Part 3
Acts openly reports all these near-death experiences and the problems that beset the journey to Rome, but Luke's careful historical account also records Paul's providential rescue from the various dangers and near catastrophes. Not only was he helped to survive the various pitfalls along the way, but Luke also makes it clear that Paul was given favor in the eyes of those who had him in their custody at each stage of his journey so that he could repeatedly preach the Gospel to different levels of authority: first to the Jewish people (Acts 21:31), then the Council of the Sanhedrin (Acts 23:9), then the governor Festus (Acts 25:1-12), and King Herod Agrippa (Acts 25:13-27) before, eventually it seems, Caesar himself.
Specifically, Luke shows that Paul was shown repeated kindnesses by the Roman officers who held him in their custody. For example, the garrison commander in Jerusalem protected him, and the chief captain, Claudius Lysias, wrote a letter in Paul's favor (Acts 23:25-30). Paul was also treated kindly at sea by the centurion Julius, who even saved his life (Acts 27:3, 43). As we will see, once at Rome, although he was a prisoner being held for trial, Paul was given a great deal of personal liberty and the opportunity to preach the Gospel by the authorities there (Acts 28:30-31).
But we should not miss an important detail of the last leg of Paul's journey to Rome. Luke tells us: "The brothers and sisters there had heard that we were coming, and they traveled as far as the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns to meet us. At the sight of these people Paul thanked God and was encouraged" (Acts 28:15). These brethren travelled some 30 and 40 miles respectively to meet Paul and welcome him, and the effect on Paul was clearly to be greatly encouraged. He arrived in Rome a prisoner, but not without a lot of protection, favor and encouragement along the way.
On the road we travel through life, we can learn a lesson from Luke's careful recording and become observant historians of the facts of our own lives. It is easy enough to see the sicknesses, accidents and problems that beset us along the way, but like Luke, we need to also recognize and remember the protection, favor and encouragement that we receive as we move toward our destination.
31 A CELL WITH A VIEW It is natural to read the last chapter of Acts with a rather somber mental picture of Paul imprisoned and awaiting trial and the execution we know eventually occurred. But the end that would come colors our perception of the near-end, and we may misunderstand the circumstances of Paul's imprisonment and what was accomplished through it.
First, Luke tells us: "When we got to Rome, Paul was allowed to live by himself, with a soldier to guard him" (Acts 28:16). This is hardly the darkened dungeon-like cell with horrible conditions we might sometimes imagine. In fact, as we will see, Paul was in a rented house (vs. 30) and was really in a situation that we would call "under house arrest." Rather than a dungeon, we should perhaps think of it as a cell "with a view." Paul may himself have expected much worse when he arrived in Rome. Notice Luke's description of the situation:
"For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance!" (Acts 28:30-31).
These closing words of Acts tell us a great deal – all of it positive – but to fully appreciate the situation, we should stand back and look at what Paul was given in those two years. His conditions may actually have been the most comfortable he had enjoyed for quite a while. This is not to make light of his imprisonment, but to stress that he was not in the constant danger he had frequently faced. Paul clearly also had a great deal of freedom. He had funds (he rented the house), he could receive visitors – and even invite large groups to his house (Acts 28:23). He could proclaim the Gospel, and he could write important
letters. The only real restriction Paul faced was being unable to travel, and that may well have been for God's purposes.
Paul's imprisonment actually provided two years of protection. If we read the catalog of dangers the apostle regularly endured on his travels (2 Corinthians 11:23-28), we see that he was "exposed to death again and again" (vs 23B). As it was, Paul's house arrest protected him from this dangerous and exhausting lifestyle for two whole years.
The two years under house arrest not only provided a kind of relative "sabbatical" for Paul, but also they provided an almost unparalleled opportunity for accomplishment. The apostle was able to think, meditate, and write more than he ever normally could have done, and he produced some of the most mature and important letters of his career – epistles such as Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians. Beyond that, Paul was doubtless able to take advantage of the situation of being in Rome from which communications spread around the empire. Although he was not able to visit them, he was able to communicate with the churches he had founded and had the time to write to them and thoroughly establish them. He also was given the opportunity to work with, and continue to train, men like Timothy who would continue his work.
Although Acts is silent on the matter, it appears that after two years Paul was likely released around AD 62. The Roman court system was stretched beyond its capabilities; and if cases were not brought and concluded in two years, prisoners were routinely released. Paul's epistles seem to show this was what he expected, and the evidence of tradition and certain other facts suggest that he was released and possibly travelled considerably before being arrested again, tried, condemned and executed around AD 64.
But at the close of Acts it appears that the dark night of Paul's final imprisonment and execution still lay in the future. His two years under house arrest not only forced him to stop moving in his tireless service to the Gospel, but also gave him the
opportunity to accomplish things he probably never would have done otherwise – accomplishments that not only greatly profited the early Church, but which carried through to guide and strengthen the Church throughout history.
