A Life Changing Conversion Acts 9:1-20 On the way to Damascus to persecute Christians, Saul encounters the resurrected Lord. Struck to the ground and blinded, he is converted. In Damascus, a disciple Ananias lays hands on Saul and his sight is restored. He is baptized and commissioned to preach.Christians and Jews are amazed by the preaching of the one-time persecutor.Tarsus was surpassed only by Athens and Alexandria as a center of culture and learning. Here Saul was born of well-to-do orthodox Jews of the tribe of Benjamin, and a Roman citizen by birth. A Pharisee, equipped to practice the trade of tent-making, he was sent to Jerusalem to be trained as a rabbi under the great Gamaliel. Ananias showed the true Christian spirit of accepting the new convert Saul on the face value of his profession of faith in Christ. There can be no doubt that Paul’s visit to Arabia was in response to a powerful inner prompting of the Holy Spirit. Paul was to be given some of the greatest revelations of truth ever written down for man. His “gospel” was not of man and not received of man. He needed time to effect fully and systematically the change in his thinking initiated on the Damascus road, so he retired into Arabia with his copy of the Old Testament Scriptures in his bag. He returned some time later with the great truths of Romans, Ephesians, and Thessalonians in his heart. By the time he returned from the solitude of Sinai, his essential theology was formed. The great truths of Christ’s cross (Romans), Christ’s church (Ephesians), and Christ’s coming (Thessalonians), which are at the heart of those pivotal epistles, were firmly fixed in his mind.