By: David S. Harkins d.b.a. “TheStoryTeller”
He was my best friend. I met him in Tarsus when we were kids together. Our parents were tent makers for the pagan carnival, but Saul and I used the skills we learned as tent makers to make fine little replicas of the tabernacle and sell them in the market for spending money. You see, we were born into families of devote Jews who had also been granted Roman citizenship, a somewhat rare occurrence in that day and time. We did not compromise our faith, quite to the contrary, we practiced our Judaism, with a devote and passionate reverence for God’s Word. Saul was especially sincere and dedicated to the Torah and the Talmud so much so that when the contest came from Jerusalem for the position to study under Gamaliel, Saul studied so earnestly that he really became a bore for a while. I on the other hand just went through the motions and was very happy for Saul when he won his scholarship to study in Jerusalem.
It was many years later that I met Saul again. By now he had changed his name to Paul and had come back from some kind of religious conversion. He kept talking about this Jesus, who he claimed was the true Messiah and of all things the Son of God, and even implied that this Jesus was somehow equal to God himself. This definitely was not the Saul I had known growing up together. Why every good Jew knew there was only ONE GOD and that the Messiah would restore the earthly kingdom of Israel at the right time and that the Messiah definitely was not equal to God or another God, himself.
Well, Paul stayed for about a year or two and as a good Jew he was obedient to his parents, but he kept insisting that he was to be a messenger of this Jesus his Messiah, the Son of God. I remember one night I went over to visit after a good day of tent making and Saul was in a terrible argument with his dad about this very subject. I went to Paul, as he preferred to be called now and tried to reason with him, but he got very angry and the next morning he told me he had seen a vision from this Jesus and that he was going to the desert to seek Him further. He left that day with very few provisions and even stated that his Lord would provide for him.
I tried to stop him and talk him out of it, but he was insistent. I soon got caught up in the insurrection of the next few years and was eventually captured and put in a Roman prison and when Nero became Emperor of Rome, I was sent to Rome to be put on display as a leader of the insurrection.
Well, what do you know but years latter after another emperor came to power and everyone had forgotten about me, Paul shows up as a very important prisoner and we wind up in the same part of the jail. At first he didn’t recognize me and he was always busy with his visitors. It seems he had become a very important leader in what was now being called The Way or Christianity and many Gentiles had been accepted into the faith. Why from what I heard, Paul himself was called the ambassador or Apostle to the Gentiles and as such he was a very important man among the Jesus followers, the Christians. How could this be, that devote Jewish young man I had known who I heard had finished first in his class in Jewish school. I didn’t know whether to respect him as a great man or look upon him as a twisted and untrustworthy traitor.
One day it happened. One of the Praetorian Guards who Paul had converted to The Way, came to me after he found out that I was also from Tarsus, and asked me if I had known Paul as a boy. When I revealed that we had been fast friends and that I only lost track of him after he had converted to Christianity, the guard arranged a meeting for me with Paul. I immediately greeted him, “Saul, my good friend, it is like seeing one risen from the dead.” Do you know what he did, he started preaching to me at that very spot using my own words to tell me about his Savior and Lord, this Jesus the Christ as he now called him, a man who he claimed had risen from the dead and whom had appeared unto him on the road many years ago.
He went on and on and went into detail explaining the mysteries of religion as he saw it and with many words he continued to attempt to convince me to convert to this new religion. I heard him out, but I told him my family would never allow this, and besides there is only One God and Jesus was just a man like me. Paul wept when I said that and asked me to come back and talk with him again. I said since we had been such good friends as boys I would out of courtesy listen to him again.
But the very next day, Paul was called before Caesar and from what I heard from the guards and the other prisoners, he Paul, my beloved friend, Saul, spoke so eloquently but so plainly to the Emperor and accused him directly of his sins and told him that he was not a god but that this Jesus had been truly Emanuel or by interpretation God with us, and He was the only way to the true God, that Caesar got so incensed that he ordered Paul to be taken immediately out and to be crucified in the fashion of “his savior.”
One witness to Paul’s execution told me that he pleaded with them to crucify him upside down, but the Romans would have nothing of this. After he died, the Romans did an unusual thing and allowed his faithful friends to bury his body in a purchased grave. What really startled me was that the Emperor, was unable to sleep that night of the execution and was deeply troubled and called for his most trusted guard, Justus, and asked him what he should do. Justus being one of the guards that Paul had converted to The Way told the emperor that he should release all of the prisoners that Paul had talked to and banish them from Rome so that his teachings wouldn’t taint the city.
Yes, they found out that Paul had spoken to me and I was given my freedom and banished from Rome. This young man named Timothy who had been Paul’s friend came to Tarsus where I resettled and he began to further teach me about The Way and with many words and actions I was finally convinced to let them immerse me in water completely in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost and I too became a Christian. Timothy stayed a while longer, but in the end, I was on my own so I decided to start a tent making business and preach and study the gospel of Jesus in Tarsus.
Many years later I heard about another Apostle who had actually been part of Jesus’ original band. I sold my business and traveled to the Isle of Patmos where this great man had been banished and since I was also an excellent scribe, I assisted him in the writing of a book that is known as the Revelation of Jesus Christ. This disciple’s name was John and he was quite elderly. I enjoyed talking to him for hours and hours about Jesus and The Way and life in general.
When he died an old, old man, I released his book to all the other Christians who assembled for his funeral and we were all filled with the Spirit and we walked together in one accord and all the world knew we were truly followers of Jesus the Christ, the one and only Son of God the one they called Emanuel, God on earth. However we were soon scattered by the intense persecutions that came upon us and until this day I am preaching the gospel wherever I go. All this I owe to my tent making friend, Saul.
The End
A BigBigDavid Story
“TheStoryTeller”
dsh
Written 10/24/2007