Antioch, the great Syrian city, from this time on became Saul’s new home. He was henceforth to be very closely connected with the flourishing capital of Syria. This was now to be the mother-church of all his activities. From Antioch he started out on all his missionary journeys and he came back to Antioch at the end of each of his far-reaching travels. Here were faithful Christians praying for him as he worked and suffered and here, when he arrived weary and worn with labour, were dear friends to welcome him and to refresh him. Antioch was the first city in the world to have Gentile Christians in it and it was from this city that Christianity spread out over the world and conquered the Roman Empire and became a world movement, and, as we shall see, the man from Tarsus was in this great undertaking the foremost leader and the untiring worker.

For a whole year Barnabas and Saul worked in the city of Antioch, spreading the knowledge of Christ through that region, gathering in new people all the time, teaching them the truth and helping them to live the new way. It was joyous work and while they were doing it they were constantly discovering fresh light and were learning all the time how to tell the world their “good news” and how to build churches out of people who had before been heathen and idol-worshippers. At the end of the first year when the Antioch church had become strong and vigorous—full of life and power—Barnabas and Saul decided, with the approval of the entire church, to go out and tell their message to the great world around them. They felt sure that God called them to be missionaries and they resolved to go wherever He wanted them to go and to do whatever they felt in their hearts that He wanted them to do. These two men took with them as their companion and helper a third man, named John Mark, who had come from Jerusalem to Antioch and who was Barnabas’ nephew. It was probably this young man who later in life wrote the wonderful book which we call “The Gospel according to Mark.”

The whole church came together for a very solemn meeting and prayed for the travellers and then the three men, full of joy and enthusiasm, set out on their journey down the river to Selucia, where they took ship for the island of Cyprus which lies west of the Syrian coast. They visited all the cities of the island, going from the eastern end across to the western edge, to the city of Paphos where the governor of the island lived. This governor was greatly impressed with the message and the extraordinary power of the missionaries and he, Roman as he was, believed the wonderful new truths which they told him about God and about the Christ who had come to reveal Him.

From Paphos the little band of travellers struck out for a new field of work. They had been so successful in Cyprus that they now decided to attack a still larger and more difficult region of the earth. They sailed almost north from Paphos, to the shores of the Mediterranean, lying west of the Taurus mountains over which Saul gazed as a boy. They landed in the district of Pamphilia and came to the city of Perga, a little way in from the Sea. From this time on, our hero is never called Saul any more. His name suddenly changes here to Paul. It is probably due to the fact that the field of his work is now widening out to the Gentile world. He is leaving behind the narrow circle of his own people who always called him by his Jewish name and he is going out among the Greeks who henceforth call him by his Greek name, that has become so familiar to us.

Three things that concern our story seem to have happened at Perga. Paul appears to have been taken ill here with some dangerous disease. It was probably a return of the trouble which he had a few years before and which he called “a stake in his flesh.” The reason why we think he was taken ill here is that he wrote afterwards to his friends in Galatia that he came to them because he had an illness, and he seems to have gone directly to Galatia now from Perga. The illness may quite likely have been malaria, though there is no way to prove it. The few references to his trouble have made some scholars think that it was malaria—a disease which comes back again and again and is dreadfully annoying to a person who wants to do a great work. The low land of Pamphilia may quite likely have brought on a new attack and compelled our travellers to move up to a higher and healthier region. Anyway, whether this theory is correct or not, Paul and Barnabas decided to push on farther north to the hill country of Pisidia. This was the second of the three things. And the third was that Mark refused to go on with them. Something about the undertaking disturbed and frightened him. He turned back and went off home. Paul did not like Mark’s desertion, but Barnabas, who was his uncle, did not treat it as quite so serious.

The two men now started off alone up over the hills and through the dangerous robber-infested country to the finely situated city of Antioch in Pisidia, which my reader must remember is very different from the other Antioch in Syria, from which Paul started on his journey. This second Antioch is in the Roman province of Galatia and we must now realise that on this first great missionary journey of his life Paul came to one of the cities of Galatia where, so far as we know, he founded the first of his missionary churches.

He began his work in the Jewish Synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia and he and Barnabas preached to the Jews of that city and to the other people who sympathised with them and who were called “God-fearers” because they were eager to learn about the God of the Jews. But after a little time the Jews disagreed with the message which the missionaries brought them and so Paul and Barnabas gave up trying to convince the Jews and set to work to tell their good news to the Greeks, just as they had done in Syrian Antioch, and these people flocked to hear them and believed their message with great joy, and were ready almost to pluck out their eyes and give them to Paul. From this first city of the Galatian province they went on to other important cities of the same province—Iconium, Derbe and Lystra. These four cities, we shall now assume, were the four centres of the churches of Galatia. One remarkable incident happened while Paul and Barnabas were working in the city of Lystra. The simple country people here made up their minds that Paul and Barnabas must be gods come down from heaven to visit them and they brought out their oxen and were ready to sacrifice them to Barnabas and Paul, who they thought were Jupiter and Mercury. It was here in this very region around Lystra that Baucis and Philemon once lived. And according to the old Greek stories, Jupiter and Mercury came down to earth on a visit. They came looking like common men and nobody knew that they were gods and when they came to men’s houses asking to be taken in and entertained, nobody would receive them. Finally they came to the poverty-stricken home of Baucis and Philemon, who received their visitors with much joy. They killed their only chicken for the supper and did the best they could to show true hospitality. Suddenly the two visitors stood forth as mighty gods. They blessed and thanked Baucis and Philemon and turned their humble dwelling into a splendid temple and glorified the two poor people who had received them so kindly.

Well, these simple people at Lystra evidently thought when they listened to Paul and Barnabas and saw their wonderful deeds that Jupiter and Mercury had come back again and they were resolved not to make a second mistake and miss the blessing. Paul and Barnabas had no desire to be treated as gods nor to have sacrifices made to them, but they had difficult work getting the simple hearted people to treat them as men and to drive their oxen home.