Acts 9:30

30. In this emergency, the brethren found opportunity to make amends for the suspicion with which they had at first regarded him. (30) " And when the brethren knew this, they took him down to Cæsarea, and sent him forth to Tarsus. " We learn, from Paul's own account of this movement, that it was not controlled by his own judgment, nor entirely by that of the brethren. While praying in the temple, he fell into a trance, in which the Lord appeared to him, and said, "Make haste, and get quickly out of Jerusalem; for they will not receive your testimony concerning me." Saul had, himself, come to a very different conclusion. Notwithstanding the murderous disposition of his opponents, he still believed that his labors among them would prove successful. He argued upon the supposition that his former position as a persecutor, like them, would now give peculiar weight, with them, to his testimony and arguments; and he ventured to urge this consideration upon the attention of the Lord: "Lord, they know that I am imprisoned and beat in every synagogue those who believe on thee; and when the blood of Stephen thy witness was shed, I was myself standing by and consenting to his death, and keeping the raiment of those who slew him." But he had erred in overlooking the peculiar odium attached to the character of one who could be styled a deserter, inclining men to listen more favorably to an habitual opponent than to him. The Lord did not argue the case with him, but peremptorily commanded him, "Depart; for I will send you far hence to the Gentiles." The fears of the brethren were confirmed by this decision of the Lord, and they promptly sent him to a place of safety.

After reaching Cæsarea, a short voyage on the Mediterranean and up the Cyndus brought him to Tarsus, the home of his childhood, and perhaps of his earlier manhood. He returns to his aged parents and the friends of his childhood, a fugitive from two great cities, and a deserter from the strictest sect in which he had been educated; but he comes to bring them glad tidings of great joy. He disappears, at this point from the pages of Luke; but he does not retire into inactivity. His own pen fills up the blank that is left there by the historian. He says that he went "into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and was unknown by face to the Churches in Judea who were in Christ; but they heard only that he who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once destroyed. And they glorified God in me." Not long after this we find mention of brethren in Syria and Cilicia, which renders it probable that his labors that were attended with his usual success. We have reason also to believe that he encountered, during this interval, a portion of the sufferings enumerated in the eleventh chapter of Second Corinthians; such as the five times that he received from the Jews forty stripes save one, the three shipwrecks, and the night and the day that he spent in the deep. We can not refer them to a later period; for, from this interval to the time of writing that epistle, we have a continuous history of his life, in which they do not occur.

We now part company with Saul for a time, and while he is performing labors, and enduring afflictions, the full detail of which we will never learn till we meet him in eternity, we turn with our inspired guide, to contemplate some instructive scenes in the labors of the Apostle Peter.