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The Acts of the Apostles
of the resurrection morn. “My flesh also,” he joyously proclaimed,
“shall rest in hope. For Thou wilt not leave My soul in hell [the grave];
neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption.”
Psalm
16:9, 10
.
Paul showed how closely God had linked the sacrificial service
with the prophecies relating to the One who was to be “brought as
a lamb to the slaughter.” The Messiah was to give His life as “an
offering for sin.” Looking down through the centuries to the scenes of
the Saviour’s atonement, the prophet Isaiah had testified that the Lamb
of God “poured out His soul unto death: and He was numbered with
the transgressors; and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession
for the transgressors.”
Isaiah 53:7, 10, 12
.
The Saviour of prophecy was to come, not as a temporal king,
to deliver the Jewish nation from earthly oppressors, but as a man
among men, to live a life of poverty and humility, and at last to be
despised, rejected, and slain. The Saviour foretold in the Old Testament
Scriptures was to offer Himself as a sacrifice in behalf of the fallen
race, thus fulfilling every requirement of the broken law. In Him the
sacrificial types were to meet their antitype, and His death on the cross
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was to lend significance to the entire Jewish economy.
Paul told the Thessalonian Jews of his former zeal for the cere-
monial law and of his wonderful experience at the gate of Damascus.
Before his conversion he had been confident in a hereditary piety, a
false hope. His faith had not been anchored in Christ; he had trusted
instead in forms and ceremonies. His zeal for the law had been discon-
nected from faith in Christ and was of no avail. While boasting that
he was blameless in the performance of the deeds of the law, he had
refused the One who made the law of value.
But at the time of his conversion all had been changed. Jesus of
Nazareth, whom he had been persecuting in the person of His saints,
appeared before him as the promised Messiah. The persecutor saw
Him as the Son of God, the one who had come to the earth in fulfillment
of the prophecies and who in His life had met every specification of
the Sacred Writings.
As with holy boldness Paul proclaimed the gospel in the synagogue
at Thessalonica, a flood of light was thrown upon the true meaning of
the rites and ceremonies connected with the tabernacle service. He
carried the minds of his hearers beyond the earthly service and the