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Saul Begins Preaching in the City He Came to Persecute
The first public actions of Saul after his baptism demonstrate that his encounter with Jesus Christ produced an immediate and unmistakable reversal of direction. Acts 9:19 states that after taking food and regaining his strength, Saul remained for several days with the disciples in Damascus, the very people he had traveled there intending to arrest. Acts 9:20 then says, “And immediately he began proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’” The location is significant because Saul had originally requested letters to the synagogues of Damascus so that their leaders might assist him in locating those belonging to the Way. Instead of entering those synagogues as an authorized persecutor, he entered them proclaiming the Person whose followers he had intended to bind. The transformation therefore became public almost immediately, leaving no room for Saul to preserve his former reputation while privately experimenting with Christian belief. He openly placed himself alongside the Christians whose confession of Jesus had previously provoked his hostility. His words announced that Jesus was not the rejected impostor Saul had believed Him to be but the Son of God whom Jehovah had raised from the dead. Saul’s first days as a Christian were consequently marked not by concealment but by proclamation.
The astonishment of those hearing Saul confirms how widely his former reputation had preceded him. Acts 9:21 records their reaction: “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name? And has he not come here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests?” Their questions show that Saul’s mission had been known and that his arrival was expected to mean danger for Christians rather than support for them. The man standing before them was therefore not an obscure convert whose previous religious identity had been unknown. He was the same Saul associated with severe persecution in Jerusalem, imprisonment of believers, and an authorized mission to extend that persecution into Damascus. His hearers knew what he had been, knew why he had traveled to their city, and could now hear with their own ears that he was proclaiming the faith he had intended to suppress. Saul’s transformed conduct gave public substance to the claim that something decisive had happened on the road to Damascus. No human observer could explain away the reversal by saying that Saul had always been sympathetic toward the Christians. His former hostility had been too visible, his mission too deliberate, and his new proclamation too directly contrary to everything he had come to accomplish.
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Saul Proves That Jesus Is the Christ
Acts 9:22 moves beyond the initial announcement that Jesus is the Son of God and describes the increasing force of Saul’s reasoning. Luke writes that “Saul increased all the more in strength and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.” The verb translated “proving” describes the bringing together of evidence in such a way that a conclusion is established, which fits Saul’s extensive scriptural education under Gamaliel. Saul did not abandon careful reasoning when he became a Christian, nor did he replace scriptural argument with repeated descriptions of his personal experience on the Damascus road. His encounter with Christ had corrected the central conclusion around which his understanding of Scripture had previously been organized. The Hebrew Scriptures he had studied for years could now be reconsidered in light of the reality that Jesus had been raised from the dead and had personally confronted him. Saul therefore began bringing passages, promises, prophetic expectations, and the known facts concerning Jesus together to demonstrate that Jesus was the promised Messiah. The intellectual ability formerly directed toward defending Pharisaic Judaism was now being redirected toward establishing the Christian proclamation from Scripture itself.
This feature of Saul’s preaching deserves particular attention because his later ministry would repeatedly follow the same pattern. He possessed an extraordinary familiarity with the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, and his education had trained him to compare texts, answer objections, and develop sustained arguments. Acts 9:22 shows those abilities operating almost immediately in service to Christ. The people opposing him could dismiss his change of allegiance as betrayal, but they still had to contend with the scriptural case he was placing before them. Saul knew the arguments of men who rejected Jesus because he himself had belonged to their side of the controversy only a short time earlier. He understood what objections would arise, what assumptions lay behind them, and what passages required careful explanation. His new Christian conviction therefore did not remove his earlier intellectual preparation but placed it under an entirely different understanding of Jehovah’s purpose. Gamaliel had helped train Saul to reason rigorously from the sacred writings, while the Damascus encounter compelled Saul to recognize that those writings had to be read with Jesus correctly identified as the Christ. The persecutor had become a preacher, and the formidable scriptural mind that had once threatened Christians now strengthened their proclamation.
