Man in White: A Novel about the Apostle Paul

By Johnny Cash and John Carter Cash

The only novel written by the legendary songwriter and performer, Johnny Cash—the incredible story of the apostle Paul.

In this historical novel about the life of Paul before and after his conversion, discover the passionate, fiery, and destructive man once known as Saul of Tarsus. Paul's encounter with Jesus, the Man in White, knocked him to the ground and struck him blind. It also turned him into one of the most influential men in history.

See the apostle Paul as you've never seen him before—through the creative imagination of one of the greatest singer-songwriters America has ever known. You'll also see Johnny Cash, the man in Black, as you've never seen him before—a passionate novelist consumed with the Man in White.

Praise for Man in White:

“[Johnny did] extensive research and study of the life of the apostle Paul, and amazed [me] as he talked about Paul and we shared the Scriptures together. When [Man in White] was first published several years ago, my wife and I both read it—then read it again!” —Billy Graham

• Biographical fiction exploring the life of Saul, the man who became the apostle Paul
• Painstakingly researched and historically accurate
• Draws on Old and New Testament references as well as cultural background information
• Includes an afterword by John Carter Cash, Johnny Cash’s son

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 24, 2008
• ISBN: 9781418555566

Book preview

"Two of the most wonderful friends that God ever gave my wife and me were Johnny and June Cash. Now that they are both in Heaven, we miss our times together with them. During one of our vacations together, I watched Johnny working many hours on a book he was writing. He had done extensive research and study of the life of the apostle Paul, and amazed us as he talked about Paul and we shared the Scriptures together.

Johnny’s book is a novel based on Paul, entitled Man in White.When it was first published several years ago,my wife and I both read it—then read it again! Now that it is to be reprinted, I hope that its new audience will enjoy the novel, and be challenged to also read the entire biblical account of Paul, the great follower of Jesus Christ, the Man in White."

—Billy Graham

May, 2006

Montreat, NC

Man_in_White_TXT_0005_0011

A Novel About the Apostle Paul

JOHNNY CASH

Man_in_White_TXT_0005_002

© 1986 by John R. Cash

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Thomas Nelson, Inc. titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [e-mail].

Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cash, Johnny.

     Man in white / Johnny Cash.

         p. cm.

     ISBN-10: 1-59554-237-X

     ISBN-13: 978-1-59554-237-3

     1. Paul, the Apostle, Saint—Fiction. 2. Church history—Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600—Fiction. 3. Bible. N.T.—History of Biblical events—Fiction. 4. Christian saints—Fiction. 5. Apostles—Fiction. I. Title.

   PS3553.A7937M3 2006

   813'.54—dc22

   2006006840

Printed in the United States of America

07 08 09 10 11 QW 7 6 5 4 3 2

This book is dedicated to my father, Ray Cash,

1897–1985, veteran of World War I.

Discharge: Honorable. Conduct: Good.

The friends of the Nazarene became united

And I became enraged

And led a slaughter zealously

I found their secret places

They were beaten, they were chained

But some of them were scattered

Justified in fearing me.

Then the Man in White

Appeared to me

In such a blinding light

It struck me down

And with its brilliance

Took away my sight

Then the Man in White

In gentle loving tones spoke to me

And I was blinded so that I might see

The Man in White

© COPYRIGHT 1986 BY JOHN R. CASH

AURIGA RA MUSIC, INC.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PROLOGUE

ONE: THE VOW, AD 37

TWO: THE FAST

THREE: THE PURGE

FOUR: THE ILLUMINATION

FIVE: THE WANDERING

SIX: REVELATION

SEVEN: THE FELLOWSHIP, AD 40

EPILOGUE, AD 70

AFTERWORD: THE THORN REMOVED?

INTRODUCTION

It is highly unlikely that, having taken years, and with a lengthy period of respite from writing Man in White, I could possibly name everyone who, in some way or another, directly or indirectly, purposely, incidentally, accidentally, unknowingly, unwillingly, unintentionally, uncaring, unwanting, or eagerly, hopefully, helpfully contributed to the completion of this publication.

Many don’t remember, as I may not, nor do they realize the vital role they played in this work, and I regret that I failed to give due credit to those whose contribution fails my memory.

Thanks to Irene Gibbs, my secretary, who typed, retyped, retyped, and retyped.

