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To the Ends of the Earth

CONNIE: How do you turn a bad situation into something good? The Apostle Paul was an expert at that—because he had to do it so many times! Join us today, as we continue our study of Paul—right at the end of his life.
Giving God’s trumpet a Certain Sound for 75 years, this is the Voice of Prophecy.

CONNIE: Hello, I’m Connie Jeffery,

LONNIE: and I’m Lonnie Melashenko. Connie, we’ve spent the last three months looking at the life of Paul, and now we’ve come down to the last pages of his life history.

CONNIE: Do we really know just how Paul’s life ended—I mean, we’ve been looking at the book of Acts in the Bible as we followed Paul’s journeys, but doesn’t Acts end with Paul still alive, awaiting trial in Rome.

LONNIE: That’s right, Connie. Luke, the great historian of the beginnings of Christianity, chose to end his stories about Paul before the very end of the apostle’s life, and there’s been a lot of speculation about why this might have been—did Paul and Luke have a parting of the ways? Did Luke just not get a chance to finish the story?

We can’t know for sure, so we have to rely on traditions passed down through the generations and on later church historians if we want to know what happened to Paul after Acts ends.

CONNIE: But we do have good evidence that Paul survived that first Roman imprisonment and went on to further missions, don’t we?

LONNIE: Yes, we certainly do. Particularly in the pastoral epistles that he wrote to Timothy and Titus—I’ll be looking at some of those passages in my message later today.

CONNIE: How much do we know about how Paul’s life finally ended?

LONNIE: One thing we know for sure is that he died with his faith still intact. I mean, we can read the things he wrote to Timothy saying for instance, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7, NKJV).

CONNIE: That’s a powerful testimony from a man who was living in very difficult circumstances.

LONNIE: It certainly is. Those words were probably penned from a dark, dank dungeon—known as the Mammertine Prison—in Rome.

Paul’s first imprisonment, which was basically a house arrest in Rome, must have ended with acquittal at Caesar’s tribunal, freeing Paul to go and continue to preach and spread the gospel around the Roman world.

But then, after several more years of productive ministry, he found himself under arrest again. A couple of years ago, our Voice of Prophecy staff took a group on a tour of the places that Paul visited. I prepared some notes for our group, and I tried to bring home the reality of what Paul faced in this way:

So here was Paul on his second voyage to Rome, again a prisoner. Only this time the circumstances were far more grim and serious; and only a few companions accompanied him. Nero's persecution had butchered thousands of Christians in Rome, martyred for their faith. The remaining ones either fled or were greatly depressed and intimidated. Many hid their light and were now desperately afraid. The Jews, once open to listen to Paul's arguments, were fired up as his bitterest enemies. This time no warm band of believers greeted Paul when he arrived at APPII FORUM and THREE TAVERNS. No one came to encourage him. There was no kind and courteous Roman Commandant Julius to say a good word in favor of Paul. No statements from Festus or Agrippa or Felix attesting his innocence. Even in ROME itself, there was a shocking change--the city scarred and blackened from the terrible fire, with tens of thousands of people reduced to squalor and living in poverty. And they pointed to Paul as he came through the city screaming epithets, "You caused this! There's the culprit who's to blame for our misery!"

Furthermore, on this trip to Rome Paul wasn't given the luxury of his own private villa, but rather, he was thrown in the slammer, the gloomy and infamous dungeon of the Mammertine Prison. A huge hole shaped like a bulbous test tube, at the bottom of which was a grate with a huge padlock. When the prisoner died, a Roman soldier was let down by a rope, he would unlock the grate and swing it open; kick the body into the hole. It would drop into a long tunnel and slide down into the Tiber River. Here the apostle Paul would remain in solitary confinement without the luxury of his companions, or a single friend. Visitation rights were practically non-existent and extremely rare. He sat there alone.

