P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

CONNIE: Can the flick of a butterfly’s wing in Beijing cause a tornado in Topeka? What is the power of small things? Join us today as begin a series on the life of Paul. Our topic: The Stone That Moved the World.

Giving God’s trumpet a Certain Sound for more than 70 years, this is the Voice of Prophecy.

CONNIE: Hello, I’m Connie Jeffery,

LONNIE: and I’m Lonnie Melashenko. Connie today we’re making a small start on a large project. We’re launching into a series of programs looking at the life of a man who looms very large in our world’s history. We know him by two names—first as Saul, and later as Paul. During his lifetime the people of Thessalonica accused him of “turning the world upside down,” but they didn’t know the half of it—they had no idea just how great an effect this man would have on world history.

CONNIE: Lonnie, I know you’re talking about the apostle Paul here—but it almost sounds like you’re talking about Jesus Himself—based on the amount of influence you say his life had.

LONNIE: I hear what you’re saying Connie—and I don’t want to be misunderstood here—of course it is through the power of Jesus that Paul had the effect he did on the world. But as we’ll notice over and over again as we consider the great apostle’s life, he was carefully chosen and set apart by Jesus Himself for the mission he was to fulfill. And Jesus knew just the kind of man He needed to accomplish such a great task.

CONNIE: Now, I know that a couple of years ago you did quite a study on the life of Paul—particularly his missionary journeys—in preparation for a trip to the part of the world where the journeys occurred. Is that the type of thing we’re going to be looking at in this series on Paul?

LONNIE: Not exactly—in fact I’m afraid just talking about the places Paul went would be pretty boring unless we could transport all our listeners there to take a look around. No, we’re going to be focusing on Paul’s life from a spiritual growth perspective—following him on his own spiritual journey, and learning the lessons God taught him right along with him.

CONNIE: Sounds interesting—and inspiring. And I think you and our producer Ken Wade had a little discussion of what we’ll be looking at recently. Let’s listen in.

LONNIE: Well Ken Wade, our writer and producer. Welcome to the other side of the big glass out there.

KEN: Well, it’s good to be here today.

LONNIE: We’ve been talking about and this series I have been looking forward to, because Paul of all the Bible heroes has to be one of my favorites.

KEN: I think that you and I are both taken with Abraham and Paul, which are the first two series that we are doing in these Bible biographies.

LONNIE: I like the biography style of preaching. I love reading about Paul, but in the year 2000 we took a group of Voice of Prophecy listeners over to the Greek Isles, and followed in the footsteps with journeys of Paul.

KEN: Wouldn’t it be neat if the power of radio could just transport all of our listeners to all of those places that you went.

LONNIE: Wouldn’t I love to do that, just to show the vision of Macedonia, and it was so exciting to be over in Philippi where east met west, the very first encroachment of the Bible I guess you could say…

KEN: Down by that riverside there…

LONNIE; Right by the riverside, and Lydia the first convert there with her family and then the great big earthquake there, and the Philippine jailor was converted, what a thrill to just actually be there, it was just awesome!

KEN: Paul’s congregation that he wrote so joyfully about.

LONNIE: Since we can’t take our listeners physically on the journey, we can talk about some of Paul’s travels, and track some of his spiritual journeys can’t we?

KEN: That’s it. You know as I study some of these Bible characters, I’m always interested to see how they grew, because we tend to think that maybe they started holy somehow because they are in the Bible, but Paul had some learning to do along the way didn’t he?

LONNIE: He Did! And it seems like he sort of got bumped up a little bit, and beat up, and half drowned, and imprisoned…

KEN: And that’s an interesting thing, you know, when you read about his first missionary journey and the start of his second that the poor guy was getting beat up all the time wasn’t he? And run out of town.

LONNIE: You may remember who this wise wag was who came up this expression, “Everywhere Paul went they turned the world upside-down, everywhere I go they serve tea”, so he was a revolutionary in every sense of the word.

KEN: He was a revolutionary, and he turned the world upside down sometimes on top his head.

LONNIE: Yes…Sometimes more than perhaps he should have, or more than would have designed.

KEN: You wonder about that, I mean it worked out in the long run, but by the time he got to Corinth, which was kind of the furthest point of his second missionary journey, he seemed to have gotten the technique down a little bit differently, he was able to stay 18 months in Corinth before they ran him out of town, and then on his next missionary journey he spent nearly three years in Ephesus, and that’s where the gospel really began to impact the whole of Asia. All of what is Turkey now was influenced as a result of his being able to settle into that one place and just continue to teach and developing missionaries that would no doubt then go out into the rest of Asia.

LONNIE: Which is an interesting role model, and perhaps in the word Ecclesiastical, church structure and leadership and how to do church, and how to organize church. You know those Corinthians and those Ephesians were deeply loved by Paul and the Thessalonians, so much so that he wrote a couple of letters to the Corinthians. He stayed for awhile, he wasn’t just a flash in the pan and then leave to the next community, rather he loved them, he wrote to them, and he sent ambassadors back to them.