To Roy M. Carlisle of Harper & Row San Francisco, who, after reading the first draft, said, Come on now, John. Give me a break. Put a little more prayer and thought into the first scene depicting a Christian worship service, then write it again, please?

Thanks also to the agnostics, the atheists, the unconcerned, and the uncaring. These may have been among the most inspiring and encouraging by providing the negative force I needed against my determination.

I’m a traveling man, and I meet a lot of people. I have, on occasion, had the opportunity to talk to people of diverse persuasions. I introduced myself to an Orthodox Jew at the Newark Airport baggage claim area. Reluctantly, he shook my hand. He took a step backward in hesitant awe when I asked him,Could you please tell me a little about the Feast ofWeeks, as it was celebrated around AD 60?

He finally warmed to the subject and supplied me with insight into that period.

I had numerous dinner-table discussions (sometimes confusing) with conservative synagogue members about first-century Temple life. I was instructed by Jewish associates in ethics, traditions, customs, and actions from the old school, the new school, and the unschooled.

I went to a Western store in Los Angeles and bought saddlebags that I carried over my shoulders for the last five years of my travels. In the bag was my book. Also the Thompson Chain-Reference Bible; the New International Version; the Catholic Bible; and from time to time, Everyday Life in Jesus’ Time; Foxe’s Book of Martyrs; A History of the Early Church; The Twelve Apostles; The Twelve Caesars; the Jewish Encyclopedia; and the writings of the Romanized Jewish historian Flavius Josephus.

June read each and every page and in her painfully honest way let me know what she thought. I listened, waited, prayed, and then acted upon my own judgment, as I did with other, less outspoken critics.

A reporter asked me, What is this about a new book you’re writing?

"It’s called Man in White," I replied.

"Neat idea. Man in White by the man in black."

I nodded, waiting.

What’s it about? he asked.

The apostle Paul’s conversion, before and after, I explained. It’s a novel.

Nothing about yourself?

No, it happens in the first century AD.

Really, a novel? Anything about prisons? he laughed.

Yes, as a matter of fact, Paul sang in prison. He sang a jail-breaking song.

Really. What was the song? he asked.

I don’t know, I said. He and a guy named Silas sang a duet, but they never recorded it.

Others I’ve talked with about it were excited, or at least intrigued.

Is it written from the Baptist Church’s angle? one asked. You are a Baptist, aren’t you?

Paul was not a Baptist, I replied. He admonished those whose doctrinal tenets focused on John the Baptist.

Then you’re a Catholic, maybe? he asked.

Maybe, I said, "since catholic means ‘universal.’"

But not the Roman Catholic Church? he asked.

No, I said. Paul was a Jew. He was a doctor of the Law.

Then it’s written from the Jewish viewpoint, right?

No, mine, I said.

But you’re a Baptist.

I finally settled on a fundamental answer. I, as a believer that Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew, the Christ of the Greeks, was the Anointed One of God (born of the seed of David, upon faith as Abraham had faith, and it was accounted to him for righteousness), am grafted onto the true vine, and am one of the heirs of God’s covenant with Israel.

What?

I’m a Christian, I said. Don’t put me in another box.

There was a long pause, and then he said, Really, Adolph Hitler was a Christian.

He was not, I argued. There was nothing Christlike in what he did.

How do you know? he asked.

I thought for a minute. I don’t really know, I said, but Jesus said, ‘By their fruits ye shall know them,’ and I’ve seen his fruits.

Where? he asked.

At the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, I said.

Thanks to Ken Overstreet, Jay Kessler, Dan McKinnon, and all at Youth for Christ.

Thanks to Dr. David Weinstein, chancellor of Spertus College of Judaica in Chicago, for his invaluable contribution.

Karen Robin, wife of my agent, Lou Robin, is a diligent student of Christianity, and in recent years a convert to Judaism, in which she has dedicated herself to studies in the Law and tradition, ancient and modern. She most graciously caused me to search out and prove numerous Hebraic pieces of my narrative. To her, I am indebted, as I am to her husband, Lou, who confirmed, or at times added with a few words, a feast of food for thought.

To Stephanie Mills, to Chet Hagen, and to Judy Markham. To Marty Klein, head of the Agency for the Performing Arts, with whom I have been associated for fifteen years, who listened to parts of my story from time to time, and who greatly encouraged me to express this work in my own words and imagery.

