St. Paul the Hero by Rufus M. Jones

Author:Rufus M. Jones [Jones, Rufus M. (Rufus Matthew)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-09-06T22:00:00+00:00

ANTIOCH

For a whole year Barnabas and Saul worked in the city of Antioch, spreading the knowledge of Christ through that region, gathering in new people all the time, teaching them the truth and helping them to live the new way. It was joyous work and while they were doing it they were constantly discovering fresh light and were learning all the time how to tell the world their “good news” and how to build churches out of people who had before been heathen and idol-worshippers. At the end of the first year when the Antioch church had become strong and vigorous—full of life and power—Barnabas and Saul decided, with the approval of the entire church, to go out and tell their message to the great world around them. They felt sure that God called them to be missionaries and they resolved to go wherever He wanted them to go and to do whatever they felt in their hearts that He wanted them to do. These two men took with them as their companion and helper a third man, named John Mark, who had come from Jerusalem to Antioch and who was Barnabas’ nephew. It was probably this young man who later in life wrote the wonderful book which we call “The Gospel according to Mark.”

The whole church came together for a very solemn meeting and prayed for the travellers and then the three men, full of joy and enthusiasm, set out on their journey down the river to Selucia, where they took ship for the island of Cyprus which lies west of the Syrian coast. They visited all the cities of the island, going from the eastern end across to the western edge, to the city of Paphos where the governor of the island lived. This governor was greatly impressed with the message and the extraordinary power of the missionaries and he, Roman as he was, believed the wonderful new truths which they told him about God and about the Christ who had come to reveal Him.

From Paphos the little band of travellers struck out for a new field of work. They had been so successful in Cyprus that they now decided to attack a still larger and more difficult region of the earth. They sailed almost north from Paphos, to the shores of the Mediterranean, lying west of the Taurus mountains over which Saul gazed as a boy. They landed in the district of Pamphilia and came to the city of Perga, a little way in from the Sea. From this time on, our hero is never called Saul any more. His name suddenly changes here to Paul. It is probably due to the fact that the field of his work is now widening out to the Gentile world. He is leaving behind the narrow circle of his own people who always called him by his Jewish name and he is going out among the Greeks who henceforth call him by his Greek name, that has become so familiar to us.

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