Damascus

• Paul’s experience with Jesus on road to

100:5.3It should be made clear that pro­fes­sions of loy­alty to the su­preme ide­als—the psy­chic, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual aware­ness of God-con­scious­ness—may be a nat­u­ral and grad­ual growth or may some­times be ex­pe­ri­enced at cer­tain junc­tures, as in a cri­sis. The Apos­tle Paul ex­pe­ri­enced just such a sud­den and spec­tac­u­lar con­ver­sion that event­ful day on the Da­mas­cus road. Gau­tama Sid­dhartha had a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence the night he sat alone and sought to pen­e­trate the mys­tery of fi­nal truth. Many oth­ers have had like ex­pe­ri­ences, and many true be­liev­ers have pro­gressed in the spirit with­out sud­den con­ver­sion.

• Jesus met teacher of mathematics from

123:6.3About this time Je­sus met a teacher of math­e­mat­ics from Da­mas­cus, and learn­ing some new tech­niques of num­bers, he spent much time on math­e­mat­ics for sev­eral years. He de­vel­oped a keen sense of num­bers, dis­tances, and pro­por­tions.

• Damascus

130:0.3Af­ter their stay in Rome they went over­land to Tar­en­tum, where they set sail for Athens in Greece, stop­ping at Nicopo­lis and Corinth. From Athens they went to Eph­esus by way of Troas. From Eph­esus they sailed for Cyprus, putting in at Rhodes on the way. They spent con­sid­er­able time vis­it­ing and rest­ing on Cyprus and then sailed for An­ti­och in Syria. From An­ti­och they jour­neyed south to Sidon and then went over to Da­mas­cus. From there they trav­eled by car­a­van to Mes­o­po­ta­mia, pass­ing through Thap­sacus and Larissa. They spent some time in Baby­lon, vis­ited Ur and other places, and then went to Susa. From Susa they jour­neyed to Charax, from which place Gonod and Ga­nid em­barked for In­dia.

• Damascus

133:8.4Af­ter prepar­ing their lug­gage for the camel car­a­van, they passed on down to Sidon and thence over to Da­mas­cus, and af­ter three days they made ready for the long trek across the desert sands.

• Damascus

134:1.1Af­ter tak­ing leave of Gonod and Ga­nid at Charax (in De­cem­ber of A.D. 23), Je­sus re­turned by way of Ur to Baby­lon, where he joined a desert car­a­van that was on its way to Da­mas­cus. From Da­mas­cus he went to Naz­a­reth, stop­ping only a few hours at Ca­per­naum, where he paused to call on Zeb­e­dee’s fam­ily. There he met his brother James, who had some­time pre­vi­ously come over to work in his place in Zeb­e­dee’s boat­shop. Af­ter talk­ing with James and Jude (who also chanced to be in Ca­per­naum) and af­ter turn­ing over to his brother James the lit­tle house which John Zeb­e­dee had man­aged to buy, Je­sus went on to Naz­a­reth.

• Damascus

134:2.5On the re­turn from the Caspian re­gion, Je­sus gave up the di­rec­tion of the car­a­van at Lake Ur­mia, where he tar­ried for slightly over two weeks. He re­turned as a pas­sen­ger with a later car­a­van to Da­mas­cus, where the own­ers of the camels be­sought him to re­main in their ser­vice. De­clin­ing this of­fer, he jour­neyed on with the car­a­van train to Ca­per­naum, ar­riv­ing the first of April, A.D. 25. No longer did he re­gard Naz­a­reth as his home. Ca­per­naum had be­come the home of Je­sus, James, Mary, and Ruth. But Je­sus never again lived with his fam­ily; when in Ca­per­naum he made his home with the Zebe­dees.

• Damascus

140:7.2For weeks and weeks small groups of earnest truth seek­ers, to­gether with cu­ri­ous spec­ta­tors, had been com­ing to Beth­saida to see Je­sus. Al­ready word about him had spread over the coun­try­side; in­quir­ing groups had come from cities as far away as Tyre, Sidon, Da­mas­cus, Cae­sarea, and Je­ru­sa­lem. Here­to­fore, Je­sus had greeted these peo­ple and taught them con­cern­ing the king­dom, but the Mas­ter now turned this work over to the twelve. An­drew would se­lect one of the apos­tles and as­sign him to a group of vis­i­tors, and some­times all twelve of them were so en­gaged.

• Damascus

186:3.2As soon as Je­sus was turned over to the Ro­man sol­diers by Pi­late for cru­ci­fix­ion, a mes­sen­ger has­tened away to Geth­sem­ane to in­form David, and within five min­utes run­ners were on their way to Beth­saida, Pella, Phil­a­del­phia, Sidon, Shechem, He­bron, Da­mas­cus, and Alexan­dria. And these mes­sen­gers car­ried the news that Je­sus was about to be cru­ci­fied by the Ro­mans at the in­sis­tent be­hest of the rulers of the Jews.

186:3.3Through­out this tragic day, un­til the mes­sage fi­nally went forth that the Mas­ter had been laid in the tomb, David sent mes­sen­gers about ev­ery half hour with re­ports to the apos­tles, the Greeks, and Je­sus’ earthly fam­ily, as­sem­bled at the home of Laz­a­rus in Beth­any. When the mes­sen­gers de­parted with the word that Je­sus had been buried, David dis­missed his corps of lo­cal run­ners for the Pass­over cel­e­bra­tion and for the com­ing Sab­bath of rest, in­struct­ing them to re­port to him qui­etly on Sun­day morn­ing at the home of Nicode­mus, where he pro­posed to go in hid­ing for a few days with An­drew and Si­mon Pe­ter.

• Damascus

190:1.8These twenty-six were dis­patched to the home of Laz­a­rus in Beth­any and to all of the be­liever cen­ters, from Beer­sheba in the south to Da­mas­cus and Sidon in the north; and from Phil­a­del­phia in the east to Alexan­dria in the west.

• Paul’s experience with Jesus on road to

196:2.1Some day a ref­or­ma­tion in the Chris­tian church may strike deep enough to get back to the unadul­ter­ated re­li­gious teach­ings of Je­sus, the au­thor and fin­isher of our faith. You may preach a re­li­gion about Je­sus, but, per­force, you must live the re­li­gion of Je­sus. In the en­thu­si­asm of Pen­te­cost, Pe­ter un­in­ten­tion­ally in­au­gu­rated a new re­li­gion, the re­li­gion of the risen and glo­ri­fied Christ. The Apos­tle Paul later on trans­formed this new gospel into Chris­tian­ity, a re­li­gion em­body­ing his own the­o­logic views and por­tray­ing his own per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with the Je­sus of the Da­mas­cus road. The gospel of the king­dom is founded on the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of the Je­sus of Gal­i­lee; Chris­tian­ity is founded al­most ex­clu­sively on the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of the Apos­tle Paul. Al­most the whole of the New Tes­ta­ment is de­voted, not to the por­trayal of the sig­nif­i­cant and in­spir­ing re­li­gious life of Je­sus, but to a dis­cus­sion of Paul’s re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence and to a por­trayal of his per­sonal re­li­gious con­vic­tions. The only no­table ex­cep­tions to this state­ment, aside from cer­tain parts of Mat­thew, Mark, and Luke, are the Book of He­brews and the Epis­tle of James. Even Pe­ter, in his writ­ing, only once re­verted to the per­sonal re­li­gious life of his Mas­ter. The New Tes­ta­ment is a su­perb Chris­tian doc­u­ment, but it is only mea­gerly Je­su­so­nian.