PAUL, the Apostle, Sylvester Hassell Saul of Tarsus was of Jewish parents, both father and mother. His father was of the tribe of Benjamin, and a freeman of Rome. He was liberally educated. The rudiments he received in his native city, which was a rival of Athens and Alexandria in learning; and he then completed his studies in Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel, a noted doctor of the law of Moses and the traditions of the Elders.”
The three highest elements of human nobility met in Saul— Roman citizenship, Grecian culture, and Hebrew religion. He had, even by nature, a mind of the highest order, and a spirit of extraordinary mold. As Moses was learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians, so Paul was learned in the wisdom of the Greeks; being one of the “not many wise men called” to the service of Christ (I Cor. 1:26). And a wonderful energy, resolution, zeal, fearlessness, sincerity, morality and devotion to the Mosaic law characterized him.
Next to the fall of man and the crucifixion of Christ, no incident occupies so much space in the Scriptures as the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. Besides being referred to several times in Paul’s epistle’s it is related three times in the Acts of the Apostles (chapters 6, 22 and 26.); first by Luke, the historian, then by Paul to the Jews, and then by Paul to the Gentiles; and, next to the sin of Adam and the death of Christ, no other event in human history is so full of spiritual instruction. If no other conversion had been described in the Bible, and if no explicit statement of doctrine had been made, the simple record of the Divine and instantaneous and total transformation of the bitterest enemy to the most devoted servant of Christ on earth would have perfectly demonstrated, and written, as it were, upon the Heavens, in letters of living light, the sovereignty, the almightiness and irresistibility of the grace of God in the conviction and conversion of the sinner.
By the operation of this efficacious grace, the persecuting Pharisee, who was all the while a chosen vessel unto God, became the lifelong martyr of Jesus of Nazareth; and, next to incarnate Deity, Paul became—far more truly than Julius Caesar—“the foremost man of all the world”—the most richly endowed with the Spirit of God to proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ to all the coming generations of the human race, the great Apostle of the Gentile world, the humblest as well as the most learned of the Apostles, the unselfish moral hero of humanity, the dauntless champion of divine sovereignty and spiritual religion, the greatest laborer and sufferer and witness for Christ that ever appeared in the annals of time, not only preaching, but living Christ “as the source and end of his whole being,” and surpassing all other men (excepting John) in the heights of spirituality and holiness to which he attained.
About two-thirds of the Acts of the Apostles are devoted to his career; and he himself wrote nearly one-third of the New Testament. All the greatness of Paul was due to the efficacious grace of God (I Cor. 15:10); and one of the most striking effects of that grace was to make him feel to be ‘the least of the Apostles’ (I Cor. 15:9); and, later in life, instead of feeling that he was getting better, he uses a still stronger expression of humility, and calls himself “less than the least of all saints” (Eph. 3:8); and, still later in life, he felt constrained to confess himself “the chief of sinners” (1 Tim 1:15). Like John the Baptist, he could say of Christ, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
Abandoning the name Saul (meaning in Hebrew asked, and in Greek conceited), the proudest name in the tribe of Benjamin, he wears the Roman or Gentile name Paul (meaning little); and he continued, all his life long, to grow less in his own esteem, while Christ, the hope of glory, grew greater within him. The humblest in the kingdom of Heaven is the greatest, said our Lord (Matt. 18:4); and we know that no one was ever more meek and lowly, or ever more great than He (Matt. 11:39; Phil. 2:6-11). Poverty of spirit is the first beatitude (Matt. 5:3); and there is no richer or lovelier sign of grace (Num. 12:3; Job 42:6; Psa. 8:2; 34:18; 51:17; Isa. 57:15; 61:1; 65:2; Jer. 31:9.18-20; Dan. 5:21,22; Micah 6:8; Matt. 11;25; Luke 4:18: 18:9-14; James 1:10; 2:5; 4:9,10).
The reality of the life and conversion of Paul, and the genuineness of his leading epistles, are unavoidably and frankly acknowledged by the most destructive and infidel historical critics of Germany. While those rationalists futilely attempt to prove that our canonical Gospels were all written in the second century of the Christian era, and are only corrupted copies of the originals, they admit that Paul’s epistles, especially those to the Romans, the Corinthians and Galatians (containing all the most important truths of Christianity), were certainly written by Paul in the first century; and that Paul himself was suddenly converted from a persecutor to a preacher of the Christian religion.
Nothing but the feeblest credulity can believe that this great change in such a mind as Paul’s was produced by a flash of lightning and his imagination.”