When June and I were married in 1968, we read a lot. We found much common ground in our tastes for books.

I had just come off seven years of addiction to amphetamines and other prescription drugs. I had been a devastated, incoherent, unpredictable, self-destructive, raging terror at times during those years.

Now with a lot of love and a lot of prayers and that madness behind me, we spend a lot of time reading great books. Having been on vacation to Israel, we love everything we read relative to that land, especially about it during the time of Christ—Ben Hur, The Robe, The Silver Chalice, Dear and Glorious Physician, and The Source.

June’s father, Ezra Carter, left me his religious-historical library when he died. He had talked to me about some of his favorite reading, books about the early church fathers, the post-Nicene and ante-Nicene councils. He kept telling me before he died, You’re going to love Josephus and Pliny and Seutonius and Gibbons and Tacitus.

At first I found Josephus slow, plodding, and hard to read, but the more I read, the more excited I got, seeing Josephus’s Roman world as the earliest Christians saw it. I eventually got into them all and bought many other books related to first-century Judea. Those dusty old books came to life.

For example, do you know about the world’s first recorded mooning? Mooning is a bit like streaking, where a person suddenly appears naked and runs through a public place, but in mooning, only his backside is bared.

Flavius Josephus, writing around AD 80, tells us that it was during the reign of Augustus Caesar that Roman soldiers caused a near riot by marching past the holy Temple at Jerusalem bearing their banners and holding aloft the imperial-blazoned eagle. Angry over the presence of such an engraved image, the priests and elders of the Temple shouted insults and threw stones at the standard. As the column of soldiers passed by, ignoring the Temple and its priests and elders, according to Josephus, a centurion stopped and faced the Jews. He then, turning in the opposite direction, raised his tunic, lowered his loincloth, bent over, and bared his hindmost parts to the priests and elders. The first known recorded mooning.

For three years, June and I took correspondence courses in the Bible from Christian International in Phoenix through Evangel Temple in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, which was the church we belonged to at the time. We worked on assignments at home, on the road, on the bus, on planes, and sometimes in a quiet spot like a cabin in the woods near home. Whenever we had a few minutes or a few hours, we would work on our lessons; then we’d mail them in and await the next course.

In 1977, three years from the time we began, we got signed, wax-sealed certificates from Christian International. We never hung them up for display. This is only the beginning, I said. All my degree means to me is that I am now qualified to study the Bible.

That last course I had finished I couldn’t get off my mind—The Life and Epistles of St. Paul by Conybere and Howson. I started reading books about Paul, the novels, and there are some very good ones, especially the ones by Sholem Asch and John Pollock. Then I got into the commentaries on Paul by Lange, Farrar, Barnes, Fleetwood, and others. I started making notes and writing my own thoughts on Paul when I saw so many different opinions in so many areas. Tons of material has been written about his differences with Peter and Mark, but I discovered that the Bible can shed a lot of light on commentaries.

And for ages pulpiteers have speculated on the physical makeup of his thorn in the flesh—how big it was and where it stuck him. Why didn’t he pull it out? He couldn’t, and that’s probably why he had a doctor (Luke) traveling with him. He was probably an epileptic, someone said. Was the thorn symbolic? He craved young women, said another, and so on and so on.

Well, I decided, if theologians can do so much speculating and make it interesting, I might throw in my two cents worth. After all, Paul had become my hero. He was invincible! He made it his life’s mission to conquer and convert the idolatrous, pagan world over to Jesus Christ. And he did everything he planned that he lived long enough to do.

He smiled at his persecutions. He was beaten with rods, with the lash, with stones; he was insulted, attacked by mobs, and imprisoned; his own people hated him. Yet he said, because of Jesus Christ, he had learned to be content in whatever state he was in!

As an old man in prison in Rome, in his last days, he wrote of things he still wanted to do, one of which was to evangelize Spain! He always had a great plan and he always carried it through; then he made journey after journey to go back to the cities he had visited to make sure people were running things the way he taught them to.

I started writing about Paul in a kind of documentary way, but right up front there wasn’t much to document. He suddenly appears at Stephen’s execution, and the Bible says that he had cast his vote against him. The people who killed Stephen laid their clothes at Paul’s (Saul’s) feet. Why? I wondered. I had to know. I found out why.

