Luke offers precious little indication of the time factor during this part of his narrative. From other sources, we get the feeling the persecution took some months, and the jump to the Samaritans easily takes us up to perhaps as late as 35 AD. What follows here would be hard to explain historically if the chapter takes us past 40 AD. We should not bog ourselves down in the minutia of secular history, but simply be aware Luke telescopes his story over a period of years.
Whether Saul was an official member of the Sanhedrin matters not, for he operates on the High Priest's authority. He is granted the discretion to imprison the disciples, now referred to as those following "the Way." Following the lynching of Stephen, it would seem Rome turns a blind eye to their executions. After ravaging the church in Judea and Galilee, Saul secures letters of extradition to bring back any disciples who fled to Damascus.
It was several days' journey north and east to Damascus, where a very large Jewish community lived. In the complicated politics of that era, it was common in the Roman Empire for various ethnic nations to maintain some police authority over their own wherever they might be found. For example, Rome found the vestiges of the ancient Moabites and Ammonites living in alliance under Edomite rule, calling it the Nabatean Kingdom. That kingdom maintained an ethnarch -- a local magistrate's office -- in the city of Damascus, where many Nabateans lived, but the city itself was fairly independent as a member of the Decapolis. That latter was a collection of cities so fully Hellenized, having enthusiastically embraced Alexander the Great's evangelism of the ancient Greek culture some 300 years earlier, they were culturally different from the surrounding Near Eastern peoples. For Paul to enter Damascus with troops and a caravan of wagons to transport prisoners was a little unusual, but not at all out of order.
Before he arrived, Saul was confronted by the Risen Jesus, Himself. In the middle of the day, the glory of the Lord was blindingly bright. Saul grew up in an Jewish household speaking the Aramaic language, but lived in a Greek-speaking world. There would be instant significance with the Voice addressing him in Aramaic, for it was a symbol of the very God on behalf of whom he pretended to be serving so zealously. As a Pharisee, he would have believed in miracles such as this, and realized at the minimum he was being addressed by an angel. The question about persecution from Heaven would have shaken Saul to the core. Upon asking to whom he spoke, Saul learned it was the man whose memory he despised, Jesus. Everything Saul thought he knew was torn away from him in that instant. While the foundation of his conviction in the One True God remained, that foundation was swept bare, and a whole new life would be built. Saul was in no position to argue, but simply asked his new Master what was required of him.
We can't be sure exactly what Saul's entourage experienced. Surely they knew something unearthly was taking place, and there's no doubt they heard Saul speaking to Jesus, whether they heard Jesus or not. Saul had seen a vision which left him blind. After leading Saul into town and to some sort of accommodation, the mission is stalled, and they cannot act without him. We note Saul is all but dead, in a sense, for about as long as Jesus stayed in His grave. We know nothing of Ananias except what we read here, but he is a spiritual man whom God sends as the agent to bring Saul into his new life. Straight Street was the main thoroughfare through the center of the city, still visible today. Ananias went there over his personal misgivings, and embraced Saul as a new brother in Christ, the man God has set aside as His new missionary to the Gentiles. We note the Lord speaks to Ananias as if suffering is the norm in the Kingdom. Saul's sight returned as if a scaly covering fell from his eyes, symbolic of the brittle nature of the lies which had formerly blinded him. He embraced this new life by the ritual of baptism.
Entering this new Kingdom fully, Saul first spent some time refreshing his understanding of the Messiah from the opposite side he had previously argued. Instead of raiding the synagogues for refugee members of the Jerusalem church, Saul preached the Messiah they served. The turn-around was shocking, even earth shattering to those who had heard of Saul's mission. Where previously he had officiated the execution of Stephen, he now took up the work of Stephen himself, debating with the same overpowering logic in the synagogues. To have their chief enforcer now become their chief antagonist was more than the rabbis could accept. They plotted to catch Saul leaving the city so they could kidnap and murder him. But their plans leaked out and Saul slipped out of town by means of a house built atop the wall, with a window facing outside, where he was let down in a very large basket.
Returning to Jerusalem, Saul had a hard time convincing the church he was one of them. Here we see the wealthy Cypriot, Barnabas, in action again, vouching for Saul. Saul told the story of his conversion, and his ministry in Damascus. For a time, he remained with the church there, literally carrying on where Stephen left off, debating in the Greek-speaking synagogues of the city. Again, there was a plot to murder Saul, and he was spirited away by the disciples, down to the port of Caesarea, from whence he returned home to Tarsus. However, there was no one else willing to take his place as the whip hand against the followers of Jesus, so the persecution waned somewhat. Thus, for a time, the disciples grew stronger and more numerous in Judea, Galilee and Samaria.
The vessel was prepared. Now it was for Peter to cross that last line with the gospel of Jesus Christ. As the senior shepherd, he visited all the congregations he could find. At one point, he stopped off in Lydda, on the Plain of Sharon, against the foothills northwest of Jerusalem. While there, he encountered Aeneas, a man paralyzed for eight years. After healing the man, the news spread across the Plain of Sharon, and many were moved by this noteworthy miracle to follow Jesus. Just down-slope from Lydda was Joppa, on the coast. A rather popular woman named Dorcas, famous for charitable acts. She sickened, then died. Jewish custom called for the body to be washed upon death, then a period of mourning for three days before embalming. The disciples there hastily sent word and had Peter brought down. He noted the widows showing off the clothing Dorcas had made for them, as such women seldom could afford to eat, much less clothe themselves. Recalling the way Jesus did things, Peter had the house cleared of guests, then prayed in the quiet privacy before calling Dorcas back to life. He pulled up from her deathbed and presented her alive again to the Christians there.
As we might expect, this so overwhelmed the community there, they had Peter stay awhile. The time is ripe. We note Peter stays in the home of a tanner, someone who would be outcast in Jewish society as one who handled animal carcasses, a profession regarded as unclean by Jews. In every way, the old walls of division were broken down, and those who previously had little hope were becoming children of God. The old Israel was passing away, and the New Israel was aborning.
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By Ed Hurst
27 June 2008
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