The Scriptural Origin of Paul's Faith

When he was called before Felix, the Roman procurator for the province of Judea, Paul gave an apologetic, that is, a defense, for the Christian faith for which the Jewish leaders had charged him of insurrection. Part of that defense, as recorded in Acts 24:14, is this statement: "This I [i. e., Paul] confess to you [Felix], that, according to the Way, which they [the Jewish leaders] call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the prophets." 

Paul's defense is not in any mystical revelation, whether by dreams or sensationalist evangelists, but strictly by the testimony that he found in the Bible, the Scriptures which we now know as the Old Testament (compare his later message to Timothy in II Timothy 3:14-15). 

If anyone could, Paul could have spoken of a mystical experience. In Acts 9:1-9, Luke the Physician gives us a record of Paul's, then still called Saul, persecution of the Christians, until he is literally thrown to the ground by Jesus, who challenges him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" (verse 4). Yet, we are then told, verses 10-19, that this same Jesus then sent a disciple named Ananias to explain the faith to Saul/Paul. "The Lord said to him [i. e., Ananias], 'Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to carry My name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel'" (verse 15). It is only after this meeting with Ananias that Paul is able to rise and be baptized, not after his vision. 

I think this record is one of the landmarks that distinguish between true Christian churches and the cults. Cults usually start with a leader who claims to have had a mystical experience, apart from Scripture, in which God supposedly taught him or her some new revelation. Nowhere does the New Testament describe conversions as occurring in this way. On the contrary, it is Paul himself who tells us that people are converted by the preaching of that same word of which he testified to Felix (Romans 10:14-17). 

We see this contrast most vividly in the Mormon religion, the founder of which, Joseph Smith, Jr., claimed revelatory visions, including new scriptures, to support his claims of a new religion, new though he claimed Christian terminology for it. The apologetic of Paul contrasts starkly with the claims of Smith, being one of the proofs that Mormonism has no legitimate claim to the name of Christ for its organization.