Saved by Hope (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 Excerpt: ...to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.--Acts 9:2. 1 ROM this, and several similar statements in i the book of the Acts, we learn what was prob--ably the first name given to the Christian religion--the way. Other names, such as Christianity, the one now most in use, or the gospel, or the Christian revelation, were not the earliest titles prefixed to the doctrine or message brought by Christ. A simpler, more pictorial and descriptive appellation was applied to it, judging from quite a number of passages in this treatise called the Acts of the Apostles which outlines the beginning of the church. The cursory reader might easily overlook this, but attention has been 'drawn to it by New Testament students, and their position is well sustained by sufficient citations. The earliest reference to it occurs in connection with the career of Saul of Tarsus. Not satiated with the blood of Stephen, he proposed to Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin to furnish him letters of introduction to the synagogues in Damascus--the capital city of Syria, where a large colony of Jews resided--authorizing him to arrest any disciples of the Man of Nazareth who might be propagating His doctrine in those parts, or, as the record runs, "if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem." Later, and subsequent to his wonderful conversion, when he was surrounded by a brutal, fanatical, howling mob in Jerusalem, he said, in the course of his explanation and defense to the crowd, "I am a Jew, born in Tarsus, of Cilicia, but brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, and being zealous for God, I persecuted this way unto the death." Still later, when ar...