paul ever visited Jerusalem. Indeed, we have only scraps of information concerning what he did after the first imprisonment at Rome. We gather some information from the letters to Timothy and Titus. Whether that included another visit to Jerusalem we do not know.

What is the relation of his visit to Jerusalem to his special and independent gospel and his independent apostolic authority? The Roman Catholics teach that Peter was the first pope, and that all authority was derived from Peter; therefore if their position be correct, Paul must have derived his authority from Peter. This letter to the Galatians grinds to fine powder the whole Roman Catholic theory of the pope, and hence it was one of the books of the New Testament that was so tremendously read in the Reformation.

Of the first and third of these visits to Jerusalem, recorded by Luke in Acts, we find parallel accounts in this letter to the Galatians. There was no occasion in this letter to refer to the second visit to Jerusalem, for at that time he simply went up to carry some alms to Jerusalem, and had no opportunity to have any conversation with the apostles. The persecution was raging; James was killed and Peter was in prison, and as soon as Peter got out he left; so, that visit to Jerusalem is not germane to our discussion, but the third visit is. The fourth and fifth visits to Jerusalem cannot touch this letter because they took place after this letter was written; so that the thing that we are to study ’in this chapter is the bearing of these two visits upon Paul’s independent, apostolic authority and his independent gospel, viz.: The first visit, as recorded in Acts 9 and the parallel account in Galatians 1, and the third visit, as recorded in Acts 15 and paralleled by Galatians 2.

We may best get at the additional and more definite information in this letter by comparing the two accounts thus: First, by reading Acts 9:17-19, then Galatians 1:15-17, then Acts 9:20-25, then Galatians 1:18 (except last clause), then Acts 9:26-27, then Galatians 1:18 (last clause) to Galatians 1:20, then Acts 9:28-29 (except last clause), then Acts 22:17-21, then Acts 9:29 (last clause) to Acts 9:31, and then Galatians 1:21-24. (For an arrangement of these passages in parallel columns see "An Interpretation of the English Bible," Acts, chap. 18.)

The following are the new and more definite particulars that we gather from inserting the Galatian passage that way: First, we learn from Galatians the time interval, three years, between his conversion and his first visit to Jerusalem. That three years after he was converted had passed before he ever saw Jerusalem or any of the twelve apostles. Second, we learn what he did in this interval of three years and what he did not: (1) That his call to the apostleship was not only directly from the Lord himself, but his acceptance of it and obedience to it was instant, without conferring with flesh and blood. His call was not at Jerusalem but at Damascus, not through Peter, but through Christ directly; Christ did not tell him to go to Peter, but the Holy Spirit selected the special man, Ananias, and sent him to him. (2) That, as his call to the apostleship was not dependent on the ratification of the twelve, he was set apart from his mother’s womb. (3) That his apostolic call had its emphasis in a different direction from the emphasis of the call of the twelve apostles, their mission being to preach to the Jews primarily, and his being to preach primarily to the Gentiles. (4) That instead of having been instructed in the gospel by the original twelve, he went, not to Jerusalem, but to Arabia to receive his gospel from the Lord himself by direct revelation. (5) That instead of waiting to act on his call to preach until the twelve refused it or authorized it, he commenced his preaching at Damascus and not at Jerusalem. (6) That he had been exercising his apostolic call and receiving revelations and preaching for three years before he was ever seen by any of the original twelve. (7) That when he did go to Jerusalem he saw only one of the apostles – Peter – but he saw James, the brother of our Lord, who was not an apostle. So we must infer that at the time of his visit the other eleven apostles were out on the field. He saw but one, and he was there only fifteen days, and while there that fifteen days Jesus, in a vision in the Temple, peremptorily ordered him to leave them, to go to the Gentile work. See how these points are brought out and urged by the Judaizing Christians, inasmuch as he was not one of the twelve, and not commissioned by the twelve, therefore he was not a true apostle. He is explaining all this in his defense. (8) That for nine years after leaving Jerusalem, while he was preaching and establishing churches in Syria and Cilicia, they did not see his face. It was during this Cilician period that he received the revelation recorded in 2 Corinthians 12. So that not a shred of his authority as an apostle, not a word of his gospel, is derived from the original twelve or from any other man. Galatians says nothing about the fact, but I will interpolate, that from Antioch he and Barnabas went to the heathen on their first missionary tour, not under Jerusalem direction, but under specific and direct authority of the Holy Spirit.

