WITH THE DISCIPLES IN JERUSALEM
Returns to Jerusalem.
Three years before, he left Jerusalem as an officer of the Sanhedrin, bearing a special commission, and accompanied by attendants and officers. He left with enmity in his heart for every person who professed to believe in Jesus Christ. Now he journeys back alone, rejected by those whom he had served, a fugitive from the Jews who, a few years before, awaited to welcome him as a hero! But Saul is happier now alone as he is than when he went in pomp to arrest God's servants. And yet he can look forward to no welcome in Jerusalem! His old friends and teachers think he has turned traitor to their cause, and the Apostles of Jesus doubt his conversion. "They were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple."
Barnabas.
But there was one, an old friend and true, a classmate, and fellow townsman who extended to Saul the glad hand of fellowship. That was Barnabas, who "took him, and brought him to the apostles," declaring how Saul had been converted by a light, and the voice of the Lord, and how he had preached in Damascus in the name of Jesus.
With this testimony, the Apostles accepted Saul, and gave him their companionship. Soon Saul was preaching in Jerusalem as boldly as he had in Damascus. In his disputes with the Grecians, he evidently confounded them as he had those in Damascus, and with the same effect—"They went about to slay him."
Back to Tarsus.
When the brethren learned this, "they brought him down to Caesarea, and sent him forth to Tarsus" back to his old home, to his parents and to his sister. But what a changed man from what he was when he left to practice in Jerusalem. In name he was still "Saul of Tarsus;" but in nature he was Paul the disciple of Jesus Christ.
