Did Paul really meet Jesus? (The Problem with Paul’s Story)

July 4, 2017Science & Faith

“Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say,”Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.”(1 Corinthians 12:3, NIV)…

The above is from Paul of Tarsus saying that only those who have the Holy Spirit will be able to say,”Jesus is Lord”. The Greek word which is translated as “by” in the verse is “e?”(en) which is a preposition. It is the same word found in John 1:1,”en arche…” which is often rendered as “In the beginning”. It is then safe to say that in 1 Corinthians 12:3 the word “by” may also be rendered as “in”. The idea is that the ones who are in/by the Holy Spirit are the only ones who can say Jesus is Lord. With that said, let us proceed to the story of Paul’s journey to Damascus.

There are a a few versions of the incident recorded in the New Testament. We won’t be going through every single one of them here. Instead, I have chosen Acts 9 as our case study.

The passage begins with an image of a persecutor who is both brute and evil that is Paul. He sets on a journey to Damascus to seek out followers of Jesus so as to capture them and bring them back to Jerusalem for punishment. Whilst on his way he supposedly experienced the following,

3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.
4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?
5 Who are you, Lord? Saul asked. I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting, he replied.
6 Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.
7 The men travelling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone.
8 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus.
(NIV)

Here’s the question. How in the world did this person who was on his way to persecute the “followers of Jesus” out of the blue address a strange light that came out of nowhere in a respectable fashion and even went out of his way and called it “Lord” ? Did he know that it was Jesus? If he knew that it was Jesus how is it that he suddenly paid homage to the one whom he is suppose to be against by using the title “Lord”? How does someone convert so radically in a matter of moments? It does not seem reasonable. But the fact is, he did not know who or what it was hence the question,”who are you, Lord?”. If he did not know who or what it was, how in the world could he have addressed it as Lord?!? For all he knew it could have been a demon or the devil. As Paul himself states elsewhere,”And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.”(2 Corinthians 11:14). Could the strange light have been Satan? What is interesting is that the following verse after 2 Cor 11:14 says that the followers of Satan may masquerade as righteous people. Could he have been talking about himself? These are some very pertinent questions that need to be asked and answered. In any case, it is absolutely strange how Paul could have called the unidentified light as “Lord” without ascertaining the identity first.
A few days ago I was having a discussion with a fellow Christian on this very subject. He was claiming that Paul “recognised” the voice, hence his addressig it as “Lord”. The passage itself refutes this claim since the term was used in a question which was asked to ascertain the voice’s identity. If he had recognised it he would not have asked for its identity and the source would not have replied to the question. The voice would have instead said, why do you ask when you already know or something to that effect. It is because he did not know the question was asked.

Now, here comes the really important question. When Paul calls the voice and the light “Lord” was he with or by the Holy Spirit? Was the Holy Spirit in him or vice versa? The answer to that question is no. We are told in Acts 9, verse 17 that Paul met Ananias wherein he is informed that he is to “be filled with the Holy Spirit”. This was about 3 days after the meeting on the road to Damascus(verse 9). From this we can conclude that whilst on the road to Damascus the Holy Spirit was not in Paul, because if it was there would not have been the need for a re-filling(verse 17). Now that we know that he did not have the Holy Spirit, how could he have called Jesus “kurios” or “LORD” in verse 5?!? This is when the verse mentioned at the beginning of the article needs to be recalled. It mentions that only those with the Holy Spirit can call Jesus Lord, yet Paul according to Acts 9 did so without the Holy Spirit. Could it all have been nothing more than a lie? I leave the verdict to the readers.