The object of Paul’s second visit to Jerusalem, after he had finished his Cilician tour, was simply to carry alms to the poor saints in Jerusalem, because of a revelation of a famine through a prophet. There could have been no conversation with the apostles from the fact that the persecution by Herod was raging, in which James was killed, and when Peter got out of prison he immediately left. There is another matter stated in Acts, though Galatians does not refer to it. We find in Acts 13-14 that when he did go out as a foreign missionary he did not go under any authority conferred by the twelve apostles, but that he and Barnabas were sent out particularly by the Holy Spirit, and that this first missionary tour that we find recorded was under special, direct orders from God and not from man.

In order to get at the account of his third visit to Jerusalem we have to carefully read nearly all of Acts 15 and every bit of Galatians 2. The object of this visit was (1) to find out how these Judaizing Christians were supported, (2) to carry out this divine injunction. (He says in the letter to the Galatians that when he made those three visits to Jerusalem he did not go because he was summoned, but by special revelation, showing that he was still under divine guidance.) (3) To show that the initiative was not taken by the Jerusalem church, but by the church at Antioch. Certain Judaizing Christians had a gospel similar to that of those who had come to Antioch and taught that they could not be saved without becoming Jews – that they would have to be circumcised or faith would not save them at all. Paul and Barnabas squarely met them, but inasmuch as the disturbance had come on the ground of comity, they carried the question to the church where it originated. Just as one would do if he were the pastor of the Broadway Church in Fort Worth, and some of the people of Dallas were to come and raise a row in the church – a row that involved his ministerial authority – then he ought to refer this to those Dallas people, saying, "Do you send these men here, or do they come by your authority?" So we see that in that third visit to Jerusalem he went with a definite object in view, not in order that he might be made an apostle, but in order to settle a great question of salvation, and that very question was being agitated in the Galatian church then, that is, the necessity of being a Jew in order to be saved.

Galatians says that Paul went to that meeting to take a test case, and the test case was Titus. Titus was converted, had been baptized and received into the church, and he determined to take Titus up there and say, "Now do you demand that Titus shall be circumcised in order to be saved?" Then he went up as he said, by revelation, to have the matter settled forever as to whether he was an apostle to the Gentiles or not. So we learn in Galatians that when he got there and sprung that question upon Titus, though Titus was not circumcised, they lost the case. Then we learn from Galatians that before the church met in conference Paul had met the elders and the pastor of the church, James, and sprung this question on them, "Do you acknowledge that this authority that I have to go to the heathen is from God, just as your authority to go to the circumcision is from God?" And he said that they conceded and gave him the right hand of fellowship, he and Barnabas only. This is a very important matter that we learn from Galatians 2, but that isn’t all that we learn. He says that from them he received nothing; that they conceded that he was not behind them in anything; that the pillars of the church at Jerusalem – the apostles and the pastor – acknowledged that they conferred nothing on him, and that he was their equal. He did not get his gospel from them, but this is not the cream of the case. He adds something that we do not find anywhere else. The Holy Spirit and the apostles and the church at Jerusalem united in the decision, embodied it in writing upon all of these points, and sent it to the churches where these questions were likely to come up.

