Journeying with Paul...part two

When I first started writing about Paul's journey's, I intended to post it all in one post but as I wrote more and more to this article, I began to realize that there was just no way to feasibly do that. The longer it grew the more I realized that people simply don't have the time to sit and read something so long all in one sitting. It didn't make sense to post it as a single post, and yet, it bothers me to split it into multiple posts too. I think it reads better as a single post, that it makes more sense as one long post, but I can't expect anyone to have such a large chunk of time to devote to reading about Paul and his journeys all at once. So I'm splitting this into multiple installments. If you haven't yet read part one, you might wish to begin there.

At the end of part one in Journeying with Paul we had just left Simon. 

We move on in the story of the apostles and the church. The gospel, repent and be baptized, was being preached throughout the lands. With the gospel spreading ever further, Scripture takes us back to Saul, telling us that he is ‘still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.’

It would seem that Saul has taken the existence of the believers as almost a personal thing. He wants them gone so badly that he goes to the high priest and asks for letters to the synagogues in Damascus so that he may arrest any believers that he finds in their midst. And here we see that the church is referred to as the Way. There is no explanation there for why Saul refers to the church that way just a single word in his request to go and arrest the believers. Considering Saul’s apparent hate for the church it would seem as though this was not a complementary description.

Saul was granted his request. We aren’t told of any time passing or what he may have had to go through to get his letters all we see is that after making the request Saul is on his way to Damascus.

And here is where Saul’s life will be forever changed. We can’t know what Saul thought, felt or believed, but we can know that he was against anyone believing in Christ, so much so that he hunted them down and threw them in prison. That would imply a deep hatred or at least a deep resentment toward Christ.

Here was a man that could very easily be labeled as an enemy of Christ.

If anyone on earth at that time would have appeared to be someone that would never be converted then, at least from a human standpoint, Saul would appear to be that person. But the Lord had other plans.

And what mighty plans they were.

How many Christians of that day lived in fear of Saul? How many hid when they saw him coming? How many fled when they heard he was in the area?

This was a man that had to inflict terror into the hearts of those that believed in Christ.

And in a moments time everything Saul stood for was changed. Saul did not go seeking Christ, quite the opposite; he lived in defiance of Him and persecuted those that were His. This is not a man that ‘made a decision for Christ’, that ‘sought after God’, that said a prayer, that ‘asked Jesus into his heart.’ This was a man that was, it would seem, happily wiping out the believers far and wide. He did not, it would appear, want to believe in Christ.

Saul had asked to be allowed to go to Damascus and arrest Christians and had been granted his request. Chances are he was good at what he did, good enough to be allowed to go elsewhere at his own request. And as he approached Damascus, Saul found not believers but the One they believed in. Or rather Christ found him.

Before Saul a light appeared and he was asked why he was persecuting ‘Me.’ There is a lesson in that alone. The Lord did not ask Saul why he was persecuting those that believed in Him but why he was persecuting Him. An attack on the called out ones, or those that belong to Christ, is an attack on Christ. And we see something remarkable in Saul’s response. Saul does not simply ask who is questioning him, he says, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ Saul knew perfectly well to Whom he was talking.

Saul may have been systematically wiping out believers but he knew the Lord’s voice when he heard it. Despite his disbelief, Saul knew who the Lord was.

Later in chapter nine we step away from Saul for a moment and see the Lord addressing Ananias, telling him to go to Saul. And we see the fear that Ananias has of Saul. But the lord overrules that fear and says, ‘he is a chosen instrument of mine.’

I wonder here how anyone can deny that the Lord controls everything. But I know that there is a great delusion involved and I know that those that do not believe in the Lord’s sovereign control would have many arguments, soft arguments, I’ve heard them called, for the Lord choosing Saul. But here…I see the hand of the Lord at work, working out His plan.

So here starts Saul’s journey with the Lord, and here starts his earthly journey, teaching of Christ, but we won’t see his physical traveling journeys of evangelism until a bit later in Scripture, although he does a bit of moving around and teaching before then. After spending ‘some days’ with the disciples at Damascus he ‘immediately’ began to teach of Christ in the synagogues.

The people were amazed because here was the man that had hunted down anyone that believed in Christ and now he was teaching of Christ to whoever would listen. Not all that long ago I was told the testimony of someone that went to bed disdainful of all things having to do with God and woke up the next morning seeking for Christ. I can only imagine that that must be what this was like for Saul. And that the people who witnessed his conversion, or heard of it, must have marveled at the seeming instant change of heart.

