To him the Lord Jesus appeared in a vision, and said, “Arise, and go into the street which 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.”
Ananias replied, “Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem; and here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name.”
Jesus replied, “Go thy way; for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel: for I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake.”
Ananias repaired immediately to the house of Judas, and, placing his hands in divine benediction upon the head of Saul, said, “Brother Saul, the Lord 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.”[99]
The scales fell from the eyes of Saul. His sight was restored. He arose refreshed and strengthened, and immediately received the rite of baptism. Saul, having thus become a disciple of Jesus, and, by baptism, a member of his visible Church, immediately made his faith conspicuous by his self-sacrificing and energetic works. In the modest account which he subsequently gave of his conversion to King Agrippa, he said,—
“Whereupon, O King Agrippa! I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision; but showed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judæa, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God,and do works meet for repentance.”[100]
As Saul was seen day after day, in the Jewish synagogues of Damascus, proclaiming with all his fervid powers of eloquence that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth was the true Messiah, all that heard him were amazed. They said one to another,—
“Is not this he that destroyed them which called on this name in Jerusalem, and came hither for that intent, that he might bring them bound unto the chief priests?”
But the zeal of Saul daily increased in fervor; and he “confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus,proving that this is very Christ.”[101] The Jews, not being able to reply to his arguments, resorted, as usual, to mob violence to silence him. Jesus, in his parting counsels to his disciples, had directed them, when persecuted in one city, to escape to another. The Jews entered into a conspiracy to kill Saul. They guarded the gates that he might not escape from the city, and engaged assassins to put him to death.
The thick and massive walls of Damascus, rising about thirty feet high, afforded a site for quite a number of small dwellings. From the windows of one of these houses, in a dark night, the disciples lowered Saul down, outside the walls, in a basket, by a rope. There this heroic young man stood alone at midnight, with a career of fearful suffering clearly unveiled before him; and yet his love for Jesus, his Lord and Master, was such, that he counted it all joy that he was permitted to suffer shame in his name.