We come now to a most startling fact. After this happened Peter made a visit to Antioch, and when he first got there he did as he did in the case of Cornelius – took a meal with the Gentiles. Here come some people from Jerusalem, and while they admit that a man did not have to become a Jew to be a Christian, yet they contend that they must not violate the old law about eating with the Gentiles. We learn from Galatians that it shook Peter, and we have already learned that Peter was easily shaken, and that it shook Barnabas also. In this new question we learn that Paul alone stood up and contended to Peter’s face and rebuked him. What a position for a pope! He told him that he was tearing down what he had already established; that what God at Joppa had shown him that he had cleansed, man should not call unclean. But Peter was dissimulating and holding back because certain of these Judaizing teachers from Jerusalem came up there and ’insisted that this business must stop.

What would have been the effect if Paul had not taken the stand he did? Christianity would have been a mere sect; it would have lost its individuality; its wings would have been clipped; it could neither fly nor soar; it could only crawl, and it would have perished at Jerusalem but for that fight that Paul made. What would we think if the "upper tens" of our church would say, "I am willing to welcome these poor people to the church, but don’t expect me to go to see them. We can’t do that"? I have always contended that but for Paul’s going away into Arabia and receiving his gospel direct from the Lord Jesus Christ, instead of having it handed down to him by somebody else, and the stand that he took when this great controversy threatened to rend Christianity of that day in its struggling childhood, we Gentiles would have had no gospel, and what the Jews would have had would not have been worth anything. It was a question of life and death. The very essence of the gospel was involved. It was as if they proposed to take the keystone out of the arch, or the foundation from under the building.

There are some incidental questions on Galatians 1-2 that we had better look at a little. Paul said that when he went to Jerusalem that first time, he saw James, our Lord’s brother. Here come up some theories. The extreme theory held by the Catholic Church, the middle theory held by the Church of England, and the other theory held by Baptist, viz.: What is meant by calling these the Lord’s brothers and sisters? The Catholics say that they were only his cousins; that Mary never bore but one child; that she was born a virgin, so she remained a virgin, and they claim that her body was taken up to heaven as was the body of Elijah – "the Assumption of the Virgin" – and that she was immaculately conceived, as Christ was conceived. That is what they call the doctrine of "the Immaculate Conception." The second theory is that they were children of Joseph by a former marriage. But there is not a hint of such a marriage in the Bible. The third theory is that they were children of Joseph and Mary, the mother of our Lord. People, who, for sentimental reasons, believe that Mary had not a lot of children after Christ, who believe that they were not Mary’s children, evolve that thing out of their own consciousness. The fact is that James and Jude who wrote books of the New Testament, and some sisters were actually half brothers and sisters of our Lord, and the children of Joseph and Mary. They were half brothers of Jesus because they had the same mother, but their father was not his; God was his father.

Another thing Paul says is that those churches in Judea from whom it was alleged that he derived his authority and his gospel, did not even know his name, but they held him in respect and glorified God in him. I took that as my text when I was appointed to preach the annual sermon before the American Baptist Publication Society in Chicago – "They Glorified God in Paul" – showing that the workman is known by his works. They said there was a mighty revolution in this Saul of Tarsus; that somebody did it, and glory to the one that did ’it. Somebody made him the mightiest power as an evangelical force that earth has ever known. Who did it? God. So they glorified God in Paul, and brethren will glorify God in us as our lives are pure and as our work is faithful, but if we live in sin as any other sinner, and if we preach something that God did not give us to preach, if conviction and conversion do not follow our ministry, if our preaching does not stir up others, then I am sure that people will never attempt to glorify God in us. They will find nothing to glorify.

QUESTIONS

1. What is the special historical value of this letter to the Galatians?

2. In what particular is this most evident?

3. How many and what visits of Paul to Jerusalem recorded in Acts, and what the scripture for each?

4. What visits had he made to Jerusalem before his conversion, and what the proof?

5. Did Paul ever visit Jerusalem after history in book of Acts closes?

6. What is the relation of his visits to Jerusalem to his special and independent gospel and his independent apostolic authority?

7. To which of these visits recorded in Acts do we find parallel accounts in Galatians, and why are not the other visits to Jerusalem referred to in Galatians?