And almost from the very beginning of that conversion Saul began to teach of Christ.

I know several unbelievers, they profess not the slightest belief in the Lord. These unbelievers can make things…difficult…for those that believe. Talking to them is an entirely different experience than talking to someone that holds at least a minuscule amount of faith in the Lord. I can well imagine the shock I would feel if one of them were to get up one morning teaching and preaching of Christ. I can also imagine how I would feel if these same people had held positions of authority and had been imprisoning anyone that believed in Christ. Quite honestly I would wonder if it was some sort of set up, if they were speaking of Christ to somehow lure believers into coming to them.

And we can see in Scripture that there were those that felt that very way about Saul. We can also see that Saul quickly went from being the hunter to the hunted.

Scripture then moves away from Saul for a while, the focus moves to others and to what is being done in the ekklesia. Of all that is happening we see that the Lord gives salvation to the Gentiles and not just to the Jews. This will later become an important thing to Saul as his ministry will be toward the Gentiles.

And that brings us to chapter thirteen and back to Saul. At the very beginning of the chapter we see that the Holy Spirit is ready for Barnabas and Saul to do ‘the work to which I have called them.’ And here is where the mighty work of Paul begins.

Here, too, is where we can begin to follow Paul’s journeys on the map. The Bible that I am using for this actually has two different maps of Paul’s journeys. There is one map for his first and second journey, and one map for his third journey and his journey to Rome.

Paul and Barnabas begin their journey in Antioch. After being set apart by the Holy Spirit they went to Seleucia and then boarded a boat to travel to Cyprus, an island where Salamis is located. They then preached in the synagogues there, teaching of Christ and performing miraculous feats, or Paul did so on at least one occasion.

Paul, it might be said, is a traveling missionary. He is just beginning his journey’s here, telling of Christ, seeing new believers converted, and in many ways establishing new groups, or assemblies, of believers. Not because he is setting up physical churches but because he is spreading the gospel to people that have never heard it and seeing new believers being given salvation.

If only one person believed in a town where Paul was, Paul established the assembly there. Because the believers are the called out ones, than that one believer would be a new assembly, or what we have been taught to call a ‘church’, in an area where believers did not exist before. Only it wouldn't have been a 'church' as we know it because we are conditioned to think of a physical building, usually with a steeple on the top, as a 'church'. That isn't what Paul was establishing. Instead he established a body of believers, introducing people that had never heard of Christ to the Gospel and to a Savior and leaving behind a body of believers, no matter what their number was, in his wake.

What, I wonder, did Paul have to leave behind with the newly established assembly when he left that area and moved on to the next? Today if someone witnessed the conversion of another person or even the first stages of belief in them, here in America, we could leave with them a copy of the Scriptures in the form of a Bible. We could hand them a list of websites to visit. We could give them our phone number so that they could call us when they had questions. But…what did Paul have to leave with them? A bit of instruction? At best maybe a few written words? The Old Testament existed but I would assume that it wasn’t all that easy to come by. I read somewhere that around the 1500's it cost a priest a years wages to buy a Bible. This was long before then. Things were still written on scrolls, if they were written at all. 

To have the Scriptures in Paul’s day, someone would have had to hand-write them. Even paper wasn’t easy to acquire. Paper as we know it did not exist then, nor did pen and ink as we know them. Owning a copy of Scripture in those days would have been no small thing, no matter how easy or hard it may have been to attain. And even if a new believer could have acquired a copy of the Scriptures, they would have only the Old Testament.

So what did Paul leave them with? Did he have words of wisdom, a bit of the Old Testament, a letter...anything...to leave in the hands of these new believers? Or did he simply leave them with their new found faith and whatever they could remember of his teachings?

And so here we gain an idea of what Paul is dealing with. People that are steeped in deep traditions. People that are being saved out of religions with their own beliefs and requirements. People that would have a lifetime of learning to put behind them as they learn a whole new way of life, of believing. And Paul has little more than his own verbal instructions to give them, he may have had nothing but his verbal instructions to give them.

From what I gathered from commentary on chapter 13 when Paul began this first journey, Barnabas was most likely the leader of the journey, Paul being a relatively new believer, but it would seem that after their time on Cyprus Paul advanced to being the leader of the group. Going only from what I’m reading in chapter 13, I did not see anything that indicated this may be true or false. Scripture, in chapter 13, only describes them as a group, although it does tell us that Barnabas and Saul had John to help them. So we know John was not in any kind of leadership or even of an equal status.