When he said he zealously persecuted the Christians, I wanted to know what he said, what he did. How long did he do it? What did his own people think of him? As a Pharisee, what was his relationship with the high priest? Was the high priest happy to give him letters to go to Damascus because he was glad to get him out of town? Maybe so. He had really disturbed the peace in Jerusalem.

The Roman Empire had its own little thorn in the flesh—Judea. The most undesirable appointment for a Roman officer would be to be sent to govern Judea. It was a remote, miserable outpost. In the time of Tiberius Caesar, governors or procurators such as Pilate and Marcellus soon learned that the Jews governed themselves, with the Temple to their one God as the center of their religious and social life. The high priest was their top man, no matter who Rome sent.

Rome was forced to allow them to mint their own money, for the Roman coins with their idolatrous images were forbidden in holy places. Jewish coins were simply designed and crudely struck. A shock of wheat or a pomegranate tree might appear on one side and numbers signifying the number of years since the last rebellion against Rome on the other.

The followers of Christ were at first considered by the high priest and most of the general population to be just another Jewish sect, of which there were many. But of all the sects, this was the most despicable. They worshiped a dead Galilean preacher who couldn’t even keep himself alive. He died the most shameful death the Romans could devise. It was said that his friends stole his body after he was buried—grave robbing, a most depraved crime, punishable by death.

The horror stories grew. His friends said that he rose from the dead, walked with them, then ascended to heaven before their eyes. After he was gone, it was reported to the high priest that the followers of the Nazarene had kept some of his blood and drank it whenever they got together. To drink blood, according to the Law of Moses, was abominable. And how about his flesh? Yes, they even told how he had left them pieces of his flesh to eat in remembrance of him. Cannibalism!

So it was not just the Temple theocracy in Jerusalem that considered the Christians enemies of God; the whole flood of public opinion was against them. They became a closed society to survive. And the man who would later write fourteen books of the New Testament was their most hostile persecutor.

Jesus Christ told us how to live. The apostle Paul showed us how the plan works. Jesus Christ told us how to die, unafraid, with an eternity of peace following, and Paul showed us how to prepare for it.

It was Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor of the followers of the Nazarene, who left Jerusalem bound for Damascus to find, arrest, bring to trial, and execute those who worshiped that Name.

And it was Paul, the apostle for Jesus Christ to the world, who entered Damascus a few days later.

Jesus had died, been resurrected, and ascended to heaven, according to his disciples, and they expected his eventual second coming. They looked anxiously for the promised return. Every convert expected it. No one, especially Saul the Pharisee, authority and expert on Mosaic Law, expected him to appear in the middle of a clear day and to have a one-on-one conversation with him.

As best I can time it, not accounting for any pauses in the exchange of dialogue between Jesus and Paul and according to Paul’s writing in his Letters, the conversation lasted approximately one minute, maybe a few seconds less. Yet a world was changed because of that one-minute conversation. It was one great paramount minute in the history of humankind. That minute determined the destiny of countless millions of people yet to be born. No event short of the birth of Jesus Christ himself has affected the life of humankind on this earth as powerfully as the commands given and accepted in that one minute. But what we know about Saul/Paul from three years before that minute to three years after that minute, we can glean from only a few versus of Scripture.

I lay awake nights back in 1978 and 1979 thinking about Paul—the amazing transformation, how he turned that zeal for persecution and slaughter around and immediately went forth with the same zeal for Christ. That six-year period intrigued me. The more I studied, the more I wrote down my own thoughts on Paul. In my mind, he took on character and personality, and I wanted to give character and personality to the high priest who sent him to Damascus. I wanted the people he persecuted and slaughtered to have names, and I wanted to see them and hear them in those earliest Christian worship services.

Someone said a religious novelist can be God’s liar; that is, by novelization of the activity and reality surrounding a tiny grain of truth, great truths can be illuminated and activated. I have not and do not claim to be a novelist, but I suppose that is the form my writing about Paul has taken. I found a story to tell in those few verses, and the story I tell around those verses is my own.

Of course, the Scriptures dealing with the six years we’re zeroing in on don’t need further illumination by me—truth is its own illumination. In studying them, I began to glimpse the unfathomable depths that lay there.

What exactly was Paul seeing and hearing that instant he went blind on the Damascus road? I suppose I was trying to see beyond the great void, to perceive just a flicker of the divine brilliance that struck him down. One of the days I was pondering this, it wasn’t meant for me to get a flicker of divine brilliance, but it was meant for me to be struck down.

