were at once inaugurated.
There was to be no more temporizing. The cruelty and
thoroughness of the persecutor, in his work, are shown in
his instituting a house to house canvass seeking for the
Christians and sparing neither age nor sex (Acts 8:1, 3).

In the first persecutions the Jews had been content to
arrest and imprison those who publicly preached Christ,
but now the policy was changed and Christianity was to
be exterminated root and branch. All believers in Christ
were to be hunted out.

The character of Saul, the arch persecutor, is shown
in the characterization of him by Luke, when he
represented him as breathing out, "threatenings and slaughter
against the disciples of the Lord" (Acts 9:1).

CONVERSION

+Cause.+--The book of the Acts, opened at one place,
shows a fierce hater and persecutor of the Christians (8:3),
opened at another place it shows this same persecutor as
an ardent and enthusiastic preacher of the faith in Jesus
Christ (13:16-39) We seek for the cause of this
remarkable change. Luke tells us that Saul was on his way to
Damascus, seeking victims for his persecuting zeal, when
Jesus suddenly appeared to him and Saul was changed
from a persecutor to a believer in Christ (Acts 9:3-7).
The account is very brief. For an event which has had
such tremendous results, the narrator is very reticent; a
light from heaven, a voice speaking, and a person
declaring that He is Jesus. Paul gives us two accounts of his
conversion and how it took place (Acts 22:6-15;
26:12-18). The men who were with Paul saw a light
and heard a voice, but not what was said. It is
impossible to describe or exaggerate what took place in Paul's
mind in those brief moments while Jesus talked to him;
but his beliefs, and his whole life plan were radically
changed. It had been well if no explanation of this
conversion had been attempted and the great fact had been
left to stand as it does in the Acts. Attempts, however,
have been made to minimize the power of this conversion
and the marvelous and sudden change it wrought in the
character and life of Paul. Some critics seeking a natural,
rather than a supernatural, cause have attributed to Paul
certain compunctions of conscience and misgivings about
his persecution of the Christians, together with a hot day
and a certain temperament, which led him to have a
subjective experience, which he thought was real. But there
is no recorded evidence forthcoming that Paul