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Saul’s Gospel Did Not Originate in Jerusalem
Paul later provided important chronological information about these early years when defending the source of his apostleship and gospel in Galatians 1. Galatians 1:15-17 explains that after God was pleased to reveal His Son in connection with Paul’s commission to proclaim among the Gentiles, Paul “did not consult with flesh and blood.” He further states that he did not immediately go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before him. Instead, Paul writes, “I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.” This statement is essential because Acts 9 compresses the narrative by moving from Saul’s initial preaching in Damascus to the statement that “many days had elapsed” before opponents plotted to kill him. Galatians supplies information belonging within those “many days,” showing that Saul’s early post-conversion period included departure for Arabia followed by a return to Damascus. Luke and Paul therefore describe the same early period from different perspectives, with Acts emphasizing the development of Saul’s public ministry and Galatians emphasizing the independence of his apostolic commission from the Jerusalem apostles.
Paul’s purpose in Galatians must control how the Arabia episode is understood. Galatians 1:11-12 states that the good news Paul preached was not something he received from a human source or learned through ordinary human instruction, because its authoritative origin lay in revelation from Jesus Christ. Galatians 1:17 supports that argument by stressing that Saul did not immediately travel to Jerusalem to receive his message from Peter, James, or the other apostles. His departure for Arabia therefore stands in deliberate contrast with a journey to Jerusalem for apostolic schooling. This does not place Paul in opposition to the Twelve, because his later ministry demonstrates unity with them concerning the gospel of Christ. It does establish that Paul’s authority did not depend upon Gamaliel being replaced by Peter as another human teacher who supplied him with a new religious system. Saul’s fundamental Christian commission came from the resurrected Christ Himself, and his understanding was not a secondhand version of something borrowed from the Jerusalem congregation. His later insistence upon this fact became important because opponents could otherwise claim that he possessed only derivative authority.
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What Scripture Tells Us About Arabia
Galatians 1:17 gives one direct statement concerning Saul’s movements: “I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.” Scripture does not identify the particular location within Arabia where Saul stayed, does not name companions who traveled with him, and does not state precisely how long the Arabian portion of this period lasted. It also does not record sermons preached there, congregations established there, or specific individuals converted through Saul during this stay. Those silences should be respected rather than filled with reconstructed episodes that the inspired writers did not provide. What Scripture establishes is that Arabia came before Saul’s return to Damascus and before his first post-conversion journey to Jerusalem. Galatians 1:18 states, “Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and I stayed with him for fifteen days,” placing Arabia and the subsequent return to Damascus within the period preceding that visit. Paul’s own argument places special emphasis upon what he did not do during those years: he did not immediately consult the apostles in Jerusalem. The Arabian period therefore belongs securely to the early independent phase of Saul’s Christian life even though its detailed daily activities are not revealed.
The uploaded treatment of Paul’s theology places this Arabian period within Saul’s profound reorientation after recognizing Jesus as the Christ. Such a reorientation would necessarily have affected the way Saul understood the Scriptures he already knew so extensively, because his former interpretation had led him to persecute the Christian congregation. The central fact that Jesus was the risen Messiah required Saul to reconsider how the promises concerning the Messiah, righteousness, covenant, sacrifice, resurrection, and the nations related to Christ. Galatians itself emphasizes that Saul’s gospel did not originate from human instruction, so Arabia cannot properly be turned into an imagined rabbinic school where he exchanged one human theological authority for another. Neither should the period be filled with claims about revelations that Paul does not specifically locate there. The sound historical-grammatical approach distinguishes the fact of the Arabian stay from reconstructions concerning every activity Saul performed while there. What remains certain is powerful enough: instead of immediately presenting himself to the Jerusalem apostles, Saul went into Arabia and afterward returned to Damascus. His Christian identity and commission were already established before he made his first visit to Peter.
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Saul Returns to Damascus
Galatians 1:17 explicitly states that after going into Arabia Saul “returned once more to Damascus,” bringing him back to the city where his life had undergone its dramatic reversal. Damascus now held an entirely different meaning for Saul from the one it possessed when he first approached the city carrying authorization from the chief priests. On his first approach, he had intended to locate Christians, bind them, and transport them to Jerusalem for punishment. On his return from Arabia, he came as a Christian herald whose message centered upon the very Jesus whose name he had attempted to suppress. Acts 9:22 describes Saul continuing to increase in strength and confounding Jewish opponents by proving that Jesus was the Christ. The movement from persecutor to preacher was therefore not a temporary emotional reaction that disappeared after the intensity of the road encounter subsided. Saul returned to the setting where his conversion was already publicly known and continued defending the Christian message. His course had become settled enough that he was willing to face the consequences produced by his new allegiance.