We will now notice the circumstances of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, and of Cornelius the Roman centurion, the first described in the ninth and the second in the tenth chapter of Acts, as these are good examples of what are called the two classes of Christian conversion.
Saul was making havoc of the church (elumaineto, a term used nowhere else in the New Testament, and employed in the Septuagint and in classical Greek to describe the ravages of wild beasts), endeavoring, with all his might, to exterminate the last vestige of the Christian religion from the earth, not even sparing the helplessness and tenderness of the female sex (Acts 8:3), and doing all this in the name of religion, than which a more heinous crime cannot be imagined; and yet filled with Satanic malignity against God and his people, and breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, he voluntarily applied to the high priest for letters addressed to the synagogues of Damascus (where were many Jews and some Christians), authorizing him to arrest and bring bound to Jerusalem every Christian man and woman, for the purpose of trial and execution.
It was a journey of nearly 140 miles, and usually occupied six days. Saul was accompanied by several attendants. As they neared Damascus, one of the most beautiful and ancient cities in the world, the sun attained high noon; and suddenly there shone from heaven a brighter light than even the meridian splendor of a Syrian sun—the Shekinah, or excellent glory of the Divine presence. The whole company saw the light, and were prostrated to the ground; and all heard an awful sound, but Saul alone understood the words, because they were specially intended for him.
Saul also saw in the Heavens the ascended and glorified Redeemer (Acts 9:14,27); 22:14; 26:16; I Cor. 9:1; 15:8), who said to him in the Hebrew tongue, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the goads.” The name of Saul was repeated to denote special solemnity, as in the case of Abraham (Gen. 22:11), Moses (Exo. 3:4), Martha (Luke 10:41), Simon (Luke 22:31), and Jerusalem (Matt. 23:37).
In Paul’s first spiritual lesson, Christ identifies himself with his poor persecuted people (Matt. 25:40,45; I Cor. 12:27; Eph. 1:22,23; 5:30; Col. 2:19); and Christ reminds him that, while all his measures for crushing the church of God are in vain, still, like a stupid ox, he is, by his stubborn fury, continually injuring himself.
The moment Saul heard the voice of the Son of God he lived (John 5:25); from his death in trespasses and sins he was a new creature (2 Cor. 5:17); his stony heart was replaced by a fleshly heart (Ezek. 36:26,27), his carnal mindedness by spiritual mindedness (Rom. 86); and every thought was brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5). In an instant and forever Saul was converted to God (John 17:3). “Out of the noonday God had struck him into darkness, only that he might kindle a noon in the midnight of his heart.” “It pleased God, who separated him from his mother’s womb, and called him by his grace, to reveal his Son in him” (Gal 1:15,16). “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness,” soon “shined in his heart, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).
“Trembling and astonished, Saul said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” From that moment obedience to Christ became the ruling principle in Paul’s life. His falling to the ground represented the fall of his pride and rebellion against God; his physical blindness denoted the utter spiritual blindness of his natural mind, notwithstanding his fine education, morality, and legalism.
Christ directed him to arise and go into the city, and it should be told him what he must do. This he did, being led by the hand in astonishment by his companions, who were themselves witnesses of the marvelous light and sound, though they understood nothing of the meaning. It was all done at noonday, when there could be no deception, and to the utter amazement of all.
And the strong-minded, educated, practical, truthful Apostle of the Gentiles knew, as well as he knew his own existence, that he had seen and conversed with the Lord Jesus Christ in glory. His whole future blameless, devoted, suffering, unworldly life is an unanswerable attestation of this fact. Though an angel from Heaven preached another gospel—which was not a gospel—from his, it was false; for he had his gospel directly from the Son of God (Gal. 1:8,12). And Paul was never ashamed of the gospel of Christ, nor of his experience of its saving power (Rom. 1:18), relating that experience even before governors and kings (Acts 26).
For three days Saul neither saw nor ate nor drank. Then to a certain disciple in Damascus named Ananias, a devout man according to the law, and of good report among the Jews, the Lord appeared in a vision, and said, “Arise, and go into the street that is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he prayeth, and hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him, that he might receive his sight.” And to Ananias’s objection the Lord answered that Saul was a chosen vessel unto him, to bear his name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel; for “I will shew him,” said he, “how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake.
And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and putting his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost. And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received his sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized” (Acts 9:18).
Thus the Lord revealed his will to each of his servants in a vision (Acts 2:17,18); there was a perfect agreement in the two revelations; Saul was at once pointedly directed to the church, and commanded to enter it by baptism, which he did.
