by Dr. William Ward Ayer
doubly flaunts himself in the face of God: 1) by being a lost sinner and 2) by denying the fact and making God a liar. The conversion of Saul of Tarsus is so significant that we must spend an entire message in the study of some of its aspects. The glorified Christ is, in Saul’s con version, the personal worker. The sig nificance of this experience of Saul is both individual and prophetic in that Saul’s conversion combines two types of conversion recorded in the Bible; one is Jewish and the other is Gentile. Now read carefully. In I Corinthians 15:8, Paul declares himself to be “. . . one bom out of due time.” Undoubted ly, the manner of Saul’s conversion was Jewish and Christian: 1) It was Jewish, in that the Lord appeared to him personally as He will appear one day to the remnant of Israel during the Tribulation. Then they will meet their Messiah face to face and shall say, “What are these wounds in Thy hands?” and He will reply, “These are they which I re
e c o m e to further study on the conversion of Saul of Tarsus who became the Apostle Paul. You know we hear so little about real con version in many of our churches that I feel we must study the conversion of the Apostle Paul with great earnestness. Saul of Tarsus was a proud Pharisee, self-righteous and obstinate — there fore, difficult to win to Christ. There is a great difference between a Publi can and a Pharisee; it is comparatively easy to denounce our sinful self, but exceedingly hard to renounce our righteous self. If God rejoices over the penitent cry of the Publican, how much more over the repentance of the Phari see — but He rarely ever hears that cry. Pride, respectability, and self- righteousness comprise this most awful sin which denies the need of God’s mercy and therefore rejects it. Paul brought this truth to the world, the truth of the grace that is greater than all our sins. He. was the chief of sinners because, he, a self-righteous Pharisee was the type of sinner that n o w
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