Acts 22:4

Acts 22:4. And I persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women. In support of his assertion that he, too, was once a Jewish ‘zealot,' he reminds them that he was formerly a bitter persecutor of ‘this way;' there were doubtless those present in the listening crowd who well knew that these words of his were literally true.

He speaks of the Christian cause with the now familiar term familiar, apparently, to friends and enemies of the Nazarene brotherhood of ‘this way.' It originated most likely from a loving memory of the Master's words, in which he claimed to be himself ‘ the way, and the truth, and the life' (see, too, the great prophecy of Isaiah 40:3, where the word ‘way' may be said to have formed the burden of the solemn song). The significant words, ‘unto the death,' seem to tell us that in those first early persecutions of the Nazarenes, Stephen the deacon was by no means the only martyr for the cause of the Lord Jesus.