Luke says that just before Paul reached the city he was thrown from his horse and blinded by a light from the sky. He heard a voice asking: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” When Paul asked who the speaker was, the voice replied, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” and instructed him to await further directions in Damascus.35 Luke certainly expressed an essential aspect of Paul’s conversion: He had suddenly discovered the terrible paradox of his position. Later he would try to explain the dilemma of the die-hard fanatic he had once been: “The good which I want to do, I fail to do,
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