LONNIE: Connie, I’ll never forget visiting that “hole in the ground” that became Paul’s last home on earth. It literally moved me to tears to think of the courage of that man, and of what he suffered for the sake of the gospel. We just stood there and held hands and tried to choked back the tears. By the way, others not from our group crept in to listen with tears in their eyes as well.

CONNIE: Well, Lonnie that a gripping description of what Paul went through.

Paul certainly was a courageous man—with boldness fueled by his faith in Jesus and His sacrifice for the whole world.

His was an inspiring life that gives me something to look up to—and to emulate. Paul urged his Corinthian friends to “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1, NKJV). And his life certainly is worthy of our study. It challenges me every day in my ministry—to want to have that same kind of zeal and love for the Lord that Paul had!

“Give Me that Old Time Religion”, King’s Heralds, from VOP Music Library # 51 CD.

CONNIE: Amen! Thank you King’s Heralds for that music—taken from our classic library of recordings going clear back to the year 1954 and an album called “Songs of Heaven and Homeland.”

LONNIE: You know, Connie, we read about Paul and Silas, when they were thrown into a prison in Philippi, and how they spent the night singing hymns—I have a feeling some of those songs were “songs of heaven and homeland,” don’t you?

CONNIE: Probably so. One of the things that kept Paul’s faith so strong was his hope of heaven. He had studied the Scriptures and had found a reason to believe in his future in God’s eternal kingdom, and that kept him strong in his faith while he was here on earth.

LONNIE: That kind of study of the scriptures is very important for a successful Christian life, and that’s the reason we often remind our listeners of our Discover Bible Lessons. These colorful, interesting study guides are a perfect introduction to the basic themes of the Bible, and they make studying the “Good Book” easy and appealing.

CONNIE: Friend, if you haven’t studied the Discover Bible Lessons yet, here’s an invitation: Go to our website at VOP.COM and click on the link in the upper right hand corner. It says “Discover Online, Free Bible Guides.” That link will take you right to the page where you can begin to study the lessons online.

LONNIE: If you don’t have access to the Internet, you can also take the lessons by correspondence through the mail, and we’ll be sharing the address to contact us to sign up for that later in the broadcast.

CONNIE: But right now it’s time for Lonnie’s message for today: “To the Ends of the Earth.” Let’s listen.

To the Ends of the Earth

Have you ever noticed that the book of Acts is an open-ended book? Here’s how it ends: “Then Paul dwelt two whole years in his own rented house, and received all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no one forbidding him” (Acts 28:30, 31, NKJV).

Acts doesn’t tell us how things went in Paul’s trial at Caesar’s tribunal, doesn’t tell us whether he was set free. It just leaves him preaching and teaching in Rome.

Then what?

Friend, if you’ve been with us for the past dozen weeks as we’ve focused our attention on the spiritual journey of the apostle Paul, you know that we’ve taken a careful look at his life. We’ve talked about his childhood, his life as a Pharisee, his conversion, his missionary journeys, his imprisonments, and his trip to Rome. And in each segment of his life, we’ve looked for evidence of how he was growing in his relationship with God.

As we’ve followed Paul in the pages of the book of Acts and in his letters to the churches, we’ve sensed that here we had a story that was leading us somewhere, that it was headed for a climax when we would see all the parts of the story come together in a grand conclusion.

But it never happens.

There’s no summing up, no drawing together of all the plot lines into a final conclusive “wrap.” To use a popular psychological term, there’s no “closure.”

When Acts ends, Paul is still awaiting his hearing before Caesar.

It troubles some people that Luke leaves us hanging, without telling us what happened next.

But really, when you think about it, it’s fitting to leave Paul there, anticipating what God is going to do next. Because Paul’s ministry literally does go on and on, through his preaching and teaching as recorded in Acts and in his epistles.

Still though, doesn’t the end of Acts leave you at least a little curious?

Did Paul stand before Caesar and give his testimony? Was Emperor Nero as profoundly affected by Paul’s appeals as King Agrippa had been? Was Paul successful in defending himself against the charges that had brought him to Rome as a prisoner in the first place? Did he get to go to Spain and preach as he had been hoping to do? WHAT HAPPENED NEXT????

