Paul - His Life and Labors (Part 2)

This is the second in a series looking at the life of Paul. It was written by Wayne Jackson and copied below from the October, 1978 Christian Courier. The paper was published by the East Main Street Church of Christ in Stockton, California and was edited by Jackson.

Paul the Persecutor - The Bible student is first introduced to Saul in connection with the death of the first Christian martyr. The murderers of Stephen, "laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul" (Acts 7:58). The term "young" (Greek: neanias) denoted a man approximately between the ages of 24 and 40 (Arndt & Gingrich, Greek Lexicon, p. 535) and some surmise that Saul was likely about 30 years of age at this time. The record continues by observing that Saul, "was consenting" (the imperfect tense suggests a habitual attitude) unto Stephen's death (Acts 8:1; cf. 22:20). The death of Stephen triggered a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem and Saul, "laid waste the church, entering into every house, and dragging men and women committed them to prison" (Acts 8:1-3). Saul's attempts to rid the earth of the Christian Way (Acts 22:4) were perfectly sincere (Acts 23:1; 26:9) and were performed with intense enthusiasm. In Jerusalem he imprisoned saints and voted to have them put to death. He disrupted Christian worship in the synagogues and persistently strove to force saints to deny the Lord (Acts 26:10-11). His conduct must have been very similar to that of Pliny, the governor of Bithynia who, in his letter to the Roman Emperor (112 A.D.) described his interrogative methods: "I ask them if they are Christians. If they admit it I repeat the question a second time and a third time, threatening capital punishment; if they persist I sentence them to death" (Epistle, 96). One can only wonder how many denied the faith under Saul's persecution.

Even in his rage against the church of Christ, Saul was missionary minded for he persecuted the Lord's people even unto foreign cities (Acts 26:11). He was merciless in his abuse of the saints. He beat them, imprisoned them and had them killed (Acts 22:19). And women fared no better at his hands than did men; a fact thrice mentioned (Acts 8:3; 9:2; 22:4) with the possible emphasis of Saul's unbounded hate for Christianity. His infamy as a persecutor of Christian people had reached even into Syria for the preacher Ananias declared that he had, "heard from many of this man" how much evil he did to the saints at Jerusalem (Acts 9:13). James Stalker wrote that Paul, "raged like a wolf in the fold of the followers of the Nazarene; and it was because there were no more victims left, as he supposed, in Jerusalem and Judea that he begged for instructions from the authorities to go in quest of fresh victims as far as Damascus" (Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, II, p. 145). Later, the apostle Paul wrote: "...beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and made havoc of it..." (Galatians 1:13). Both of the verbs are imperfects, literally affirming, "I kept on persecuting and laying waste the church." The memories of those bloody days were to linger with Paul for years to come (Cf. I Corinthians 15:9; Ephesians 3:8; I Timothy 1:15).