The Life of Paul Part 3: Saul of Tarsus, John the Baptist & 26 A.D.

Now the new procurator, Pontius Pilate by name, arrived in Judea, being a harsh, rough, and sometimes even cruel, if not sometimes even disastrous, ruler. He decided to quell and break the will of the Hebrew people immediately. He had no more come by ship, docked in the harbor of Cessarea by the sea, taken his place in the palace, which also had a jail beneath it, a prison. A few days after his arrival, the Jewish people in Caesarea and in Jerusalem woke up to find that during the night, something called standards had been placed all over the city, both in Caesarea and Jerusalem. Now, these were, by Jewish minds, heathen flags intended to promote heathenism and did not belong in Jerusalem and should not be in Caesarea.

Remember these words that the population of Caesarea by the Sea was 50% Jewish and 50% Gentile, 50% heathen, and 50% of it Jewish. The Jews of Caesarea immediately asked for an audience with the governor and received it, in which they implored him to remove the standards. He said they would stay. For a Jew, this was blasphemy and in Jerusalem even worse. And so, a delegation from different parts of Judea asked for another audience with the governor. But rather than giving it to them, he made a plot; he would receive the Jews in a room filled with Roman soldiers. At a given point, he would tell them that if they did not immediately leave his room with their foolish requests, they would all have their heads cut off. And all the soldiers would instantly pull out this Roman sword.

And so, the Jews came in and implored Pontius Pilate to please remove the standards. He immediately made his declaration. The swords came out from the fists of every Roman soldier in the room, and, expecting the people to scream and leave in fear, all of the Jews fell on their faces before the feet of Pontius Pilate and pulled back their hair, exposing their necks, inviting death. Pontius Pilate had underestimated the monotheistic Hebrews.

Horrified and remembering that he had a letter to write to the emperor and knowing that he dared not slaughter in his first week a large number of Jewish leaders, he gave in, and the next day the standards were all removed, but he would wait for his revenge. And he would wait for his revenge. The year was 26 AD. But there was something else that happened besides Tiberius moving out of Rome to Capri and from Pontius Pilate coming into Jerusalem in Cessarea and being met by devout Jews willing to die with their heads severed to have those pagan symbols removed.

And it was this. It was a very strange-looking man who had appeared out of nowhere. The hair of camels had been turned into threads and woven into a garment. It was an unclean animal, and it was rumored that he ate locusts, which were also considered unclean, and ate wild honey as his food. His hair had never been cut. His eyes were as black as coal, as was his hair, which reached almost to the ground. And instead of coming into the cities to proclaim the word of God, he began preaching where caravans crossed in their paths and began to denounce the whole world by his strong and fervent words out there in the desert.

The people had to come to John rather than John coming to them. Sometimes he was in the wilderness in Judea, and crowds came. And there were times that he was near the Jordan River, and the crowds came to Galilee. And sometimes he crossed the Jordan River and baptized on the other side of Jordan, a word that hardly fell freely from the mouth of any devout Jew; beyond the Jordan was beyond Israel. And it said that he thundered against sin, that he thundered by name against some, and he also announced that the kingdom of heaven was very, very near.

His words were correct, for He (Jesus), “the kingdom” – He was very near. At 18, Saul, at every opportunity he got, learned all he could about what this almost insane-looking madman was saying. He was announcing the coming of the Messiah, and he was calling out that he himself was nothing but a cry out in the Judean wilderness. And so, did he listen, and so, did he plan and wait for the passing of years until the day he could leave home and go to Judea, perhaps meet this strange prophet, and sit at the feet of Simon or Gamaliel, until he would reach the age of somewhere between 20, 22, or 24. He had even found some of his kinsmen who agreed to let him live with them. In fact, they had looked forward to his coming. In fact, their names were Andronicus and Junia.