KEN: And with Corinth in particular, I think that Paul learned a very important lesson, because after he had spent about 18 months there he, when he left, took everything, he took the church leaders, he took Apulia and Priscilla who had worked with him. They all headed over to Ephesus from there and kind of left the Corinthians to their own devices, and that’s why we have so many letters to the Corinthians because they got into big trouble. And then you read later letters to like Timothy and Titus, and he’s saying, “Look, you guys stay there and be the elders, I left you there to keep things on an even keel”, so Paul was learning through this process also.

LONNIE: and his life was not an easy one, He got beat up by people, he got run out of town, but despite all of his problems he had learned how to trust God:

KEN: Well, I guess that’s the lesson, and one of the biggest lessons that you learn is that all along the way, boy, you know, I don’t know if could have gone through what he went through, but he came out having climbed those mountains, having come through those obstacles, and he came out with a stronger faith than he had going into them.’

LONNIE: Would you think that maybe God would want us to pray not to take those obstacles out of our path, because maybe it was God’s design that they are there to make our faith even stronger.

“Lord, Don’t Move That Mountain”, T. Marshall Kelly.

CONNIE: Amen—Lord, don’t move that mountain! That was T. Marshall Kelly singing for us—Lonnie do you think that might have been the Apostle Paul’s theme song. I mean, it seems like he had to climb a lot of mountains for the Lord.

LONNIE: Well, perhaps it could, Connie. As you look at his life, you almost never find him taking the easy way out. I remember one instance where he was traveling with a group and all the others decided to go by ship, but he chose to walk—he must have been a man of great energy.

CONNIE: And not only physical energy—spiritual energy. It seemed like nothing could keep him down for long—he was always on the move, looking for new places and new ways to share the gospel.

LONNIE: Paul is just one of the biblical heroes of faith whose life story is told in the book we have for our listeners today—it’s called Still Standing True, and it’s a production of our sister ministry It Is Written. We’d like you to have a copy of this book, and you can receive one for free by giving us a call at our toll-free number, 1-800-872-0055.

CONNIE: Of course you can also write to us and request a copy of still standing true. We always love hearing from our listeners, so we’ll give our mailing address at the end of the broadcast. But right now, let’s listen to Lonnie’s message for today: “The Stone That Moved the World.”

The Stone That Moved the World

Have you ever met someone who had the power to change others for the better just by the way they lived—just by their example?

I mean, a person who didn’t so much practice what they preached as preach what they practiced. A person whose testimony sprang from somewhere deep down in their soul, at the very wellspring of what made them “tick.”

When you’re around someone like that, it’s not so much what they say that changes you, but what they live.

Stephen was a man like that.

Oh, he could preach—no doubt about that. One of the longest sermons in the Bible records Stephen’s sermon to the Sanhedrin (the council of priests and leaders in Jerusalem) after they arrested him for preaching and teaching about Jesus. It’s found in Acts 7:2-53, and it takes up two full pages in many Bibles.

But I’m convinced that it’s what happened after Stephen preached that sermon that really changed the world. Because you see, when he was done preaching, he didn’t walk to the back of the church and shake hands with the members of the congregation as they went out the door thinking about what they were going to have for lunch.

The sermon Stephen preached that day had a profound effect on all of his listeners. But the sermon, plus what happened afterward had an even greater effect on one man. It had a life-changing, even world-changing effect.

The sermon affected the members of the Sanhedrin so deeply that they became enraged and began to threaten Stephen’s life. Acts 7:54 says that “When they heard these things they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth” (NKJV). Now, that’s pretty scary. Have you ever had a whole crowd of people literally gnashing their teeth at you like they’d like to bite your head off?

Stephen did. But notice how he reacted. Did he cower in fear? Did he try to run away from them? Did he get out his cell phone and dial 911? . . .

Were you with us last week when we talked about Abraham’s final test on Mt. Moriah? Do you remember what Abraham did when it seemed like everything was going to be going downhill from there on? He looked up. There on the top of the mountain, when it seemed like there was nowhere to go but down, Abraham heard a voice calling to him from above the mountain top, and Abraham looked up and saw the ram caught in the thicket—the ram that would die as a substitute for his son Isaac. The ram that pointed forward to the Savior of the world who would die to give life to all who would receive Him.

Abraham looked up and saw the Savior in type and shadow.

But when Stephen looked up, what did he see? Let’s read it in Acts 7:55-56: “But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, ‘Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’ ” (NKJV)

Like Abraham, Stephen was in a place where things seemed ready to go from dangerous to deadly. And just like Abraham, Stephen looked up toward heaven. And God gave him one of the most precious visions recorded in the Bible. A life-changing, world-changing vision. Because Stephen had the privilege of being the first one ever to actually see Jesus up in heaven after His ascension. He saw the Savior there, standing at the right hand of God!

Now, that might not have been such an earthshaking event, except for one important detail in this story: Who was watching and listening when Stephen testified that he saw Jesus in heaven.

You see, the reason Stephen was on trial before the Sanhedrin was that he had gotten into a dispute about Jesus in one of the synagogues in town. The stories told in Acts 6:8-9: “And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and signs among the people. Then there arose some from what is called the Synagogue of the Freedmen (Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and those from Cilicia and Asia), disputing with Stephen” (NKJV).