Saul, before his conversion, “verily thought that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth” (Acts 26:9). His sincerity by no means proved that he was right or acceptable with God; because it was the sincerity of a carnal and darkened mind. The Hindoo is sincere in immolating himself under the car of Juggarnaut; but such immolation is suicide.
While a Pharisee, Saul had no doubt uttered long and numerous forms of prayer, but he never truly prayed until quickened into spiritual life by the voice of the Son of God and the power of the Holy Ghost (Acts 9:11; John 5:25; Eph. 2:1; John 6:63).
Paul, after his conversion, immediately preached in the synagogues at Damascus, confounding the Jews, and proving that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God. Then, as we learn from Galatians 1:17,18, he retired for about three years into Arabia, most probably the Sinaitic peninsula (Gal. 4:25; Heb. 12:18-21), for the purpose, it would seem, of searching the Holy Scriptures, and, afar from the haunts of men, like Moses, in the backside of the desert (Exo. 3:1, etc.), to commune alone with God on that holy ground where the bush “had glowed in unconsuming fire, and the granite crags had trembled at the voice which uttered the fiery law.”
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who communed there with Moses 1,500 years before, met his chosen and honored servant, and taught him the momentous lesson that he was to bear in his earthen vessel to the unborn generations of the people of God—the spirituality of the Mosaic law and his own carnality, that thus, through the law, he might be dead to the law, and so might live unto God (Acts 22:14; Rom. 7:14; Gal. 2:19; 2 Cor. 4:7).
While alive to the law, hoping for salvation by obeying it, and dreading condemnation by disobeying it, he was dead unto God; and it was only when he learned from God (Isa. 54:13; John 6:45) how spiritual the law was, demanding perfect sinlessness of thought as well as of word and deed, and how carnal he was, sold under sin, and having no good thing dwelling in him, did he become dead to the law and all legal dependence, divorced from the legal covenant, delivered from the curse of the law, and truly alive unto God, united to Christ, crucified with Jesus to the sinful and perishing vanities of the world, and yet living, or rather Christ living in him, and he living the life that he now lived in the flesh by the faith of the Son of God, who loved him and gave himself for him (Gal. 2:19,20).
The outward miracle of the light and sound was a sign of the inward miracle wrought upon the heart of Saul by the Holy Spirit “delivering him from the power of darkness, and translating him into the kingdom of God’s dear Son” (Col. 1:13); and he who denies that the conversion of the sinner is a miracle (that is, supernatural) point-blank denies the authority of inspiration (2 Cor. 4:6; Gen. 1:3; 2 Cor. 5:17,18; Eph. 2:1-10; John 5:25; Acts 9:1-22).
If creation and resurrection are not miraculous or supernatural, then surely nothing can be; and such atheistic philosophy would thrust God out of both his natural and his spiritual universe.
In view of Saul’s conversion, and the Scriptures, just cited, it is no wonder that even Mr. John Wesley wrote: “It may be allowed, that God acts as sovereign in convincing some souls of sin, arresting them in their mad career by his resistless power. It seems, also, that at the moment of our conversion, he acts irresistibly” (Wesley’s Works, vol. 6., p. 136, as quoted in Watson’s Theological Institutes, vol. 2., p. 444).
The conversion of Saul of Tarsus illustrates the saying of God quoted by Paul from Isaiah (Isa. 45:1; Rom. 10:20: “I was found of them that sought me not; I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me.” The case of Cornelius, the Roman centurion (Acts 10), illustrates what has been called the other class of conversions, which fulfill the promise: “Ye shall seek me and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13).
This language of the Lord by Jeremiah was addressed to the chosen people of God then in Babylonian captivity, and it was a most comforting prediction to them: “For thus saith the Lord, that after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the Lord: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the Lord: and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive” (Jer. 29:10-14).
These were the chosen people of God all the time, and it was certain, from this Divine prediction, that in the fullness of time they would call upon and seek the Lord with their whole heart, and be found of him, and be delivered from their captivity.” (Hassell’s History ppg195- 201)
E. De Pressense—quoted by Hassell: Every great truth which is to win a triumphal way must become incarnate in some one man, and derive, from a living, fervent heart, that passion and power which constrain and subdue. So long as it remains in the cold region of mere ideas, it exercises no mighty influence over mankind. The truths of religion are not exceptions to this law. God, therefore, prepared a man who was to represent in the primitive church the great cause of the emancipation of Christianity, and whose mission it was to free it completely from the bonds of the synagogue.