An ostrich tried to kill me. I was trying to look across the abyss between heaven and earth and put some of it in words at my cabin in the woods, which is near my home in a fifty-acre fenced-in area stocked with wild game. I got up to take a walk and relax when I met this eight-foot-tall ostrich in the path. He had lost his mate in the winter freeze and had become hostile. I was thinking of Paul being struck down on the Damascus road by a binding light when I was suddenly struck down by the two big feet of an ostrich.

As soon as he hit me, he ran off into the woods. I picked myself up, examined myself, and realized that I wasn’t hurt, so I walked on down the path.

After I had taken my walk and started back toward the cabin, there stood that ostrich on the path again. He spread his wings and hissed at me. I think I’d better show you who owns this land, I said, picking up a long stick. Then he attacked. I swung the stick at his long neck, which is just what he wanted me to do. He jumped straight up out of my reach and came back down on me feetfirst. He broke three ribs when he hit me, and only my belt kept his big, dirty claws from ripping me open.

Like Paul when he was struck by the Light, I fell flat on my back, but unlike Paul, I broke two more ribs on the rock I fell on. The ostrich ran and left me lying there. I finally managed to get back home and to the doctor.

Painkillers led to sleeping pills. Sleeping pills led to uppers again, and soon I was back on that mood-altered, not-so-merry-go-round. My story about Paul got stuck away in a closet. Only occasionally would I take it out and try to write. Mood-altering drugs vex the spirit, and if inspiration comes to a writer while under the influence, it’s usually distorted, meaningless, and senseless by the time it gets on paper.

I had to let Billy Graham read my book, and every time I talked to him, he asked me if it was finished. I’d say, Too busy on the road, or give some other excuse. The truth is I wanted to see more of what Paul saw

Reviews for Man in White

[mauriceawilliams · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was always impressed with Johnny Cash. His baritone voice added depth and pathos to some of the songs he became famous for. He almost destroyed his career and probably his life with addiction to drugs. Finally in mid career, when he was about 36, he had a conversion experience and was able to come off drugs. From then on for the remaining 35 years of his life, he remained a devout Christian and many times bore witness to Christ even on the stage before large audiences.He always felt uncomfortable with sectarian divisions within the Christian community and, when interviewed, refused to identify himself with any group suggested by his interviewer: Baptist? Catholic? “No,” he would say, “I’m a Christian.” Not many know that, after his conversion, Cash wrote a biography about the Life of St. Paul.St. Paul was an important person in the early church, so I was curious how Cash understood St. Paul’s life. It turns out that Cash’s Man in White is a remarkably good biography. Cash had some training in Biblical Study and benefitted from friends, including Billy Graham, who critiqued his drafts as the work was in progress. But the most remarkable feature is that Cash has a real talent for spinning a story. His rendition of the life of St. Paul brought Paul’s life out of the mystical, where so many put him, and showed Paul as an ordinary man of his time. I enjoyed reading Man in White very much.The novel starts out with Peter in The Temple when he cured the crippled man. Saul is in another Temple chamber discussing the Nazarenes with the high priest, and Gamaliel, and two other men. Gamaliel advised them to leave these men alone. Saul wasn’t convinced. He felt these unbelievers should be stopped.From this start, Cash goes on to craft a remarkably well-written novel about Saul. Cash provides a lot of detail about what life was like in Jerusalem at that time and details that round out the character of Saul. After Stephen is martyred, Saul obtains a commission from The Temple to eradicate the Nazarenes. He endures a seven-day fast in preparation and then has himself dedicated to this mission in a Temple ceremony where all his hair is shaved off and burned along with an animal sacrifice. Then Saul is ready to embark on his mission.I got a lot out of this novel. It is not like other stories about Saints. It reads more like an adventure story, but, in this case, the story is true. Cash keeps his novel in line with what is already known about St. Paul, but he makes Paul come alive in Cash’s skillful handling of small details about Paul’s appearance, his family background, how he supported himself, and his friends and relatives. The title is based on how Jesus appeared to Saul on the way to Damascus. Jesus was clothed in brilliant white: Jesus is the Man in White.I enjoyed this novel. It gave me a deeper understanding of Paul as a man as well as a Saint, and I got a glimpse into Johnny Cash’s inner soul as well.