A brilliant light shone around him. Paul was stunned and blinded by it. He also heard a voice that said, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." Then Paul humbly asked, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Acts 9:5, 6. This experience was followed by an amazing transformation in Paul's life. He became a chosen apostle, and he, in turn, chose to follow Christ.
Paul's conversion brought him a clearer perception of the true idea of God, which Jesus represented. The great light surrounding Paul was not the appearing of the personal Jesus, who had ascended, but of the ever-present Christ, illumining Paul's receptive consciousness—the same eternal Christ that shone so brightly in Jesus as he fulfilled his earthly mission as the promised Messiah.
Once while he was being questioned by his detractors, Jesus bewildered and enraged them by affirming, "Before Abraham was, I am." John 8:58. They thought that Jesus was referring to his human identity, but he was actually confirming the eternality of his divine nature. In Science and Health Mary Baker Eddy gives us a logical explanation of Jesus' words: "Throughout all generations both before and after the Christian era, the Christ, as the spiritual idea,—the reflection of God,—has come with some measure of power and grace to all prepared to receive Christ, Truth. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and the prophets caught glorious glimpses of the Messiah, or Christ, which baptized these seers in the divine nature, the essence of Love." Science and Health, p. 333.