This man was St. Paul, and never had noble truth a nobler organ. He brought to its service an heroic heart, in which fervent love was joined to indomitable courage, and a mind equally able to rise to the loftiest heights of speculation and to penetrate into the deepest recesses of the human soul. All these great qualities were enhanced by absolute devotedness to Jesus Christ, and a self-abnegation such as, apart from the sacrifice of the Redeemer, has had no parallel upon earth.
His life was one perpetual offering up of himself. His sufferings have contributed, no less than his indefatigable activity, to the triumph of his principles. Standing ever in the breach for their defense—subject to most painful contradictions, not only from the Jews, but from his brethren— execrated by his own nation— maligned by a fanatic and intolerant section of the church, and threatened with death by those Gentiles whose claims he so boldly advocated—he suffered as scarcely any other has suffered in the service of truth; but he left behind a testimony most weighty and powerful, every word sealed with the seal of a martyr.
With the exception of Peter in the case of Cornelius, Paul was the first Apostle to the Gentiles, and being more especially called to that work, he devoted his noble life to it, and visited many countries, and that repeatedly— preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ, and thus inaugurating, as it were, the universal triumph of Christianity.
It was needful that the door of the church should be opened to the thousands of proselytes from Corinth, Athens, Ephesus, and Rome, who came up to it and knocked. But the great Apostle to the Gentiles was not satisfied with this irresistible argument from facts; he added to it reasoning equally able and eloquent, and armed with dialectics perfectly adapted to the habits of mind of his opponents, he victoriously established his principles.
The epistles in which these reasonings have in part come down to us, bear in every page the impress of his heart and mind; they show us the whole man, and the very style depicts in vivid characters his moral physiognomy. His polemics are especially admirable, because with him a negative always leads to a weightier affirmation; he never destroys without replacing, and, like his Master, only abolishes by fulfilling.
He is not only an incomparable dialectician in the subversion of error, but he is able also to discern all consequences of a truth, and to grasp its marrow and inner substance. This great controversialist is, therefore, at the same time, the first representative of that true Christian mysticism which St. John was so fully to develop.
St. Paul triumphed over Judaism only by putting in its place Christianity in all its breadth and beauty. What holiness, strength, nobleness of character he displayed in the course of his ministry, his history shows. St. Paul is the type of the reformer in the church; in every fresh struggle for the church’s freedom, his will be the track in which courageous Christians will follow. No true reformation can be wrought in any spirit other than that of Paul—a spirit equally removed from the timidity which preserves that which should be destroyed, and the rashness which destroys that which should be preserved.
When God is forming a powerful instrument for the accomplishment of his designs, the process of preparation is long and gradual. Every circumstance was brought to bear on the education of the chosen witness, and every experience, even of wrong and error, is made to enhance the power and completeness of the testimony rendered. When a man is called to effect some great religious reformation, it is important that he should himself have an experimental acquaintance with the order of things which he is to reverse or transform.
The education of Saul the Pharisee was to him what the convent of Erfurt was to Luther. It was well that he who was to break the yoke of Jewish legalism should himself have first suffered under its bondage. Thus while the question of the emancipation of Christianity had been stated by men belonging, like Stephen, to the most liberal section of Judaism, the Hellenist Jews, it was to receive its final solution from a man who had himself felt the full weight of the yoke.
Saul belonged to a Jewish family rigidly attached to the sect of the Pharisees. His name, which signifies “The desired one,” had led some commentators to suppose that he being born like Samuel, after hope long delayed, was, like him, specially consecrated by his parents to the service of God, and therefore sent from his early childhood to Jerusalem to study the sacred writings in the most famous school of the age. However this may be, it is evident that his mind had a natural bent toward such studies.
He may have received some intellectual development in his own city. Strabo tells us that literary and philosophical studies had been carried so far at Tarsus that the schools of Cilicia eclipsed those of Athens and of Alexandria. It appears, however, from the evidence of Philostratus, that a light and rhetorical school of learning predominated at Tarsus; more attention was paid to brilliance of expression than to depth of philosophical thought.
The life of the East there reveled in boundless luxury, and the corruption of manner reached its utmost length. The young Jew, endowed with a high-toned morality, may well have conceived a deep disgust for this Pagan civilization; and these first impressions may have tended to develop in him an excessive attachment to the religion of his fathers.
