To him, as an ardent zealot of the Law and a highly educated expert in it, all this could appear only as crying madness. It would not have deserved the slightest attention if the preachers had been only illiterate villagers.
Such men had followed the Founder of the teaching in crowds. But these were educated Hellenists, such as Stephen. Plainly, this teaching had already taken deep root, and it could not be left without attention.
These preachers had to be refuted and struck down. Saul did indeed come forward against Stephen. He was certainly one of those “from Cilicia, who disputed with Stephen” (Acts 6:9).
A dispute between such opponents could only be most heated. Saul saw, to his horror, that with all his learning he “could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit by which” his opponent spoke.
Then his zeal assumed a bloodthirsty character. He could wash away the shame of his defeat only with Stephen’s blood, and he approved his killing.
The circumstances accompanying this dreadful martyrdom could not pass without trace for such an ardent man as Saul. A terrible feeling of regret and repentance stirred in his soul, because in his zeal he had gone so far.
At the same time, a spark of doubt in his own rightness began to glow. But this was a burdensome feeling. It had to be suppressed.
This could be achieved only by a new and intensified zeal in defending the Law of Moses and persecuting its enemies. If such a highly educated and heroic preacher as Stephen had been destroyed, then the mass of his followers deserved no pity at all.
It had to be destroyed, and then the hateful teaching would be torn up by the roots. With such thoughts and feelings, Saul, contrary to the instructions of his great teacher Gamaliel, positively began “ravaging the Church.”
He persecuted her members “unto death” (Acts 8:3). This persecution struck terror into the Christians. Before the face of the terrible persecutor, they scattered and disappeared.
Jerusalem seemed to have been completely cleansed of them. There was no longer any preaching or miracles at Solomon’s Porch. Crowds no longer gathered in the streets, waiting for the shadow of the apostles Peter and John to pass by.
In the house of Mary, the mother of Mark, there were no longer crowded assemblies. If Christians gathered at all, they gathered only fearfully and secretly, in small numbers.
If the agape meals were still held, they probably took place as in the first days after the Resurrection, with doors locked for fear of the Jews.
Some Christians suffered cruel torment for their faith. Less devoted members of the Church undoubtedly fell away from her. The majority fled at once, even before the storm of persecution broke.
Such success had to bring great joy to the chief priests and elders of the Jews. At last they could hope for the complete destruction of the sect which had caused them so much trouble.
They would even have been satisfied with what had already been done. But Saul wanted to carry the matter to the end. “Being exceedingly enraged against them, he persecuted them even to foreign cities” (Acts 26:11).
He had heard that there were especially many Christians in Damascus. There they had made themselves a nest under the authority of the Arabian prince Aretas.
To destroy this nest also, Saul went to the high priest. He asked him for letters of authority to Damascus. With these he could set up a tribunal there.
He intended to bring in chains to Jerusalem all Christians he found there, both men and women. They would then be subjected to the highest court, whose example of justice and mercy they could see in the fate of Saint Stephen.
Having received the letters, he set out on the road, “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” Yet by the inscrutable purposes of God’s Providence, this road led him to an outcome wholly unexpected by him.
He did not leave Damascus as a terrible persecutor, with a whole party of Christians bound in chains and trembling for their fate. He left as a humbled and shattered Nazarene.
He became a follower of that very Jesus of Nazareth, whose name until then had sounded contemptible to him and had stirred in him an ineradicable hatred.
THEOSIS