The relationship between Galatians 1 and Acts 9 also prevents a mistaken chronology in which every event of Acts 9:19-25 must be squeezed into a few uninterrupted days. Acts first records Saul’s immediate proclamation, then states in Acts 9:23 that “many days had elapsed” before the plot against him matured. Galatians identifies a movement to Arabia and back to Damascus within this broader early period, after which Paul eventually went to Jerusalem three years later. Luke’s narrative is selective because his purpose at this point is to show the astonishing reversal of Saul and the consequences of his preaching, not to provide a day-by-day itinerary. Paul supplies the missing geographical movement because his argument in Galatians requires him to explain why his gospel could not have been received from the Jerusalem apostles. The two accounts therefore complement one another naturally when each is read according to its stated purpose. Saul preached in Damascus, went to Arabia, returned to Damascus, and remained within this early period until opposition forced a dramatic departure.
The Meaning of Saul’s Growing Strength
Acts 9:22 says that Saul “increased all the more in strength,” language that should be understood from the context of his preaching rather than reduced to physical recovery after blindness. Saul had already regained his physical strength after taking food according to Acts 9:19. The growth described in Acts 9:22 appears in direct connection with his ability to confound opponents and establish from Scripture that Jesus was the Christ. His reasoning was becoming more effective as his understanding of the Christian message deepened and his command of its scriptural foundation became increasingly clear. This was not miraculous knowledge replacing study, thought, and careful use of Scripture. Saul possessed years of disciplined training, and his new recognition of Christ gave that training a corrected center. His earlier ability had served a wrong conclusion, while his growing Christian understanding enabled him to bring his accumulated scriptural knowledge into the service of truth.
The development is especially striking because Saul knew what it meant to argue from the other side. He had once regarded Christian claims about Jesus as sufficiently dangerous to justify imprisonment and violent suppression. He knew how a strict Pharisee might react to the assertion that the crucified Jesus was Messiah, and he understood the objections generated by that claim. Saul could therefore address resistance with knowledge of its internal logic rather than from a position of ignorance concerning Jewish argument. His opponents were confronting a man who understood their Scriptures, shared their cultural background, had participated in Pharisaic life, and had once possessed their hostility toward Christianity. That made his new proclamation difficult to dismiss as the enthusiasm of someone who had never seriously understood Judaism. Saul’s whole previous career stood behind his testimony that he had been wrong about Jesus. His growing effectiveness made the transformation even more troublesome for those determined to reject his message.
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Former Allies Become Opponents
The reversal of Saul’s course inevitably changed his relationship with people who would previously have regarded him as an ally. Before reaching Damascus, Saul possessed letters from religious authorities and expected cooperation from synagogue leaders in locating Christian disciples. After returning to Damascus as a preacher of Jesus, he stood publicly against the conclusion his former associates maintained. Acts 9:23 records the eventual result with disturbing simplicity: “When many days had elapsed, the Jews plotted to do away with him.” Saul had once approved Stephen’s death and had participated in a campaign that placed Christians under threat of imprisonment and death. He now discovered what it meant to stand on the receiving side of religious hostility directed against the Christian message. The man who had hunted Christians became a Christian whom others hunted.
This opposition cannot be explained as ordinary disagreement between competing teachers because Acts specifies an intention to kill Saul. His preaching had moved beyond being surprising or irritating and had become intolerable to opponents determined to stop him. Saul had once responded to Christian proclamation in essentially the same way, moving from theological rejection to coercion and violence. He now stood where Stephen had stood, arguing that Jesus was the Christ while facing men who were unwilling to answer the message merely through scriptural discussion. The resemblance would have been morally sobering for a man who remembered approving Stephen’s execution. Saul could not condemn the murderous intentions of his present opponents without also condemning the persecuting course he himself had previously followed. His changed circumstances therefore exposed the terrible nature of his former conduct from the opposite side of the conflict. Christianity had not simply given Saul new doctrines; it had placed him among the people against whom his former violence had been directed.
