Let's take our Bibles and go to Acts chapter's eight and nine. We're going to be looking at chapters

eight and nine today. If you're new to our study here at Cornerstone, we go straight through the

Bible from cover to cover, and we're presently in the book of Acts. We also have an in-depth study

on Wednesday nights. We're in the book of First Samuel. We go verse by verse. On Sundays, we kind of

go chapter by chapter, and we're going to be looking at Acts

chapters 8 and 9.

So welcome to church today, friends.

Who's happy to be here?

Amen?

And welcome to our online viewers as well.

We're going to be reading today one of the most radical conversion stories in all of the Bible

when Paul meets Jesus on this road to Damascus, Syria.

In fact, Paul's conversion is so dramatic, the way that he goes from being a hater of Christians, a persecutor of Christians, someone who

plays a part in helping for Christians to be executed to becoming one of them because he meets Jesus

and has this radical transformation where now he will go from hating Christians to helping

people become Christians. And it's often why, even today, when some people have a real

dramatic conversion story that it is referred to sometimes as they had a Damascus Road

experience, because it kind of mirrors what we are going to read here

with the Apostle Paul. Now, I have to be honest with you, you know, when it comes to dramatic,

you know, radical transformations, I don't really personally have a Damascus Road experience.

And I can tell you that for years, I envy people people who did. You know, you might, you might have

grown up in church and, you know, heard those kind of stories. I just remember, you know,

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