8. Where in Acts are the sections corresponding to the two visits to Jerusalem recorded in Galatians?

9. How may we best get at the additional and more definite information in this letter?

10. What are these new and more definite particulars that we gather from inserting the Galatian passages in the Acts passages?

11. What was the object of Paul’s second visit to Jerusalem, and what opportunity did this visit afford for conversation with the twelve apostles, and why?

12. What matter stated in Acts brought in here by the author?

13. What the object of Paul’s third visit to Jerusalem, what the case at Antioch, and what two important matters were settled authoritatively on this visit?

14. What social questions sprang up at Antioch soon after this, what its history, how settled, and what if Paul had not taken the stand that he did?

15. What is the bearing of Paul’s independent gospel and apostleship, together with Galatians 1:12-2:14 on the alleged primacy and supremacy of Peter?

16. What are the three theories of our Lord’s relation to James, and which is the true one?

17. What did Paul here say of the churches in Judea, and how may the people glorify God in the preacher?

Verses 22-24

XVI

SAUL, THE PERSECUTOR

Acts 7:57-60; Acts 8:1-4; Acts 22:4-5; Acts 22:19-20; Acts 26:9-11; 1 Corinthians 15:9; Galatians 1:13; Galatians 1:22-24.

In a preceding chapter on Stephen we have necessarily considered somewhat a part of the matter of this chapter, and now we will restate only enough to give a connected account of Saul. In our last discussion we found Saul and other members of his family residents in Jerusalem, Saul an accomplished scholar, a rabbi, trained in the lore of the Jewish Bible and of their traditions, a member of the Sanhedrin, an extreme Pharisee, flaming with zeal, and aggressive in his religion, an intense patriot, about thirty-six years old, probably a widower, stirred up and incensed on account of the progress of the new religion of Jesus.

In considering this distinguished Jew in the role of a persecutor, we must find, first of all, the occasion of this marvelous and murderous outbreak of hatred on his part at this particular juncture, and the strange direction of its hostility. On three all-sufficient grounds we understand why Saul did not actively participate in the recent Sadducean persecution. First, the issue of that persecution was the resurrection, and on this point a Pharisee could not join a Sadducean materialist. Second, the motive of that persecution was to prevent the break with Rome, and Saul as a Pharisee wanted a break with Rome. Third, the direction of that persecution was mainly against the apostles and Palestinian Christians, who, so far, had made no break with the Temple and its services and ritual, or the customs of Moses. To outsiders they appeared as a sect of the Jews, agreeing, indeed, with the Pharisees on many points, and while they were hateful in their superstition as to the person of the Messiah, they were understood to preach a Messiah for Jews only and not for Gentiles. That is why Saul did not join the Sadducean persecution – because of the issue of it, because of the motive of it, and because of the direction of it.

1. Five causes stirred him up to become a persecutor: First, the coming to the front of Stephen, the Hellenist, whose preaching evidently looked to a Messiah for the world, and not only looked to a break with Jerusalem and the Temple, but the abrogation of the entire Old Covenant, or at least its supercession by a New Covenant on broad, worldwide lines that made no distinction between a Jew and a Greek. That is the first cause of the persecuting spirit of Saul.

2. Stephen’s Messiah was a God-man and a sufferer, expiating sin, and bringing in an imputed righteousness through faith in him wrought by the regenerating Spirit, instead of a Jewish hero, seated on David’s earthly throne, triumphant over Rome, and bringing all nations into subjection to the royal law. This is the difference between the two Messiahs. So that kind of a Messiah would be intensely objectionable to Saul.

3. Stephen’s preaching was making fearful inroads among the flock of Saul’s Cilicean synagogue, and sweeping like a fire among the Israelites of the dispersion, who were already far from the Palestinian Hebrews.