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The Plot to Kill Saul
Acts 9:24 states that the murderous plot became known to Saul and that his opponents watched the city gates “day and night” in order to kill him. The repeated surveillance shows deliberate planning rather than a momentary eruption of anger. Damascus was a walled city, and controlling or watching its gates offered an effective means of observing those entering and leaving by the normal routes. Saul’s opponents evidently understood that preventing an ordinary departure could trap him within the city and create the opportunity to seize him. The former persecutor therefore found himself under the kind of determined pursuit he had once directed toward others. Official letters and respected Pharisaic credentials no longer provided security because his confession of Christ had alienated him from the cause those credentials once served. Saul’s life had become endangered precisely because he refused to abandon the message he had embraced.
Paul later supplied an additional political detail when recalling this escape in 2 Corinthians 11:32-33. He wrote, “In Damascus the ethnarch under Aretas the king was guarding the city of the Damascenes to seize me, but I was lowered in a basket through a window in the wall, and I escaped his hands.” The UASV note explains an ethnarch as a political leader associated with a particular ethnic group, adding an administrative dimension to the danger Saul faced. Acts emphasizes the plot originating from Jewish opponents and their watch over the gates, while 2 Corinthians records the involvement of the ethnarch under King Aretas. These details are complementary because hostile religious opposition could operate in connection with local political authority rather than requiring two unrelated escape events. Paul remembered the incident years later as an example not of personal grandeur but of weakness and danger endured in Christian service. The man who had once traveled with official authorization now escaped hostile authority through a window in a city wall.
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Lowered Through the Wall in a Basket
Acts 9:25 explains how Saul escaped: “his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket.” The scene contains several remarkable reversals compressed into a single sentence. Saul had approached Damascus expecting to control the movements of Christians, but Christians now protected his movement out of the city. He had intended to bind disciples and lead them away, but disciples now lowered him to safety by means of a basket. He had entered the region possessing the support of powerful authorities, but he departed secretly at night because those opposing his Christian ministry controlled the normal routes of exit. The former persecutor had become dependent upon the courage and practical assistance of the very community he had once threatened. His escape demonstrated that Christian service would not bring the social advancement or security that his former career within Judaism might have promised.
The phrase “his disciples” in Acts 9:25 also indicates the effectiveness Saul had already developed as a Christian teacher. These men were not merely anonymous residents who happened to provide an escape route; Luke identifies them in relation to Saul’s work. Within the comparatively early period of his Christian life, Saul had not only begun proclaiming Jesus but had become capable of instructing others who responded to his ministry. The man who had traveled to Damascus expecting to reduce the number of Christians had contributed instead to strengthening Christian conviction there. Those associated with him were willing to expose themselves to danger by helping him evade men determined to kill him. Their action required secrecy, coordination, and confidence that preserving Saul’s life served the continuing work of proclaiming Christ. Saul’s ministry was already producing relationships completely opposite to those intended when he first left Jerusalem.
Paul Later Remembered the Basket as Weakness
The placement of the Damascus escape in 2 Corinthians 11 is revealing because Paul does not recount it as an impressive adventure designed to magnify himself. He is discussing hardships endured in Christian ministry and explicitly says in 2 Corinthians 11:30, “If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” He then names the God and Father of Jesus Christ as witness that he is telling the truth before recalling the ethnarch’s attempt to seize him and his escape through the wall in a basket. The incident therefore remained in Paul’s memory as an example of vulnerability rather than worldly triumph. Saul had once been the man with institutional power, official documentation, freedom to travel, and authority to seize others. Christianity had brought him to a position where survival depended upon being concealed in a basket and lowered through an opening while enemies watched the gates. Yet Paul later considered such weakness entirely compatible with faithful apostolic service.
This perspective helps explain a feature that would characterize Paul’s later ministry repeatedly. He did not interpret opposition as proof that his Christian course was mistaken, nor did he expect obedience to Christ to remove danger from his life. Jesus had already told Ananias in Acts 9:16 that Saul would be shown how much he must suffer for Christ’s name. Damascus became one of the first concrete demonstrations of what those words meant. Saul’s preaching produced not merely astonishment and debate but a conspiracy against his life and an escape under cover of darkness. He continued nevertheless because the truth of Jesus’ resurrection did not depend upon whether proclaiming it made his circumstances comfortable. The man who had once imposed suffering upon Christians was now willing to suffer because he had become convinced that their message was true.
