NOTES for Act 9:4-5

They say usually: Christianity is a voluntary thing. It is all about man’s free choice here: to accept or not, to go or not. And suddenly, upon meeting with the resuscitated, sounds: you can’t kick against the pricks! "But how then with the freedom of choice, goodwill, deliberated acceptance et cetera, without which Christianity cannot be? Or does the Rescuer make an exception for Saul (who will be later called Apostle Paul)? Maybe, yes. After all, Saul showed so much enthusiasm in his opposition to the Church, no person showed himself as much as he did. He is the one, who was ready to pursue Christians everywhere.

Christians were persecuted in all times, and in all the times most of the persecutors were led not by the thirst to defend the truth, but by profit, interest, mostly personal, more rarely public or from the State, as they understood it. But Saul began his crusade against the Church in order to protect God against those he considered as His enemies. Such crusade can’t be stopped by any human strength, at least because the one who carries it out, acts in the name of God.

He doesn’t deceive himself, nor the others, he is really mistaken, without using trickery and without trying to run away from the truth. Then God Himself comes for a meeting with him, comes out in the person of the One, Who Saul was ready to consider as liar, madman, anyone, but only not the One Who He is really.

And the crusade against the Church becomes suddenly a crusade in the name of the Church; the persecutor becomes the faithful witness and the missionary. There is nothing surprising here: Saul, becoming Paul, really saw what he was speaking about. He changed neither himself, nor God; he just understood where he should go. And when he understood, he went without hesitations. On the road leading to the Kingdom.