4. Some of Saul’s own family were converted to the new religion, two of them are mentioned in the letter to the Romans as being in Christ before him, and his own sister, judging from Acts 23, was already a Christian.

5. Saul’s humiliating defeat in the great debate with Stephen.

These are the five causes that pushed the man out who had been passive in the other persecution, now to become active in this persecution. They account for the vehement flame of Saul’s hate, and the direction of that hate, not toward the apostles, who had not broken with the Holy City, its Temple, its sacrifice, nor the customs of Moses, but against Stephen and those accepting his broader view. We cannot otherwise account for the fact that Saul took no steps in his persecution against the apostles, while he did pursue the scattered Christians of the dispersion unto strange cities.

We may imagine Saul fanning the flame of his hate by his thoughts in these particulars:

1. "To call this Jesus ’God’ is blasphemy.

2. "To call this convicted and executed felon ’Messiah,’ violates the Old Testament teaching of David’s royal son triumphing over all of his enemies.

3. "That I, a freeborn child of Abraham, never in bondage, must be re-born, must give up my own perfect and blameless righteousness of the law to accept the righteousness of another, is outrageous.

4. "That I must see Jerusalem perish, the Temple destroyed, the law of the Mosaic covenant abrogated, and enter into this new kingdom on the same humiliating terms as an uncircumcised Gentile, is incredible and revolting.

5. "That this Hellenist, Stephen, should invade my own flock and pervert members of my own family, Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen [Romans 16:7], and my own sister [Acts 23:16], and shake the faith of my other kinsmen, Jason and Sosipater [Romans 16:21], is insulting to the last degree.

6. "That I, the proud rabbi, a member of the supreme court of my people, the accomplished and trained logician, should be overwhelmed in debate by this unscholarly Stephen, and that, too, in my own chosen field the interpretation of the Law, Prophets, and Psalms, is crucifixion of my pride and an intolerable public shame. Let Stephen perish!

7. "But more humiliating than all, I find myself whipped inside. This Stephen is driving me with goads as if I were an unruly ox. His words and shining face and the Jesus he makes me see, plant convicting pricks in my heart and conscience against which I kick in vain; I am like a troubled sea casting up mire and filth. To go back on the convictions of my life is abject surrender. To follow, then, a logical conclusion, is to part from the counsel of my great teacher, Gamaliel, and to take up the sword of the Sadducee and make myself the servant of the high priest. Since I will not go back, and cannot stand still, I must go forward in that way that leads to prison, blood, and death, regardless of age or sex. Perhaps I may find peace. The issue is now personal and vital; Stephen or Saul must die. To stop at Stephen is to stop at the beginning of the way. I must go on till the very name of this Jesus is blotted from the earth."

That is given as imagined, but you must bring in psychology in order that you may understand the working of this man’s mind to account for the flaming spirit and the desperate lengths of the persecution which he introduces.

Seven things show the spirit of this persecution, as expressed in the New Testament:

1. In Acts 8:3 (Authorized Version), the phrase, "making havoc" is used. That is the only time in the New Testament that the word "havoc" is found. It is found in the Septuagint of the Old Testament. But it is a word which expresses the fury of a wild boar making havoc – a wild boar in a garden: rooting, gnashing, and trampling. That phrase, "making havoc," gives us an idea of the spirit that Saul had, which is the spirit of a wild boar.

2. In Acts 9:1, it is said of Saul, "Yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter." How tersely expressed that is! The expiration of his breath is a threat, and death. Victor Hugo, in one place, said about a man, "Whenever he respires he conspires,” and that is the nearest approach in literature to this vivid description of the state of a man’s mind – that the very breath he breathed was threatenings and slaughter.

3. The next word is found in Acts 26:11. He says, "being exceedingly mad against them." That is the superlative degree. He was not merely angry at the Christians, but it was an anger that amounted to madness; he was not merely mad but "exceedingly mad." So that gives you the picture of that wild boar.