Now, if you’re like me, you’d have to get out a map and study it for quite a while to figure out where all those people were from, but long-story-short, they were Jews from outside Palestine, and one of the places mentioned is Cilicia, the home territory of a young Pharisee named Saul.

Saul was a brilliant preacher and debater, but notice that even with all his talents, verse 10 tell us that Stephen’s opponents “could not resist the wisdom and the Spirit by which he spoke” (NRSV).

Now, friend, I believe that verse reveals step one in the conversion of Saul. But only step one. The fact that Stephen gave him a Bible study and he couldn’t prove him wrong didn’t make any drastic change in Saul’s life. It wasn’t until Saul saw how Stephen lived out his beliefs that the real changes started to happen in his life.

Stephen’s sermon to the Jews of Paul’s synagogue got him in trouble—it got him put on trial before the Sanhedrin. And when the religious authorities heard his teaching, it enraged them, and they gnashed their teeth at him.

And Saul was there, observing all of this as it happened. He watched and listened as Stephen, instead of fighting back, or trying to defend himself, or pleading for mercy, turned his eyes toward heaven and caught sight of Jesus at the right hand of God.

And Saul watched and listened as the enraged mob dragged Stephen out of the city and began to hurl huge stones at him. And Saul heard Stephen’s dying prayer, addressed to the Man he had seen in heaven: “‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. . . . Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ ” (Acts 7:60, NRSV).

Imagine what that must have been like for Saul. First off, think of the effect that participating in a mob action like that would have on you.

There are gangs in many of the cities of this world where the price of membership is participation in the killing of an enemy. When you’ve gone that far with your comrades—when you’ve participated with them in murder—you are bound powerfully to them and to their cause. It’s true today. And it was true in Saul’s day.

The stoning of Stephen seems to have had a “first-blood” effect on Saul. Acts 8:1 tells us “Saul was consenting to his death,” and verse 3 tells us what he began to do next: “As for Saul he made havoc of the church, entering every house, and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison” (NKJV).

If he had been committed to opposing Christians before, now he seemed absolutely obsessed with it. He threw himself into it wholeheartedly.

But do you know what?

His enthusiasm for the cause may have been just a way of covering up some doubts and questions that were niggling at the back of his mind, pricking his conscience like a donkey-cart driver using a pointed stick to keep his stubborn mule moving in the right direction.

Saul’s true state of mind is revealed in the words that Jesus spoke to him some time later on the road to Damascus. Here’s how Saul himself told the story many years later:

“ ‘I punished [the Christians] often in every synagogue and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly enraged against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities. . . . As I journeyed to Damascus . . . along the road I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and those who journeyed with me. And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads” ’ ” (Acts 26:11-14 NKJV).

Friend, Jesus knew Saul’s heart. He knew what was going on deep down inside that man who was so zealously opposing Jesus’ followers. He knew that something was troubling him, pricking at him, making him uncomfortable. Prodding him to go a different direction. His conscience was bothering him. Because he just couldn’t get the image of Stephen out of his mind.

Saul was there and saw it all happen.

Saul watched as Stephen gazed up into heaven.

Saul listened as he proclaimed that he could see Jesus up in heaven.

And Saul watched and listened as Stephen went peacefully to his martyrdom, unafraid to face death because he knew that Jesus was watching from heaven.

As the stones flew, Stephen didn’t duck. He just knelt down in prayer and asked that what his murderers were doing wouldn’t be held against them in the tribunal of heaven. And when that final stone struck—the one that took his life away—something struck Saul as well.

It would take time—maybe a year or two. But during that time, Jesus was up in heaven, looking down at Saul. Watching as he persecuted those who wouldn’t give up their faith in their Savior. But also watching what was happening in Saul’s heart.

And when the time was right, suddenly Saul himself saw heaven opened. He wasn’t privileged to see Jesus at the right hand of God, but he saw a bright light and heard a voice asking “Why are you persecuting me?” and revealing that heaven knew what was going on in his mind: “It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”

And Saul was instantly converted.

Instantly you say?

Well, maybe not. Because conversion is always a process. Stephen’s sermon and Bible study started things for Saul. But Stephen’s life—and death—were what I think really got caught in Saul’s conscience, and kept niggling away back there in the back of his mind, pricking him, goading him, moving him to the place where he would be willing to listen when Jesus spoke to him.

The stone that took Stephen’s life was intended to snuff out the influence of the gospel. But because of the way that Stephen lived and died, it instead led to the conversion of Saul—who became Paul, the great apostle to the Gentiles who did so much to spread the gospel to the whole world.

That’s why I call it the stone that moved the world—because it moved Saul, and through him God moved the world. Moved millions to have faith in His Son Jesus. But only because of the way Stephen lived his faith.

As we launch into our series, looking at the life of Saul, I am challenged by the life—and death—of Stephen. I want to live as he did—full of faith, unafraid, full of the Spirit, and with my eyes fixed on heaven.

How about you?

“Heaven on My Mind”, Del Delker, from VOP Music Library #6 CD.