¹⁷“It happened when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, that I fell into a trance, ¹⁸and I saw Him saying to me, ‘Make haste, and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about Me.’ ¹⁹And I said, ‘Lord, they themselves understand that in one synagogue after another I used to imprison and beat those who believed in You. ²⁰And when the blood of Your witness Stephen was being shed, I also was standing by approving, and watching out for the coats of those who were slaying him.’ ²¹And He said to me, ‘Go! For I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’”

The apostle Paul continued in his testimony to the Jewish mob. His life was in danger, yet he had the presence of mind—or should we say, presence of spirit—to articulate carefully the story of his conversion. What he says here is concise and brief; the totality of it can be recited in about three minutes. This was his “elevator talk,” telling his story in the amount of time it might take on an elevator ride to the top of a building with a few floor stops on the way.

Paul’s experience is recorded only here in Acts, so it is an addition to the brief description given in Acts 9. His experience was one of many ways God uses to communicate with prophets. Just as Isaiah “saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple” (Is. 6:1), so also Paul was praying “in the temple” and “saw Him saying to [him] . . .” The apostle Peter experienced the Lord speaking to him in a trance on a rooftop in Joppa, preparing to open the gospel door to the Gentiles (Acts 10:10). All were solemn occasions of God’s commissioning his prophets.

Paul’s testimony moves from Damascus to Jerusalem, and then the Lord instructed him to evacuate from Jerusalem because of impending danger. Paul had apparently argued against the evacuation plan, thinking he had great credibility with the Jews since he was once the fiercest supporter of the kind of behavior they were enacting against him now. Surely they would listen to him, he thought: as “one of them,” he could enlighten them with the truth. So he conveyed again in his testimony that it was God who sent him to the Gentiles.

Paul had a deep desire to reach his own people, as he wrote later:

I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit . . . For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. (Rom. 9:1–3)

God had other plans; Paul needed to accept that and heed God’s command. It was not for him to preach to the Jews. And the Jewish mob needed to accept what God was doing among the Gentiles through Paul.

Lord, I accept when You send me in a different direction than my heart desires.