July, 36 CE. Late one night, Saul had a bright idea that was put into his head by the holy Ghost, only Saul did not realise that's who it came from: the Romans had been paying Saul only pocket change for kidnapped Christians – nothing close to the thirty pieces of silver, per Jew, that Saul had heard was the going rate down in Judaea. His new plan was to make a sweep of Damascus; to kidnap all of the "Jesus Jews" or "Christers" he could find; and to take them in chains to Jerusalem, to be crucified. The Chief Priest down there, named Caiaphas, knew what a Christian was worth, and he was willing to pay – so to hell with these cheap tight-fisted Romans and their trashy pop-culture gladiator games! That is the way that Saul the Persecutor figured it (Acts 22:5).

Saul went from one Jewish usurer to the next, throughout Tarsus, until he had borrowed enough cash for the expedition, using the same house as collateral with a dozen different moneylender. He packed his bags and saddled his camel. And without telling his mother, he left town one night on a secret mission to Syria.

Saul had already passed through Antioch and was close to the outskirts of Damascus when something very weird and unexpected happened. It was high noon, a bright sunny day, and very little traffic, when Saul suddenly fell off his camel and saw a light in the sky as bright as the sun (Acts 22:6).

A booming, deeply resonant Voice spoke to him in Hebrew, saying: "Saul! Saul! It is hard for you to kick against the pricks" (Acts 9:4).

"True," said Saul, "but the little pricks have it coming to them!"

Then the Voice said (sadly, and with a note of self-pity), "Why do you persecute me?" (Acts 9:5).

This remark caught Saul by surprise.

"Who are you...Yahveh?" he asked, tenuously (Acts 22:8). Saul was puzzled. He knew that the intense bright light and the Voice were no trick – in those days no one but God had that kind of technology – but until this point Saul simply assumed it was Yahveh who was talking, and he had always believed, like any man of faith, that he and God were on the same side.

The Voice said, "I am Jesus, and you're persecuting me!"

"Jesus of Nazareth?"

In the life of any great man, there will come an uh-oh! moment when he realises that he may have made a big mistake. Saul at this moment had oops! written all over his face. He shook with terror. He perspired. Tears welled up in his eyes. And he muttered something under his breath. I didn't quite catch it, but it sounded to my fallible ears like, "Oy gevalt, just look at me, I'm shvitzing [perspiring] all over like a goddamned Christian!" (Acts 9:1-7, 26:9-11).

An aside: Years later, as Saul of Tarsus told and re-told the famous story of the Voice on the road to Damascus, he remembered new details of what transpired that day (Acts 26:12-20). It all happened so quickly! Fourteen years later, Saul recalled that the Voice and the light didn't just knock him to the ground. Jesus actually took him on a tour of the universe, transporting him all the way up to "the Third Heaven" – and you can't get any higher than that: the "Third Heaven" is where the Trinity's three great White Thrones are located, well beyond the reach of the Hubble Space Telescope (2 Cor. 12:1-6, Rev. 2:7).

It was during his celestial tour that Saul the Persecutor happened to notice a worrisome seating arrangement up there in the Third Heaven: he saw rows of Judgment Seats, which (as Jesus explained) are reserved for Christian martyrs – including many of the same martyrs whom Saul had thrown into prison or thrown to the lions. At the Final Judgment (explained Jesus) those same martyrs will seal God's hellish doom on every "persecutor" who ever made fun of them or gave them a bad time (Rev. 20:4).

Hearing this unwelcome news put the fear of Christians into Saul's heart, I can tell you. So when he was beamed back down to Earth, and awakened on that patch of desert ground just outside Damascus, Saul's first spiritual insight was that he should probably change his name, being born again under a new identity. And here was another good reason to change his name: those merciless Jewish moneylenders back home in Tarsus – to whom he owed a total 17,000 denarii plus interest, more than he could repay in a lifetime – would soon be looking for him.

Five minutes after he accepted Jesus Christ into his heart as his personal lord and saviour, "Saul of Tarsus, the Persecutor," renamed himself "Paul of Damascus, the Apostle." And he never looked back.

– L.

(To be continued!)