Acts 22:21

And He said unto me, Depart; for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles.

Paul had intended his last words to win a favorable consideration of his cause, by showing tile Jews that he, who had been a persecutor like themselves, had been changed to a believer and advocate of Jesus of Nazareth by miraculous evidence from heaven. He now wanted to present evidence that his mission among the Gentiles had been determined in the same way, by a direct revelation from heaven, which he, as they well knew, would not have dared to disobey. It had been when he returned to Jerusalem, on his first visit after his conversion, while he was offering prayer in the Temple, that he fell into a trance, was seized with supernatural ecstasy, in which he saw the Lord bidding him hurry and go out of Jerusalem with all speed, since the Jews would not accept his witness concerning the Savior. This account supplements that of chap. 9:29-30, since in that passage the actual personal danger is mentioned, which is here represented as being the Lord's motive for sending him forth. "May not St. Luke be describing the occurrence in relation to the Jews and the Church, and St. Paul in relation to his own private personal history, St. Luke giving us the outward impulse, St. Paul the inner motive, so that the two causes, the one natural, the other supernatural, are mentioned side by side?" Paul, as he relates, had at that time contradicted the Lord, giving as his reason that the Jews would surely receive the testimony from him of whom they knew that he had made it a practice to throw into prison and to beat the believers in Him in every synagogue; also, that they were familiar with the fact of his having been present and gladly assenting, and even assuming the position of guardian of the witnesses' clothes, when they shed the blood of Stephen, His witness. But that argument had availed him nothing over against the will of the Lord, for the latter had merely insisted with greater emphasis: Go, will send thee afar to the Gentiles. Before a different audience, and at a different time, this vindication of Paul might have proved acceptable, for they could not gainsay one single argument. But the statement that Paul was sent away from them because they were obstinate and hard-hearted, and that, in his case at least, the Gentiles were preferred to the Jews, that his mission was primarily to the despised heathen, was too much for this audience. It has ever been thus that the full, uncompromising truth of the Word of God, even if additional evidence from history was offered, has been received partly with skepticism, partly with open enmity. The heart of natural man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.