After traveling through Cyprus, the group leaves, having spread the gospel through the entire land, and travels by ship to his next stop, Perga. At this point John left them. Paul and Barnabas continued their journey to the city of Antioch, not the same Antioch that they started from.

It was here that Paul and Barnabas began to give the gospel to the Gentiles.

As we move into the final verses in chapter thirteen we see that the Gentiles rejoiced and glorified the word of God. But we see something else too, ‘as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.’ Here among this great crowd, written in a few words, is what Paul later refers to as the elect, the chosen of God. Here, we see that only those appointed to eternal life believed. It would be easy to read these verses and come to the conclusion that in the crowds of Gentiles now following Paul and Barnabas were all believers. These people followed after him rejoicing in the word of God…aren’t they all believers? Aren’t they all receiving salvation?

Just as in the ‘church’ buildings of today, in that group were many people that were professing a belief in Christ but Christ himself told us that ‘their hearts are far from me.’ A profession from ones mouth does not equal a converted heart. It’s easy to believe in something when you see the wonders before you. For example…anyone that’s ever stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon cannot help but admit that it’s real but can they admit that it was created?

Here in these large groups of people was much excitement, and probably no small amount of stories being told of Christ and His miracles, His resurrection alone was a huge miracle, and the people in these groups are being swept away by this excitement and the stories they heard.

I went to a play at a ‘church’ building just before Christmas. Toward the end of the play the preacher went onstage and spoke to the audience, eventually leading them through the ‘salvation’ prayer. Many, many voices joined together that night in prayer. Why? Do you suppose that everyone  that said that prayer in the audience that night had their hearts changed and were given salvation by the Lord? Do you suppose that play had the ability to reach deep into all those people and change them to the point that the Lord saved them? Or is it more likely that the play being given that night affected their emotions to the point that they were ‘ripe for the picking’ when the preacher told them they could spend eternity in heaven? Who, after all, doesn’t want to go to heaven?

These groups following Paul were probably no different…minus the ‘salvation’ prayer. They were seeing Paul, hearing the stories he and Barnabas told, possibly hearing stories from others. Chances are they were being drawn into the excitement of the moment.

And we should probably not forget that in these days what excitement did they have? Roman soldiers going through their towns? Public beatings? A trip to the marketplace? There were no televisions, no movies, no internet. I admit to knowing little of what life was like during that time. Did they have festivals? I don't know but if they did than those festivals would most likely have been like the festivals of today, coming around only every so often. If they had reading material it probably wasn't like the stories we have in books today, fairy tales and romances, to entertain the mind and remove the reader from reality, and even if they had stories the likes of which we have today, those stories would not have been in the easy to come by, cheap paperbacks of today.

Excitement might have been all it took to make their minds believe and their mouths confess, but that doesn’t mean their hearts believed unto salvation. And Scripture tells us, right there toward the end of chapter thirteen, that ‘as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.’

So here is what Paul is dealing with. Large crowds of scoffers and those that not only do not believe but that would gladly kill him for his belief. And large crowds of people claiming to believe. How is he to know the true believers from the ‘professors’?

At this point the Jews were so against him that they ‘drove them out of their district.’ Paul and Barnabas ‘shake the dust from their feet’ and leave. They move on to Iconium and get much the same response, great numbers of believers and unbelievers stirring up trouble against them. Here we see that ‘they remained for a long time, speaking boldly for the lord, who bore witness to the word of his grace granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands.’

These men were performing miracles. And just as the people had done with Christ, the people in this city set out to stone them for the things they said and did. Paul and Barnabas, learning of the plan to stone them, flee the city.

They now spend some time in the cities of Derbe and Lystra and the ‘surrounding country.’ It is here, in Lystra, that Paul and Barnabas are taken to be gods and it is here that the Jews from Iconium and Antioch follow them, convincing the crowds to side with them, the Jews stone Paul and drag him from the city, assuming that he is dead.

These were the same crowds that had just been wanting to make sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas, thinking they were gods. Now at the word of Jews from other cities, not even one of their own city, they stone Paul.

What determination did Paul have to have to endure such persecution? What must have filled his heart and mind to the point that he could and would willingly keep going through such horrors as he had just faced? But keep going he did. Paul gets up and goes into Derbe. He and Barnabas preach the gospel there and ‘made many disciples’.

Paul not only kept going after he was stoned...and I don't know about you but I can hardly even imagine the pain that being stoned must bring...but Paul got up after being stoned to the point that he was dragged from the city and discarded, being thought dead. We are told nothing of his injuries or of his recovery, only that he got up and kept going but he had to have had injuries, severe injuries to be taken for dead.

