Week 42 Acts
Paul’s conversion to The Way was pretty dramatic, and one of the last things you’d have expected.
While he was on the way to Damascus Paul was stopped by a luminescence that blinded him, and a voice that asked him why he (Paul) was persecuting him (the voice). Paul didn’t know what was going on.
Paul: who are you, sir?
The Voice: I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting.
That was the extent of the conversation.
Paul had to be led by the hand into Damascus. He sat in his room for three blind and hungry days. He did pray, and he did have a vision of someone named Ananias coming and healing his blindness.
In the meantime Ananias had his own independent & simultaneous vision where he was told to go to the house of a stranger named Judas who lived on Straight Street where he would find Paul. He would pray that Paul would regain his vision.
Ananias was about as willingly to see Paul as Jonah was the Assyrians. But the Lord told him: (Paul) is my chosen instrument to take my message to the Gentiles and to kings as well as to the people of Israel. And I will show him how much he must suffer for me.
So Ananias did as he was told.
Once you get to chapter thirteen Paul dominates the rest of the book of Acts.
Note: quotes from Acts 9:5 & 15-16 (NLT)