We may, probably, attribute to his abode at Tarsus the literary culture displayed in his writings. He familiarly quotes the Greek poets, and poets of the second order, such as Cleanthes or Aratus (Acts 17:28,) Menander (I Cor. 15:33) and Epimenides (Titus 1:12). According to the custom of the rabbis of the time, he had learned a manual trade, and, as the Cilician fabrics of goat’s hair were famous for their strength, he had chosen the calling of a tent-maker.
Jerusalem was the place of his religious education. He was placed in the school of Gamaliel, the most celebrated rabbi of his age (Acts 22:3). We know how fully the scholastic spirit was developed among the Jews at this period. To the companies of the prophets had succeeded the schools of the rabbis; the living productions of the Divine Spirit had been replaced by commentaries of the minutest detail, and the sacred text seemed in danger of being completely overgrown by rabbinical glosses, as by a parasitic vegetation. The Talmudic traditions fill twelve large folios and 2,947 leaves.
Whilst an ingenious and learned school, formed at Alexandria, had contrived, by a system of allegorical interpretation, to infuse Platonism into the Old Testament, the school at Jerusalem had been growing increasingly rigid, and interdicted any such daring exegesis. It clung with fanatic attachment to the letter of the Scriptures; but, failing to comprehend the spirit, it sank into all the puerilities of a narrow literalism. Its interpretations lacked both breadth and depth; it surrendered itself to the subtleties of purely verbal dialectics.
Cleverly to combine texts—to suspend on a single word the thin threads of an ingenious argument—such was the sole concern of the rabbis. Gamaliel appears to have been the most skilled of all the doctors of the law. He is still venerated in Jewish tradition under the title of “Gamaliel the Aged.” The “Mishna” quotes him as an authority. We are inclined to believe that he may have been less in bondage than the other doctors of his day to narrow literalism, and that he may have maintained a spirit more upright and elevated. His benevolent intervention on behalf of the church at Jerusalem distinguishes him honorably from those implacable Jews who were ready to defend their prejudices by bloody persecutions. The fact of his having had a disciple like Saul of tarsus, who must have been through his whole life characterized by a grave moral earnestness, leads us to suppose a true superiority in the teaching of Gamaliel. He had not got beyond the standpoint of legalism, but this he at least presented in its unimpaired and unabated majesty. He was not a man to delude the conscience with subterfuges, and his disciples were therefore disposed to austerity of life, and were distinguished by a scrupulous fidelity to the religion of their fathers.
Saul of Tarsus embraced the teachings of his illustrious master with characteristic earnestness and ardor, and, it must be added, infused into it all the passionate vehemence belonging to his nature. At the feet of Gamaliel he became practiced in those skillful dialectics which were the pride of the rabbinical schools, and he thus received from Judaism itself the formidable weapon with which he was afterward to deal it such mortal blows.
Here he gained a profound knowledge of the Old Testament. Gifted with a strong and keen intellect, he in a few years acquired all the learning of his master. He thus amassed, without knowing it, precious materials for his future polemics; but his moral and religious development in this phase of his life is of more importance to us that his intellectual acquirements. With all his knowledge he might have become, at the most, the first of the Jewish doctors, surpassing even Gamaliel, and shedding some glory on the decadence of his people; but he could never have derived from that vast learning the spirit of the reformer, which was to make him immortal in the church.
It is in the depths of his inner life that we must seek the distinctive character of his early religion; he has himself accurately described it when he says, that being “taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers,” he “was zealous toward God” (Acts 22:3).
Saul was no hypocrite, and, therefore, the burning words of rebuke spoken to his sect in general by our Lord did not apply to him. He was conscientious and honest in all his devotional exercises, and verily thought that salvation was attainable by the strict observance of the Judaistic rites and ceremonies. He says himself that he was “as touching the law blameless” (Phil. 3:6). And again says: “I profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals (in years) in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers” (Gal. 1:14).
Yet this is the same man who, by the grace of God, was made willing to count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord. For, says he, “when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died; and the commandment which was ordained to life I found to be unto death” (Rom. 7:9,10).
After his baptism he conferred not with flesh and blood, but went forth immediately preaching Jesus to the heathen (Gal. 1:16). Yea, saith he, “Unto me, who am less that the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8). The spirit that was mighty in Peter to the circumcision, was powerful in Paul to the Gentiles (Gal. 2:8). He was the great Apostle of the Gentiles, and he magnified his office. He could not adduce any external connection with the Savior in the days of his flesh, as could the other Apostles; he had not seen the historic Christ, so to speak, but he had seen the ascended and glorified Christ. This sight of him, however, was not a mere vision; it was miraculous and positive, and it confers on St. Paul an authority in no way inferior to that of the twelve Apostles.