From Destroying the Faith to Proclaiming It
Galatians 1:22-24 preserves one of the clearest descriptions of how Saul’s reputation changed during these early years. Paul states that he remained personally unknown by face to the congregations of Judea that were in Christ, but those congregations kept hearing a remarkable report about him. Galatians 1:23 gives the report directly: “He who once persecuted us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.” That sentence captures the reversal of Saul’s public identity more precisely than any later attempt to soften his past could have done. Christians did not forget that Saul had persecuted them, and Paul himself did not ask them to erase that fact from the story. What transformed his reputation was that the persecutor’s present conduct contradicted his former conduct in the clearest possible way. The man once associated with destruction had become associated with proclamation.
The wording “the faith he once tried to destroy” also demonstrates that Saul’s transformation concerned objective Christian truth rather than a vague change in temperament. He had not simply become less aggressive, more tolerant, or personally kinder while retaining his former judgment concerning Jesus. Saul had embraced the very faith he had attacked and was publicly proclaiming it to others. The central confession that Jesus was the Son of God and the Christ now governed his preaching. His scriptural arguments served that confession, his movements were increasingly shaped by the assignment Christ had given him, and the opposition he endured arose because he refused to stop proclaiming it. Saul’s identity therefore changed at the level of allegiance, doctrine, conduct, relationships, and public reputation. Those dimensions together made his reversal impossible to reduce to a private emotional experience.
The Congregations Glorify God Because of Saul
Galatians 1:24 states that when the Judean congregations heard what had happened to their former persecutor, “they were glorifying God because of me.” Paul did not write that they glorified Saul, celebrated his intellectual brilliance, or treated his conversion as evidence of human greatness. Their response was directed toward God because the transformation of such a determined enemy into a Christian preacher demonstrated the power of the truth Saul had once opposed. The same Christians who might previously have heard Saul’s name with fear could now hear reports that he was proclaiming Christ. His former crimes were real, but they no longer defined the course he was presently following. Repentance had produced visible deeds consistent with a new allegiance, and those deeds gave Christians reason to praise Jehovah rather than remain permanently fixed upon Saul’s former identity.
This change in reputation did not happen because Christians ignored evidence or accepted a verbal claim without observable confirmation. Saul preached publicly in Damascus, reasoned that Jesus was the Christ, faced opposition because of that preaching, and endured a plot against his life. His conduct supplied repeated evidence that he no longer served the campaign he had once advanced. The disciples of Damascus became close enough to him to assist his escape, while congregations in Judea heard continuing reports that their former persecutor now proclaimed their faith. Transformation was therefore measured across time and action rather than by a single declaration. Saul had entered Christian fellowship by baptism, but his subsequent life demonstrated that his confession was genuine.
Saul’s Scriptural Training Is Redirected Toward Christ
The first years of Saul’s Christian life also reveal how his earlier education was transformed rather than discarded. His training under Gamaliel had cultivated knowledge of Scripture, disciplined argument, memory, and careful engagement with religious questions. None of those abilities were inherently evil, but Saul had previously employed them within a framework that rejected Jesus and treated His followers as dangerous offenders. After Damascus, the same trained mind began proving from Scripture that Jesus was the Christ. Acts 9:22 therefore forms an important connection between Saul the student introduced in Acts 22:3 and Paul the apostolic reasoner seen throughout his later ministry. His learning remained extensive, but its governing conclusion had changed completely.
The significance of this redirection becomes clearer when Saul’s immediate preaching is compared with the way he later wrote to Christian congregations. His letters would draw repeatedly upon Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Isaiah, Habakkuk, and other portions of the Hebrew Scriptures. He would reason concerning Abraham, Adam, Moses, the Law, sin, righteousness, resurrection, the Messiah, and Jehovah’s purpose for both Jews and Gentiles. Those later arguments did not emerge from intellectual emptiness but from a mind already deeply formed by years of scriptural study. The Damascus encounter corrected Saul’s understanding of the Person standing at the center of God’s redemptive purpose, and that correction redirected the accumulated resources of his previous education. His formidable scriptural ability would now become one of the principal human instruments through which he carried the gospel into synagogues, cities, congregations, and eventually written apostolic instruction.