We don't know how long Paul recuperated but we are told that they then go back the way they came, revisiting the cities that they had fled.  Here we see that they ‘strengthen the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.’

They are, it would seem, giving instruction to the believers, telling them how to live, and that they will enter the ‘kingdom of God’ through ‘tribulations’. Here again, I must wonder at the modern belief that God only wants to love us and to bless us. That is a very popular belief among many that profess a belief in Christ. And yet…Scripture clearly says that the kingdom of God is entered through ‘many tribulations.’ Where is the idea that He only wants to bless us in that?

But back to Paul…he is urging the ‘disciples’ to continue in the faith, telling them that they will have many tribulations. Did he tell them of what he himself has gone through? Did he tell them stories of the believers he threw into prison? Did he tell them of Stephen and how he held fast to his faith in his final moments on earth? We don’t know. But we do know that he urges them to continue in the faith and that there will be tribulations.

At that point we see that elders are appointed. Who would these elders be? I read that this first journey of Paul’s lasted two years. If that’s correct then it would seem that among these believers there would be none whose faith was more than two years old, most likely much less than that. Paul was retracing his steps, revisiting the places he had been. He was working his way backwards through the cities he had spread the gospel in. So those that were given faith at the beginning of his journey would be back on the island of Cyprus and Paul is starting with his most recent stops…Lystra, the very city that attempted to stone him to death.

And it is among these new believers that elders must be appointed. So…who would the elders be? They wouldn’t be chosen from the upstanding men of the city, wouldn’t be chosen based off age. What then would qualify someone to be an elder among these new believers? Maybe the Lord gave Paul the perception to see who was a true believer and who wasn’t. Maybe the Lord delivered those that He wanted to be made elders to Paul in some way. We can’t really know how the elders came to be chosen but we can be fairly sure that these men were chosen as elders based off their understanding of the gospel and at least seemingly genuine faith.

Paul knew that he was about to leave brand new believers in the hands of these men. These believers had nothing to go by except what they had learned from Paul and what these men would teach them. They had no Scripture in their hands to use as a measuring stick for themselves or for others.

These elders would have been very important, both to the new believers and to Paul. Paul had to be able to trust these men with the teaching of the new believers and the believers had to be able to trust these men to teach them the right way.

Funny…today we hold within our hands the very word of God. With the turning of a few pages and a few minutes of our time we can see what the Lord expects of those that lead His people and yet…many blindly follow the man standing behind the pulpit in whatever building wears the name of ‘church’.

These early believers had no Bible to use for testing those in leadership roles, they had nothing to study at home, they had nothing to follow. They had their faith and the few words they were given by Paul, or whoever. And they had the elders appointed in each place.

And these elders were being chosen based off their faith and most likely their understanding of Scripture. Today, elders are appointed based off…whatever man deemed qualification they wish to use. Preachers are chosen based off which seminary they graduated from and…whatever other similar qualifications are looked for.

Does anyone ever question these ‘elders’ and preachers on how they came to be ‘Christians’? And if so are their testimonies ever checked against what Scripture says true conversion is? Are they ever quizzed to see how well they know Scripture? Are they ever chosen based on the standards set forth in Scripture? Are they ever put through the tests of the faith in 1 John?

This appointing of elders and encouraging of the disciples brings an end to Paul’s first journey. He works his way back the way he came, encouraging and putting something of a system in place for the believers that he was an instrument in their believing in Christ.

And that brings us to the end of Paul's first journey. We have mentally walked where he walked and in doing so I have had numerous questions that there are no biblical answers to, so much of that time in Paul's life is left out. We are given the basics and nothing else. We are shown what he does and how it related to the early ekklesia but we are not told of what Paul thought or felt. Did he ever have days when he just wanted to give up? Days when he remembered his former life, may have remembered the ease of that life, if it was a life of ease, possibly even wished, in some way or another, for a life without the persecution he was facing in this new life that he did not ask for.

What I wouldn't give for a more in depth look into this part of Paul's life, to read, say, his journal, telling of his thoughts and feelings, what he went through, what he wished for, what he wanted to do, but the Lord did not see fit to provide us with that much insight into Paul's life. Maybe because He wanted the importance on what Paul was doing more than what Paul was feeling, or even on Paul himself. Either way, we are not given that kind of insight. But we can gain great insight and understanding in walking with Paul as he made those journeys.