Received from St. Paul, the Disciple of Jesus, through James E. Padgett, in 1915: “Well, my brother, I was with you at the discourse on the “Drama of St. Paul” and was interested in the subject and the way it was delivered. The speaker was somewhat dramatic himself, in delivering his discourse between the personages in the drama; but they didn’t sound familiar, to me they possessed too much artificiality to correctly represent the real tones of voice and feeling that possessed me and the others on those occasions. Nevertheless they were effective and, I have no doubt, produced on the hearers the effect intended.
(Padgett asked a question.) “I well remember my experience on the way to Damascus and the great change that it caused to my whole existence. The brightness and the voice of Jesus were actualities; but the statement that I went blind is not true, for I was not blind, but only affected for the time by the unusual light, and also the shock that the voice of Jesus caused. As Jesus said, my only blindness was that which covered my spiritual eyes at the time; when I went into the town, the only blindness I recovered from, was that which had kept my soul in darkness and caused me to persecute the followers of Jesus under the belief that I was doing the work of God.
“Jesus has told you what my condition of soul was, and how I lacked the love which I afterwards, to some degree, possessed. I was, in my early ministry, more of an intellectual Christian than a Christian possessing the Divine Love of the Father. Yet, thanks to him, I continued to preach and believed, as best I could, until I finally became a redeemed child of God, filled with His Love.
“I had extensive knowledge of things connected with and taught in the Theology of the Jews, and especially of the Pharisees; I see now that in my writings, my conceptions of the Truths of God were flavored to a considerable extent by this knowledge. While many things I taught are true, as I now see them, yet many things that the Bible says I wrote are not true. I wish I could rewrite the Epistles ascribed to me and make the Truth plain, but I cannot.
“Your brother in Christ, Paul”
Excerpts from “The Gospel of God’s Love,” The Padgett Messages, page 195.