Saul Learns the Cost of His New Allegiance
The contrast between Saul’s former and present circumstances could hardly have been sharper. Before encountering Christ, he possessed respect within the religious system he defended and was advancing beyond many of his contemporaries according to Galatians 1:14. He could approach the high priest, receive letters, travel with authorization, and enter other cities as a recognized agent of persecution. After becoming a Christian, he faced astonishment, rejection, murderous hostility, surveillance of the city gates, and escape through a basket. The change therefore offered no obvious worldly advantage that would explain his new allegiance through ambition. Saul exchanged a rising position within Judaism for a Christian course that quickly placed his life in danger.
This fact gives substantial weight to his testimony concerning the Damascus encounter. A man inventing a story for advancement would normally expect the story to produce some social, financial, or political benefit, but Saul’s Christian confession immediately cost him the advantages attached to his former identity. His old allies became opponents, while the people he had persecuted became his brothers and companions. He had to rebuild trust among Christians and endure hatred from those who regarded his new preaching as betrayal. Yet Saul continued because the foundation of his change was his conviction that the resurrected Jesus had truly appeared to him and commissioned him. The consequences confirmed that he did not embrace Christianity because it offered an easier path.
The Reputation of the Persecutor Is Rewritten by His Conduct
Saul could not change the historical fact that he had approved Stephen’s death, ravaged the congregation, entered Christian homes, imprisoned men and women, and traveled toward Damascus intending to continue that work. Those events remained part of his biography and would later be acknowledged openly in his preaching and letters. What he could change was the course he followed after Christ confronted him. His reputation therefore underwent transformation not by rewriting the past but by living differently in the present. Christians came to know him not only as the man who had persecuted the faith but as the man now proclaiming it. Jewish opponents in Damascus likewise knew him as the former ally whose scriptural arguments now defended Jesus as Messiah.
Galatians 1:23 captures both identities without confusing them: “He who once persecuted us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.” The word “once” marks a real past, while “now” marks an equally real present. Saul did not remain halfway between the two roles, privately sympathetic to Christianity while publicly maintaining his former Pharisaic campaign. His new course was sufficiently visible that news spread beyond Damascus to congregations whose members did not even know him personally by sight. His reputation was therefore being reconstructed across the Christian community through reports of observable faithfulness. The persecutor had become the preacher.
From Damascus Toward Jerusalem
By the time Saul escaped Damascus, the first major stage of his Christian life had already displayed many characteristics that would define his later ministry. He preached Christ publicly, reasoned rigorously from Scripture, refused to retreat when opponents rejected his message, and depended upon fellow Christians when danger threatened his life. He had also spent time in Arabia, returned to Damascus, and maintained the independence of his commission from the Jerusalem apostles. Galatians 1:18 states that after three years he finally went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him for fifteen days. That journey would bring Saul back to the city where his name had once inspired fear among Christians and where he had participated in their persecution. The believers there possessed strong reasons to distrust him because many had personally experienced or remembered the consequences of his former campaign.
Saul therefore left Damascus carrying neither the authority nor the reputation with which he had first approached it. He originally came as an agent of the chief priests, but he departed as a hunted preacher of Jesus Christ. He had intended to take Christians from Damascus to Jerusalem in bonds, yet after his escape he himself traveled toward Jerusalem as one of the Christians he had once intended to imprison. He had begun his journey into Damascus surrounded by associates who shared his persecuting mission, while his departure depended upon Christian disciples willing to lower him through the city wall at night. The reversal was now established in public history, not merely in Saul’s private convictions. What remained uncertain was how the Christians of Jerusalem would respond when the former persecutor appeared among them claiming to be their brother. That question would shape the next stage of Saul’s life as he returned to Jerusalem, encountered fear among the disciples, received the support of Barnabas, met Peter and James, and eventually departed for Tarsus.


























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