You’ve heard the Damascus road story a hundred times. Blinding light, voice from heaven, Saul becomes Paul, the great “conversion”.
Here’s what I’d never noticed until I went looking several years ago: the word conversion never appears. Not in any of the three accounts in Acts. Not in Galatians, where Paul tells it himself. And the name change? It doesn’t happen on the road. It doesn’t happen for years. When it finally shows up, it’s on an island, in front of a Roman official, in half a sentence with no drumroll at all.
In this episode I walk through what Paul actually says about that day, why he borrows his language from two prophets you’d never associate with conversion, and the courtroom scene decades later where he describes himself in a tense that should stop us cold.
Press play. Bring your Bible.