4. "He haled men and women." "Haled" is an old Anglo Saxon word. We don’t use it now, but it means "to drag by violence." He didn’t go and courteously arrest a man; he just went and grabbed men and women and dragged them through the streets. Imagine a gray-haired mother, a chaste wife, a timid maiden, grabbed and dragged through the streets, with a crowd around mocking, and you get at the spirit of this persecution.

5. The next word is "devastate." Paul used this word twice, and Ananias used it once (Acts 9:21). That word is the term that is applied to an army sweeping a country with fire and sword. We say that Sherman devastated Georgia. He swept a scope of country seventy-five miles wide – from Atlanta to the sea, leaving only the chimney stacks – not a house, not a fence – with fire and sword. And that word is here employed to describe Saul’s persecution.

6. Twice in Galatians he uses this word in describing it: "I persecuted them beyond measure," that is, if you want to find some kind of a word that would describe his persecution, in its spirit, you couldn’t find it; you couldn’t find a word that would mean "beyond measure."

7. The last phrase is in Acts 22:4, "unto death." That was objective in spirit, whether men or women. These seven expressions, and they are just as remarkable, and more so, in the Greek, as they are in English, give the spirit of this persecution.

The following things show the extent of this persecution:

1. Domiciliary visits. He didn’t wait to find a man on the streets acting in opposition to any law. He goes to the houses after them, and in every place of the world. The most startling exercise of tyranny is an inquisition into a man’s home. The law of the United States regards a man’s home as his castle, and only under the most extreme circumstances does the law allow its officers to enter a man’s home. If you were perfectly sure that a Negro had burglarized your smokehouse, and you had tracked him to his house, you couldn’t go in there, you couldn’t take an officer of the law in there, unless you went before a magistrate and recorded a solemn oath that you believed that he was the one that did burglarize your place, and that what he stole would be found if you looked for it in his house.

2. In the second place, "scourges." He says many times I have scourged them, both men and women, forty stripes save one; thirty-nine hard lashes he put on the shoulders of men and women. Under the Roman law it was punishable with death to scourge a Roman citizen. Convicts, or people in the penitentiary, can be whipped. Roman lictors carried a bundle of rods with which they chastised outsiders, but on home people they were never used. Cicero makes his great oration against Veres burn like fire when it is shown that Veres scourged Roman citizens. Seldom now do we ever hear of a case where a man is dragged out of his house and publicly whipped by officers of the law, just on account of his religion.

3. The next thing was imprisonment. He says, "Oftentimes I had them put in prison." A thunderbolt couldn’t be more sudden than his approach to a house. Thundering at the door, day or night, gathering one of the inmates up, taking him from the home and taking him to jail. What would you think of somebody coming to your house when you were away in the night, and dragging your wife and putting her in jail, just because she was worshiping God according to the dictates of her conscience? We live in a good country over here. We have never been where these violent persecutions were carried on.

4. He says that when they were put to death he gave his voice against them. He arrested them and scourged them, and then in the Sanhedrin he voted against them.

5. In the next place he compelled them to blaspheme. The Greek doesn’t mean that he succeeded in making them blaspheme, but that he was trying to make them blaspheme. For instance, he would have a woman up, and there was the officer ready to give her thirty-nine lashes in open daylight: "You will get this lashing unless you blaspheme the name of Jesus," Paul would say. Pliny, in writing about the Christians in the country over which he presided when he was ordered to persecute the Christians, says, "I never went beyond this: I never put any of them to death if when brought before me he would sprinkle a little incense before a Roman god. If he would Just do that I wouldn’t put him to death."

6. Expatriation, ex, from, patria terra, "one’s fatherland" – exiled from one’s country. It was an awful thing on those people at a minute’s notice either to recant or else just as they were, without a minute’s preparation, to go off into exile, father, mother, and children. The record says, "They were all scattered abroad except the apostles."

7. Following them into exile into strange countries, and cities, getting a commission to go after them and arrest them, even though they had gotten as far from Jerusalem as Damascus.

