At this point in Paul’s life, he has been promised by God through his sense of vocation (Acts 19:21) and has been promised by Jesus through a vision (Acts 23:11) that he will get to Rome. Now Paul himself has to take responsibility, at one level, for making this happen.
Luke now comes to a turning point in his story. Here we are at the start of an extraordinary triple journey which will take Paul across Turkey and Greece and back again, then again once more, and finally off to Rome itself. We would much prefer the story to be one of gentle persuasion rather
Having inserted Saul with appropriate and violent suddenness into the narrative of the Jerusalem apostles, Luke brings us back into Peter’s story. Having found his way down to Joppa, Peter will be called from there on another and more widely significant errand. But there is no such thing as a
If the death and resurrection of Jesus is the hinge on which the great door of history swung open at last, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus was the moment when all the ancient promises of God gathered themselves up, rolled themselves into a ball and came hurtling through that open door and out