We have invented a little instrument called a “dictaphone.” If one of these instruments is hidden away in a room, a person at the other end of the dictaphone can overhear all the conversation that goes on in the room where it is concealed, and the entire conversation can be written down and kept. How we wish now that there had been a dictaphone in the room in which Saul staid with St. Peter for fifteen days in Jerusalem. Part of the time James, the brother of Jesus, was there, too, with them. But the rest of the time they were alone—talking, talking, talking. St. Peter was telling Saul the things he wanted to know about the life of Jesus and about His death and resurrection. What a wonderful story it would be, if we could only get it all back, word for word! There was that keen and eager face of the man still young, with all his life-work before him, and opposite the older man whose whole life had been boating and fishing until one with authority had said to him, “Follow me.” The older man knew more about this Galilean life than anybody else knew, unless it were that other fisherman, named John, and he could answer all the questions the young man asked so long as they were just questions about events, for he had seen with his eyes and he had heard with his ears and he had handled with his hands and he knew.

The pity of it is, not a word of this conversation has been preserved. We can imagine what some of the questions were and we can guess what some of the answers would be, but the actual words are gone. They are lost forever. What we do know, however, is that at the end of these fifteen days of wonderful talk, Saul went away from Jerusalem, his mind stored with truth about Jesus. He had heard from Peter’s lips the supreme facts about the life of the Person who was henceforth to be Lord and Master of his own life. Peter and James told all their friends in Jerusalem what had happened to Saul, how his career had suddenly changed, how the man who once dragged harmless Christians to prison was now getting ready to give his whole life to the work of telling the good news about Jesus and they already saw that a mighty champion of the truth had joined them and they all thanked God for Saul of Tarsus. When he left Jerusalem, after his memorable visit with Peter, Saul probably went home to Tarsus, and he lived and worked for a time in the home province of Cilicia. There is a long period of his life at this time about which we know nothing at all. He must have been at work for he could not settle down and rest. There was a tremendous drive in his glowing spirit, and wherever he was something was always happening. If he spent some years in Tarsus, as is probable, it is certain that many people there heard of Jesus from him and we can well believe that he went from town to town through the mountain province to tell in all the synagogues the truth which he had learned.

It is possible, however, that he may at this time have had a long period of serious illness. He has himself given us one single glimpse into this unknown period of his life. In the twelfth chapter of Second Corinthians, he says that a tremendous experience came to him fourteen years before—that would be in this period. He was suddenly “caught up” into a higher world where he saw what nobody can see with ordinary eyes and where he understood the mysteries of life in a new way. It seemed for a moment as though he had lost his body and found his soul, as though he had leaped across all the space of the universe and had come to God’s dwelling-place and everything lay plain and clear before him. But about this time, he says further, some terrible illness came upon him, which was so bad that it felt like “a thorn,” or “a stake in his body”—a piercing, racking pain that seemed to bore into his quivering flesh. It was almost more than he could endure. He begged and besought that he might be relieved of it but it lasted on and on. We do not know certainly what this painful disease was but perhaps a little later, as we go on with his life, we may get some idea of what it was, for it appears to have come back again when he was in Galatia.

What we do know is that, while he was living in Tarsus, a man named Barnabas thought of Saul and came to Tarsus to find him. Barnabas was another man something like Stephen. He saw farther than most of the others did. He was always ready for new things and he was full of faith and activity. Like Saul, he could not rest—he wanted to tell everybody what he had discovered. He heard of a new movement in the great city of Antioch, the capital of the province of Syria, and he went off to Antioch to see what this movement really was. When he got there he found that some followers of Jesus who had been forced to leave Jerusalem, because of the persecutions, had come to Antioch and had begun a little church there and were preaching to everybody who would listen. It did not make any difference to them whether the people who came to hear were Jews or not. They were as ready to tell the good news about Christ to Greeks as to the people of their own race. It was the first time and the first place in all the world that anybody had done this. In Jerusalem, “those of the way” were all Jews and they had nothing to do with anybody else. They never dreamed that peoples of all races were alike and were equally dear to God and that Christ came to bless and save all men. They made a sharp distinction between Jews and Gentiles. But in Antioch it was all different. Those who formed the church in Antioch forgot about race and thought only about brotherhood. Greeks flocked into the same room with Jews and together they worshipped God like brothers. And here in Antioch where this new spirit was born and where this new movement began, the followers of Christ were for the first time called “Christians.” In Jerusalem this word was not used or thought of, because no outside people came in and there was no need of a new name. But in Antioch where the Greeks joined the movement and where everybody discovered that a new religion was born they needed a word to name it with and so they called these persons who talked so much about Christ, “Christians.” Barnabas was filled with joy when he found what was going on in Antioch. It looked like the beginning of a movement that would sweep across the world and change the whole empire. He saw at once that he must have the best man whom he could find to help him push the work along, and as he sat thinking of the different persons who could do this great work, suddenly he remembered the young man whose persecutions had driven these first Christians to Antioch and he knew that Saul was now a changed man and a powerful champion of the truth. Whereupon he hurried off through the Syrian gate in the mountains to fetch Saul to Antioch and Saul went back with him to begin the greatest work any man has ever done in the world.