Acts 26:16

Acts 26:16. But rise, and stand upon thy feet. These words introduce a portion of the interview passed over in the two other accounts of the ‘appearance.' Commentators have been apparently somewhat perplexed here, owing to the similarity of the words of the glorified Lord which follow here with the commands given to Ananias to deliver to Saul, as reported in the narrative of chap. Acts 9:15-16. It is most improbable that Paul here ‘condenses into one, various sayings of our Lord to him at different times, in visions and by Ananias' (Dean Alford). Nor does it seem likely, when we consider the extraordinary solemnity of the scene which Paul is here describing to King Agrippa, and the overwhelming influence which it had upon his whole subsequent life, that the apostle is here simply summarising the words of Ananias spoken to him three days later, treating those words as sayings of God addressed to him. It is far more reasonable to take the account here given by Paul in its natural obvious sense, and to regard the words of the Lord which immediately follow here in this and the two following verses as positively uttered on this momentous occasion. They, in fact, explained to the amazed and awe-struck Pharisee the reason of the blinding,glory and the awful voice which had arrested him and his company on his entrance into Damascus. Nor is it at all improbable that the substance of this communication was repeated again to him by Ananias, or was pressed upon him in a vision; for it told him, in fact, what it was the Lord wished to be the one great object of his life the guiding the Gentiles, those peoples who had so long sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, into light.

For I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee. The words were reassuring; the awe-struck man might arise without fear. The Divine One, whom, not knowing, he had opposed with so intense a purpose, cherished no feeling of wrath against him; on the contrary, He had chosen him out of all the sons of men for a great work; or, in Dr. Hackett's words, ‘The object of the vision was to summon him to a new and exalted sphere of effort.' Saul the Pharisee was to bear witness not only of the present sublime scene, in which the Crucified appeared surrounded with a glory too bright for mortal eyes to gaze into; but he was to be a witness also to tell out to the world, to Jew and Gentile, to high-born and low-born, the story of future revelations which would be made to him in coming days. Notably these future revelations referred in the first instance to those special appearances of the Lord to Paul in visions, trances, or ecstasies, such as are chronicled in chap. Acts 22:17-21, when he fell into a trance as he was praying in the temple, and in the Second Epistle to the Corinthian Church, Acts 12:1-5; but the reference to ‘those things in the which I will appear to thee,' of which things Paul was to be the witness, really was to those great summaries of Divine truth which Paul the apostle put out in after days, in the form of epistles to the Gentile churches those Divine handbooks to Christian doctrine and Christian life. It was really in these lonely hours, perhaps in the still eventide or quiet night, after the day's hard toil spent in the workrooms of men like Aquila the tentmaker, that God indeed appeared to Paul and guided his thoughts. It was of these appearances in after years that Paul was to be the witness not only to Roman governors and Jewish kings, not only to the dwellers under the far-reaching power of the imperial Rome of that day; but he was to be the witness, though perhaps he failed then to realise it, to nations yet unborn, in lands still undiscovered.

The form of the Lord's words to Saul, telling him to be a witness of what he was then seeing, and also to be witness of what he would afterwards come to the knowledge of, is not unlike another charge given by the same glorified and risen Saviour to a brother apostle of St. Paul: ‘ Write the things, ' said the Son of man, speaking as a King in all the Majesty of heaven, to John in his lonely watch at Patmos, ‘ write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter' (Revelation 1:19).

It is remarkable that Paul, the last called, the one admitted into the fellowship of the holy Twelve after no little anxious thought, the one always looked on by a portion of the early Church with doubt and suspicion, should have been the apostle commissioned to be the witness of the glory of Christ. In the midst of all his sufferings and bitter persecutions, endured at the hands especially of his own countrymen, often cruelly misunderstood, forsaken, and deserted not once or twice in that restless, brave life of his, by his own friends and converts, this thought must have been ever present to the mind of the tried servant of Jesus Christ. It was his one great comfort, joy, and support, this blessed memory of the noontide meeting outside the Damascus gates, when he was witness of the glory of Christ.