8. The last thing in connection with the extent of this persecution is to see, first, the size or number of the church. Let us commence with 120 (that is, before Pentecost), add 3,000 on the day of Pentecost, add multitudes daily, add at another time 5,000 men and women, add twice more, multitudes, multitudes, then we may safely reach the conclusion that there were 100,000 Jewish communicants in that first church at Jerusalem. That represents a great many homes. This man Paul goes into every house, he breaks up every family. They are whipped; they are imprisoned; they are put to death or they are expatriated; and over every road that went out from Jerusalem they were fleeing, the fire of persecution burning behind them. The magnitude of the persecution has never been fully estimated.

There are eight distinct references by him in two speeches and four letters that show his own impressions of this sin. One of them you will find in the address that he delivered on the stairway in Jerusalem when he himself was a prisoner (Acts 22); another one is found in his speech at Caesarea before King Agrippa (Acts 26). You will find two references in Galatians 1 of the letter to the Galatians (1:13, 23) ; there is one in 1 Corinthians 15:15; another in Philippians 3; still another, and a most touching one, when he was quite an old man (1 Timothy). We may judge of the spirit and the extent of a thing by the impression that it leaves on the mind of the participator.

Everything that he inflicted on others, he subsequently suffered. He had them to be punished with forty stripes save one; five times he submitted to the same punishment. He had them put in prison; "oftentimes" he was imprisoned. He had them expatriated; so was he. He had them pursued in the land of expatriation; so was he. He had them stoned; so was he. He attempted to make them blaspheme; so they tried to make him blaspheme under Nero, or die, and he accepted death. He had them put to death; so was he. Early in his life, before a great part of his sufferings had yet commenced, we find his catalogue of the things that he suffered in one of the letters to the Corinthians, and just how many particular things that he had suffered up to that time.

Two considerations would naturally emphasize his unceasing sorrow for this sin:

1. His persecution marked the end of Jewish probation, the closing up of the last half of Daniel’s week, in which the Messiah would confirm the covenant with many. From this time on until now, only an occasional Jew has been converted. Paul did it; he led his people to reject the church of God and the Holy Spirit of God, the church which was baptized in the Spirit, and attested by the Spirit. He, Saul, is the one that pushed his people off the ground of probation and into a state of spiritual blindness – judicial blindness – from which they have not yet recovered.

2. The second thought that emphasized this impression was that he thereby barred himself, when he became a Christian, from doing much preaching to this people. In Romans 9 he says, "I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren’s sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh." "I bear them witness," he says in the next chapter, "that they have a zeal for God," and in Acts 22 he says that when he was in the Temple wanting to preach to Jews, wanting to be a home missionary, God appeared to him, and said, "Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem; because they will not receive of thee testimony concerning me." That was one of the most grievous things of his life, and we find it, I think (some may differ from me on this), manifested in the last letter of his first Roman imprisonment – the letter to the Hebrews. He wouldn’t put his name to it. He didn’t want to prejudice its effect, and yet he did want to speak to his people.

Let us compare this persecution with Alva’s in the Netherlands, and the one following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In a few words, it is this: There were two great bodies of Christian people, so-called, in France – the Romanists and the Huguenots. Henry of Navarre was a Huguenot. He became king of France, outwardly abjuring his Huguenot principles, but on the condition that liberty of conscience should be allowed to the people. His grandson, Louis XIV, revoked that great edict of toleration, and by its revocation, in one moment, commanded hundreds of thousands of his people to adopt the king’s religion. If they didn’t, troops or soldiers were placed in their homes with the privilege of maltreating them, and destroying their property, without being held responsible for any kind of brutal impiety that they would commit. Their young children were taken away from the mothers and put in the convents to be reared in the Romanist faith; the men had their goods confiscated, and in hundreds of thousands of instances were put to death. They were required to recant or leave France at once. Before they got to the coast an army came to bring them back, and when some of them did escape, my mother’s ancestors, the Huguenots, when that edict was revoked, came to South Carolina. Some of them went to Canada, some to other countries where there was extradition. The Romanists pursued them, and when they were able to capture them, brought them back to France to suffer under the law. Some of those that reached Canada left the settlements and went to live among the Indian tribes. There they were pursued.

