DAY 312 Read Acts 8 and 9.
Today's reading: We are introduced to the man who became perhaps the greatest Christian missionary--Saul of Tarsus, later known as Paul. Christ's apostle to the Gentiles.
Memory gem: "He is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel" (Acts 9:15).
Thought for today:
Before Paul was converted he was armed with letters of arrest and went from city to city to seize and punish all who called Jesus "Lord." You remember the story of the Damascus road. Christ appeared to Paul in glory. Paul saw the shining face of Christ, the marks of the thorns, the nail-pierced hands, the wound in His side.
Paul saw the Lord, and his eyes were dim to this world ever after. A voice from heaven said, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" Saul said, "Who art thou, Lord?" The answer came back, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest (Acts 9:4, 5).
How was Saul persecuting Jesus? He was persecuting Jesus in the person of His followers. "As ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren," Jesus declared, "Ye have done it unto me" (Matthew 25:40).
When the first Christian martyr, Stephen, was stoned to death, Saul held the coats of the men who did the cruel work. He was with them in it. He was guilty of persecuting Jesus in the person of Stephen. But Paul never forgot something about that terrible experience: Stephen's face looked like the "face of an angel" (Acts 6:15)..
The servants of Christ put to death by persecution were maligned as the offscouring of the earth, when they actually were the saints of the Lord. Think of the wonderful meeting someday in the better land when Paul meets those whom he persecuted! Someone has put these words into his mouth just before he himself died as a martyr for Jesus:
Saints, did you say!
Ah, those remembered faces!
Dear men and women that I sought to slew!
How when we met within the heavenly places
Will not I weep to Stephen and to you!
Today's reading: We are introduced to the man who became perhaps the greatest Christian missionary--Saul of Tarsus, later known as Paul. Christ's apostle to the Gentiles.
Memory gem: "He is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel" (Acts 9:15).
Thought for today:
Before Paul was converted he was armed with letters of arrest and went from city to city to seize and punish all who called Jesus "Lord." You remember the story of the Damascus road. Christ appeared to Paul in glory. Paul saw the shining face of Christ, the marks of the thorns, the nail-pierced hands, the wound in His side.
Paul saw the Lord, and his eyes were dim to this world ever after. A voice from heaven said, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" Saul said, "Who art thou, Lord?" The answer came back, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest (Acts 9:4, 5).
How was Saul persecuting Jesus? He was persecuting Jesus in the person of His followers. "As ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren," Jesus declared, "Ye have done it unto me" (Matthew 25:40).
When the first Christian martyr, Stephen, was stoned to death, Saul held the coats of the men who did the cruel work. He was with them in it. He was guilty of persecuting Jesus in the person of Stephen. But Paul never forgot something about that terrible experience: Stephen's face looked like the "face of an angel" (Acts 6:15)..
The servants of Christ put to death by persecution were maligned as the offscouring of the earth, when they actually were the saints of the Lord. Think of the wonderful meeting someday in the better land when Paul meets those whom he persecuted! Someone has put these words into his mouth just before he himself died as a martyr for Jesus:
Saints, did you say!
Ah, those remembered faces!
Dear men and women that I sought to slew!
How when we met within the heavenly places
Will not I weep to Stephen and to you!
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