But it is equally true that, in this respect, he more nearly represents the numerous generations of Christians who have had no outward relations with the incarnate Savior. Again he stands apart from that symbolic number of the twelve, which points to the ancient tribes of Israel. He is the Apostle of the church as it bursts the confines of Judaism; the Apostle of mankind rather than that of a nation.
Lastly, he did not receive his office by transmission: Ananias, who laid his hands on him, was a simple believer. His Apostolate was conferred on him by direct revelation. It stands in no relation to any positive institution, but it carries its own glorious witness in its results. The revelation “which he received in the temple at Jerusalem bore directly on his mission to the Gentiles (Acts 22:21); and thus presupposed an enlargement of his religious views.—Pressense (Hassell’s History ppg 232- 236)
E. Stock—Quoted by Hassell: His journeys were extensive, and ranged in different and distant portions of the Roman Empire. He was usually accompanied by one or more brethren in these travels, and the labors, exposures and persecutions that they experienced were wonderful indeed. Paul made four principal journeys in the discharge of his Apostolic and ministerial duties among the Gentiles.
First Journey.—From Antioch in Syria by land to Seleucia; by sea to Salamis in Cyprus; by land to Paphos; by sea to Perga; to Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe; back from Derbe to Lystra, Iconium, Antioch in Pisidia, Perga, Attalia; by sea to Seleucia and Antioch in Syria (Acts 13., 14).
Second Journey.—From Antioch in Syria by land to Tarsus, Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, Antioch in Pisidia; through Phrygia, Galatia and Mysia, to Troas; by sea to Neapolis; to Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea; by sea to Athens; by land to Corinth; by sea to Ephesus; by sea to Caesarea; by land to Jerusalem; back to Antioch in Syria (Acts 15:40-18:22).
Third Journey.—From Antioch in Syria, through Cilicia and Cappadocia to Galatia and Phrygia; through the province of Asia to Ephesus; from Ephesus to Macedonia (probably by sea); to Corinth (probably by land); by sea to Traos; by land to Assos; by sea along the coast to Asia to Miletus, Rhodes, Patara; by sea to Tyre; by land to Caesarea and Jerusalem (Acts 18:22-21:15).”
Fourth Journey.—From Caesarea by sea to Sidon and Myra (in Lycia); by sea round the south side of Crete, across the sea of Adria to Melita; by sea to Syracuse, Rhegium, Puteoli; by land to Rome.—E. Stock. (Hassell’s History ppg 236, 237)
Have the ministerial labors of any man ever surpassed those of the Apostle Paul? Because he was not chosen an Apostle by the other Apostles, and did not derive his authority as such from them or any institution in Judea, many doubted his Apostleship and caused divers accusations to be preferred against him; but it was absolutely certain that the signs of an Apostle attended his labors and ministry, and there were no reasonable grounds for disputing the same.
The first Apostles could point to the work in Jerusalem and in Samaria, but he could point to that which was done in Antioch, Paphos, Iconium, Derbe, Syltra, Philippi, Corinth, and to all the churches founded by him in various parts of the world. The council held by the Apostles and Elders in Jerusalem sanctioned the authority of Paul’s Apostolate, his doctrine preached unto the Gentiles, and their release from the burdens of the Jewish ritual. (Hassell’s History pg 237)
E. De Pressense—Quoted by Hassell: The Divine Spirit works not less mightily in Paul than in Peter, but the apostolic office is more distinctly observable. The thousands converted on the day of Pentecost and in Solomon’s porch were acted upon together by a sudden and irresistible influence, produced by the first outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Conversions in masses like these do not occur in this second period of the church. The proselytes are many, but they are made personally, one by one. When we come to examine Paul’s teaching, we shall see how wise he was in the adaptation of his discourse to the circumstances of his hearers, and how admirably he sought and found the point of contact between those he addressed and the gospel he preached.
His ministry is accompanied with miracles, but he has less frequent recourse than earlier preachers to this method of persuasion. In many places he founded churches without the aid of external miracles. In these missions of the Apostle to the Gentiles, therefore, the Divine Spirit works more directly upon the conscience and less by external manifestations. Man cannot derive any glory to himself from this fact; for though God’s method of intervention assumes a different form, it is none the less to this sovereign intervention of grace that the most beautiful fruits of the Apostle’s labor are to be ascribed.—Pressense. (Hassell’s History pg 238)