Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
CHAPTER VIII.
1, 2. Pursuant to the time-honored custom of the Jews, to mourn over the dead seven days,
“devout men buried Stephen and made great mourning over him.”
PERSECUTIONS.
3. Saul of Tarsus, flooded with native talents, literary culture, ecclesiastical prominence and
unparalleled aspirations to reach the very acme of his transcendent and ambitious aspiration, arriving
from the north too late to see any of the miracles wrought by Jesus during His ministry, and the Holy
Ghost during the Pentecostal revival, obdurately incredulous to the testimony of the poor, despised
Nazarene, at once comes to the front with the gigantic grip of his iron will, takes into hand the
already complicated problem of rescuing the church from the Nazarene heresy which, in his candid
judgment, is striking at the very vitals of the Mosaic institutions. Hence, as a true son of Abraham,
loyal to God and Moses, he takes the bit in his teeth, determined to make a summary settlement of
all difficulties. When ecclesiastical autocrats once taste the blood of persecution they invariably
become insatiable. The martyrdom of Stephen lifted the flood-gate for the bloody tide which had
been accumulating since the baptism of John, and had received a wonderful impetus during the
revivals of Pentecost. The Roman civil arm is still willing to purchase Jewish favor at the expense
of the Nazarene faction. Therefore, Saul, utilizing his wonderful sagacity as an organizer, diligently
rendezvouses the orthodox magnates and the loyal element of the fallen church, sparing neither age
nor sex, but running like the inquisitorial bands of St. Dominique into every house; “arresting both
men and women, he continued to commit them to prison,” thus determined to make summary work
and exterminate the heresy with all possible expedition, relieving the country of the nuisance and the
church of the miasma already infecting her to the heart.
4. “Therefore indeed being dispersed abroad, they went everywhere preaching the word.” Oh,
how the devil overshot himself in the Sauline persecutions. It was high time that Jerusalem nest was
broken up and the saints dispersed to the ends of the earth to preach the gospel. Nothing could so
effectually bring to pass this indispensable desideratum as a bloody persecution. Hence the devil set
a trap, lost all of his bait and got caught in it himself. This awful Sauline persecution was worth more
than a wagon full of gold to send the gospel to the destitute, and thus establish the church in all the
earth. Meanwhile Satan’s persecution dispatched hundreds and thousands of blood-washed and firebaptized
evangelists to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth; he even lost the greatest and most
successful leader of hell’s army he ever had on the earth, i.e., Saul of Tarsus, whose attitude at the
very front of the popular church qualified him, invested in the livery of heaven, to serve the devil and
promote the damnation of souls infinitely beyond the possibilities of the blackest incarnate reprobate,
fighting overtly and devouredly under the motley banner of the bottomless pit. Therefore in the work
of Saul the persecutor hell suffered signal bankruptcy.