We have only a few clues in the Bible. But they confirm that Paul had several more years of productive ministry after his first imprisonment in Rome, and after that he was imprisoned again. Other historical sources indicate that he was finally executed by beheading during the reign of Nero.

We can piece together some of what happened between the two imprisonments from the letters we call the Pastoral Epistles—1 and 2 Timothy and Titus—plus a few snatches of information we can glean from the Prison Epistles—Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon—which Paul wrote while he was in Roman custody.

Does it surprise you that when we look at these little bits of information, they reveal a man still in love with his Savior? A man still with a pastor’s heart of love for the churches and an evangelist’s burning zeal to spread the gospel as far and wide as possible?

Paul’s urgent desire, once he had been to Rome, was to go on to points farther west—specifically to Spain.

I don’t think he had any plans for a vacation on the Spanish Riviera, though, do you? Believe me, there were no five-star hotels available in those days. In fact, Spain had only recently been subdued by Roman armies, and there was still a constant threat of revolt by the native population.

A visit to Spain in A. D. 60 would have been much like a trip to Dodge City in 1875—a visit to a genuine frontier zone.

I like that about Paul. He always wanted to be on the cutting edge.

When he explained to the Romans why he wanted to go to Spain, he wrote “I have made it my aim to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build on another man's foundation, but as it is written: ‘To whom He was not announced, they shall see; and those who have not heard shall understand’ ” (Romans 15:20, 21, NKJV).

Paul always wanted to be on the front lines—carrying the gospel to new places.

And that’s what he did right up to the very end of his life.

An early church leader, Clement of Rome, writing about 35 years after Paul’s first trial before Caesar, stated that Paul was able to witness “to the limits of the west.” That would be Spain. We don’t know anything about what happened to him there—but judging from his other missionary endeavors; it must have been eventful trip that led to the raising up of several churches.

Where to from there?

We can learn a little bit about Paul’s wish list of other destinations from some of his letters. Philippians is one of the letters Paul probably wrote during his first imprisonment in Rome, and he told his friends there, he hoped to visit them soon. Here it is in Philippians 2:23-24: “Therefore I hope to send [Timothy] at once, as soon as I see how it goes with me. But I trust in the Lord that I myself shall also come shortly” (NKJV).

While he was in prison in Rome, Paul became acquainted with a slave named Onesimus, who had apparently escaped from his master in Colossae—a city of Asia Minor, east of Ephesus. Somehow Onesimus came into contact with Paul in Rome, and Paul led him to Christ. Later, Paul sent Onesimus back to Philemon in Colossae, and we have the letter he sent along as part of the Bible. It puts another point on the map of Paul’s travel hopes: “Meanwhile,” he wrote to Philemon, “prepare a guest room for me, for I trust that through your prayers I shall be granted to you” (Philemon 22, NKJV).

As far as we know, Paul had never been to Philemon’s city before—so this text confirms that he wanted to keep pressing into new territory. And it seems likely that his wish was fulfilled, because when he wrote his first letter to Timothy, he urged his young protégé to stay in Ephesus, saying that’s what he had told Timothy to do while he was on his way to Macedonia. If Paul did get to go to Colossae, he would have passed through Ephesus on his way to Macedonia.

Throughout his life Paul was a concerned pastor as well as evangelist. He loved to move into new territory and raise up congregations for Jesus way out on the frontiers of Christendom. But he never forgot the people he’d won to Christ along the way. In his second letter to the Corinthians he described many of the trials he had endured on his journeys and then reminded them that “besides [all these] other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:28, NRSV).

He cared about, and worried over, his churches. This was no idle “I’ll pray for you” concern, either. He considered it essential to retrace his steps from time to time and check on how things were going in the congregations he had raised up. Remember the story of his first missionary journey and how he met with opposition, rejection, ejection, and even stoning in the various cities of Asia Minor. But when he headed back home to Antioch, he chose to go the long way around, and to revisit the towns he’d been thrown out of, in order to be sure all was well with the saints there.

