I've tried to watch the BBC productions of Poirot's exploits, but, believe me, they're so long and boring they make reading the telephone directory a welcome respite.Anyway, something on TV caught my short attention span one night and that was the night I almost fell out of my chair. And thereby hangs a tale.
"In the Steps of St. Paul" is the name of the two part TV series that I thought might be interesting, not only because of its subject matter, but also because the narrator and main participant of the documentary is none other than David Suchet.
As the documentary begins, Suchet tells us that he's been interested in Paul for 25 years, ever since that night in a hotel room that he picked up a Bible and read the book of Romans. From there on, he's been captivated by its author, even to the point of wanting to play him in a movie. It was because of this enchantment with Paul that he decided to go where Paul was born and where Paul traveled to see if he could learn more about "the man who changed Western Civilization."
The viewer learns that Paul, born in Tarsus in Turkey traveled 10,000 miles to evangelize and plant churches all over the place. So, we find Suchet in Jerusalem, Turkey, Tarsus, and other places Paul visited, walking on the same Roman roads Paul traveled.
Suchet says that he wants to learn why Saul became the Paul we know and admire. To do this, he doesn't go to the Bible, but to a psychologist over there who sheds his "light" on what made Saul into Paul, something like, he intoned, an identity crisis.
Of course Suchet has to bring up the subject of Saul's Damascus road experience which he calls one of the most fabulous accounts in literature--the desert, the blinding light, the conversion. But then he says, "I want to find out what really happened [on the road to Damascus]. We now know that Suchet doesn't accept the Bible's "most fabulous account" as to what really happened. He offers no evidence that the Damascus road experience didn't really happen, but just moves on to some psychological dumbo-jumbo about being out in a desert and whatnot as the reason. I guess he thinks it was the heat out there in the desert.
The thing is Suchet wasn't on the Damascus road at the time, yet he has the arrogance to say that it didn't happen. This would be like someone saying to me, "You weren't kidnapped when you were in the second grade and you, a child, certainly didn't fight off your knife-wielding kidnapper, a grown man, and escape from his car. Now tell me what really happened." My answer would start with, "You weren't there; how do you know what did and did not happen?"
Moving on into the documentary, we hear not only from psychologists, but also from learned clerics, professors, historians, and archeologists. And then it happens! Enter Dr. Helen Bond of the University of Edinborough for an interview with David Suchet. During the course of the interview, I (not literally) fell out of my chair.
Dr. Bond said, "Paul was saying, 'You don't have to be circumcised. You didn't have to keep the Law; Paul was saying to the gentiles that all you need is to believe in what God has done through Jesus, [that is] the cross and the resurrection and faith in that is going to save you."
Wow!
Right there, right smack in the middle of Episode 1 of this documentary, we've just heard a presentation of grace, a presentation of the gospel! And David Suchet doesn't even know that's what's just happened in the middle of his documentary. He just goes right on talking, zooming by Dr. Bond's remark to say, "Paul broke all the rules." He's just heard the most astounding news of grace, and it bounces off his stony heart like the seed in the parable of the Sower.But now, here's the most interesting part of the documentary: Dr. Helen Bond doesn't believe the gospel either! She gave it so clearly, so succinctly that I can hear some pastors out there saying, "I wish those in our congregation understood the gospel as clearly as she does and I wish they could state it as well as she does."
How do we know she's lost? Read her books and you learn that she believes that Jesus' tomb was empty, but that Joseph moved the body to an unknown and unmarked location. She thinks that we don't have the words Jesus really said and we'll never have them. She thinks our Lord was only an apocalyptic prophet, mentored by John the Baptist. Where did all that come from? (Take a read of II Cor. 4:4)
The Holy Spirit was at work in Suchet's life 25 years ago when he picked up a Bible and read the book of Romans. The Holy Spirit is at work in Bond's life as she reads Paul's words and understands the gospel. Yet, thus far, they've said, "No." But the Holy Spirit has been at His John 16 task. It's for us to cooperate with Him in that task.
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