When Alva came into the Netherlands (Belgium and Holland), the lowlands, under Philip, the King of Spain, the inquisition was set up and he entered the homes; he made domiciliary visits; he compelled them to blaspheme; he put to death the best, the most gifted, those holding the highest social and moral positions in the land, to the astonishment of the world. With one stroke of his pen he not only swept away all of their property, but anyone that would speak a kind word to them, or would keep them all night in the house, such a person was put to death. All over that country there was the smoke going up of their burning, and the bloodiest picture in the annals of the world was what took place when Alva’s soldiers captured a city. I would be ashamed before a mixed audience to tell what followed. The devastation was fearful.

This persecution illustrates the proverb, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." Whenever Saul put one to death, a dozen came up to take the place of that one. Indeed, he himself caught on his own shoulders the mantle of Stephen before it hit the ground, as God put the mantle of Elijah on Elisha, and as God made John the Baptist the successor in spirit to Elijah. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

The effect of this persecution on the enlargement of the kingdom, and on missions, was superb. Those Jewish Christians in Jerusalem – those terrapins – would never have crawled away from there, if Saul hadn’t put fire on their backs, but when the fire began to burn and they began to run, as they ran, they preached everywhere. It was like going up to a fire and trying to put it out by kicking the chunks. Whenever a chunk is kicked it starts a new fire. When that persecution came, then Philip, driven out, preached to the Samaritans. Then men of Cyrene, pushed out, preached to Greeks in Antioch, and they opened up a fine mission field. Peter himself, at last, was led to see that an uncircumcised Gentile like Cornelius could be received into the kingdom of God. So it had a great deal to do with foreign missions.

The effect of this persecution in bringing laymen to the front was marvelous. They never did come to the front in the history of the world as they did in this persecution. The apostles were left behind. The preachers right in the midst of the big meeting in which 100,000 people had been converted, were left standing there, surrounded by empty pews, with no congregation. The congregation is now doing the preaching. A layman becomes an evangelist. These people carry the word of God to the shores of the Mediterranean, into Asia Minor, to Rome, to Ephesus, to Antioch, to Tarsus, to the ends of the earth, and laymen do an overwhelming part of this work.

It is well, perhaps, in this connection to explain how Saul, in this persecution, could put to death Christian people, since they, the Jews, had no such authority. In the case of Christ we know that it was necessary for the Jews to obtain Roman authority in order to put to death, but just as this time Pontius Pilate was recalled, the Roman Procurator was withdrawn, and a very large part of the Roman military force and the successor of Pilate had not arrived, so the Jews were left pretty much to themselves until that new procurator with new legions came to the country.

QUESTIONS

1. What of Saul already considered in a preceding chapter?

2. Why did not Saul participate actively in the Sadducean persecution?

3. What five causes stirred him up to become a persecutor?

4. How may we imagine Saul fanning the flame of his bate by his thoughts?

5. What seven things show the spirit of this persecution as expressed in the New Testament?

6. What things show the extent of this persecution?

7. What eight distinct references by him in two speeches and four letters which show his own impressions of this sin?

8. What were his own sufferings, in every particular? Were they such as he inflicted?

9. What two considerations would naturally emphasize the unceasing sorrow for this sin?

10. Compare this persecution with Alva’s in the Netherlands and the one following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

11. How does this persecution illustrate the proverb, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church"?

12. What was the effect of this persecution on the enlargement of the kingdom, and missions?

13. What was the effect of this persecution in bringing laymen to the front?

14. How do you explain that, in this persecution, Saul could put to death Christian people, since they, the Jews, had no such authority?