When things went awry in Corinth, he didn’t just hang his head and mourn for their foolishness. He sent Timothy, then Titus, and made repeated trips himself until he was sure that things had gotten back on an even keel.

And along the way he learned constantly about the importance of pastoral care for new Christians. That’s why he left Timothy in Ephesus—to provide stable and competent leadership for the church there.

Titus, another of his trusted traveling companions, he left in Crete. In Titus 1:5 we read “I left you behind in Crete for this reason, so that you should put in order what remained to be done, and should appoint elders in every town, as I directed you” (NRSV).

This text reveals another stopping point in the apostle’s journeys after his first imprisonment in Rome. Paul had made a brief port call on the island of Crete as a prisoner on his way to Rome, and it must have opened his eyes to the opportunities for witness there. He must have gone there and raised up several churches after he was freed from prison, because he wrote to Titus about churches in several towns.

The letter to Titus also lets us know what may have been Paul’s last missionary destination: Nicopolis, a prominent city on the Adriatic side of the Greek peninsula. Tireless in his missionary zeal, Paul appealed to Titus to join him in his mission there.

We don’t know whether Titus made it to Nicopolis while Paul was there. Paul may have been rearrested there, probably in AD 66. We know nothing of what led to his second imprisonment, but history tells us that Emperor Nero—who had overseen his first trial—was traveling in Greece during that very year. It was now two years after the great fire in Rome that Nero had blamed on the Christians. And it was the very year that revolt against the Romans broke out in Jerusalem. The entire Roman Empire was on the verge of civil war.

Perhaps all of these factors conspired together to bring Paul to Nero’s attention again, and when the emperor heard that the apostle was still traveling about the empire converting people to Christianity, he must have had him arrested and sent back to Rome.

Oscar Wilde is credited with coining the phrase “A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies,” and it was Adolf Hitler who made the political application of this idea by writing that “The efficiency of the truly national leader consists primarily in preventing the division of the attention of a people, and always in concentrating it on a single enemy.”

But such ideas are not limited to the modern world. Nero understood and applied the principle well. His empire was falling apart, and he needed something to distract the people’s attention. He needed to focus their ire on another enemy. Christians in general, and Paul in particular, seem to have suited his needs all too well.

And so Paul found himself being shipped back to Rome—in chains this time. From there he wrote his second letter to Timothy, appealing for his young friend to come to him in Rome. He was apparently all alone, except for his longtime traveling companion Luke. There were few Christians in Rome at this time—many had been burned as torches or killed in other ways after the fire two years earlier. Those who hadn’t been killed had wisely fled the city.

When Paul wrote to Timothy, he had already undergone one hearing, but was expecting condemnation at his next encounter with Roman justice. Still though, he’s not defeated, discouraged, or fearful. No, he’s ready for whatever will come. “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering,” he wrote. “And the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing” (2 Timothy 4:6-8, NKJV).

His hope was in Jesus, not in Nero or his minions.

During Nero’s absence from Rome, the city was ruled by Helius and Tigellinus, two bloodthirsty men whom historians remember for terrorizing the whole city. These men may have been directly responsible for the execution of both Peter and Paul on June 29, AD 67. Tradition says Paul was beheaded outside Rome, on the road to Ostia.

The empire could take Paul’s head. But it couldn’t take his life. No. That goes on, safe in the hands of Jesus, who claimed it on the road to Damascus.

It goes on from there, around the word, to every corner and continent. Because it is a life given to God, given in service of the Savior and in the service of his fellow men and women.

What about you, friend? Has Paul’s life touched yours? Has Jesus touched you through Paul? Has the gospel reached to your corner of the world? To the inmost corners of your heart?

Thank God for the ministry of this great man and for the message he carried to the ends of the earth!