We do not need to look for personal lessons in such a positive ending to the Book of Acts; but if we do, we should remember that Paul, the arch-mover and tireless worker, may well have often felt constrained by his captivity, and yet it was precisely this captivity that enabled some of his greatest accomplishments. If we sometimes feel that we are slowed down or hindered from doing the things we would like to do because of illness or other restrictive and negative circumstances in our own lives, we should remember what Paul was able to accomplish – and perhaps was intended to accomplish – in his cell with a view.
32 PAUL AFTER ACTS It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known… (Romans 15:20). The Book of Acts closes with Paul in prison in Rome, awaiting trial before Caesar. We do not know if such a trial took place at that time, but the situation recorded in Acts and many clues in Paul's own epistles suggest that it did not. A little detective work allows us to find the following facts which seem to be evidence of this possibility.
In his epistle to the Philippians, written while he was imprisoned in Rome, Paul states that he planned to send Timothy to them and that he fully expected to follow (Philippians 2:23-24), and in his letter to Philemon, written around the same time, he asks his friend to prepare a guest room for him "…because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers" (Philemon 1:22). It seems unlikely that Paul would make these statements if he were not fairly sure that his case was probably going to expire and that he would then be released.
We also have some tantalizing clues as to what may have happened after Paul's release at the end of two years in Rome. When we look at the last of the Pauline epistles, we find the names of several places not mentioned in Acts or Paul's earlier epistles. For example, in 1 Timothy Paul tells Timothy to remain in Ephesus while he, Paul, travelled in Macedonia, but this situation does not fit what we find in Acts or Paul's other writings.
In his second epistle to Timothy, Paul requests that Timothy bring his cloak and parchments from Troas (2 Timothy 4:13), though if Paul was not released from prison in Rome, the last
time he would have been in Troas would have been some six years earlier (Acts 20:6, 17), making such a request unlikely. In the same letter Paul also mentions that he had left Trophimus sick at Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20), though on Paul's only visit to Miletus recorded in the Book of Acts he did not leave Trophimus there (Acts 20:15, 21:29).
In the same way, in his letter to Titus Paul says he had left Titus on the island of Crete (Titus 1:5), yet Paul is never said to have visited Crete anywhere in Acts. Paul also mentions to Titus that he planned to spend the winter in Nicopolis, though Acts never speaks of Paul being at this place even for a brief visit.
So the apparent evidence of the New Testament seems to fit with the tradition that survived in Christianity that Paul was released from prison in Rome at the end of two years, and that he travelled widely – perhaps as far as Spain in the West (Romans 15:24, 28) – before being arrested again. This information indicates that Paul may have written 1 Timothy and his letter to Titus in the period between his two imprisonments, and that he wrote 2 Timothy during his second imprisonment in Rome. It was in 2 Timothy that Paul, with greater finality than is seen in any of his other letters, wrote:
For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing (2 Timothy 4:6-8).
It was perhaps at this time, around AD 64, that Paul was tried and executed. The apostle had been assured by Christ himself that he would go to Rome and speak before Caesar (Acts 27:24), which he may have done in his first captivity or at this later time. But in either case Caesar would have been the
Emperor Nero, the brilliant yet degenerate and evil emperor who exemplified the shortcomings of human rule over the kingdoms of men. If Paul did, in fact, speak before Nero as he spoke before the governors and kings beneath the emperor, then he doubtless conveyed the message of salvation and of the righteous King to whom all men must submit that he had proclaimed throughout his ministry.
That message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ would have been preached then by Paul from the "lowest" to the very "highest" of men. It had also been preached over a considerable area of the Mediterranean world and established through him in such a way that long after Paul, even after the early Church as a whole, the message survived in Gentile regions and would continue to spread "to the ends of the earth."
33 THE EARLY CHURCH AFTER ACTS "… I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it …" (Matthew 16:18 ESV). What did Jesus mean by these words? Clearly, the "gates of hell" are metaphorical for death and destruction, but how do these words best fit what we know of the early Church and its subsequent history? The answer is already beginning to appear in the Book of Acts. Luke shows that two attacks were mounted against the early Church almost from its inception. These two "gates of hell," to use Christ's metaphor, were the destruction of Christian believers through persecution and the destruction of Christian beliefs through heresy and false teaching.
We know that Christ foretold that his followers would be persecuted (Matthew 10:16-22), and Acts shows that the persecution by outside forces began soon after the Day of Pentecost. We find exhortations to withstand persecution in many of the later New Testament writings, and we know the apostles and many others died as martyrs of the early Church.
But what persecution failed to do to the Church from the outside, heresy and false teaching then began to attempt to do from within. Christ had also foretold that there would be false teachings of Christianity (Matthew 24:4-5), and we see glimpses of this in Paul's letters, such as his warning to Timothy: "…people will not endure sound teaching, but …. will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths" (2 Timothy 4:3–4). We see heresy already among the Jewish Christians (Acts 15:1); and when Paul was first imprisoned in Rome, we read that heresy was occurring in the Gentile church at Colossi (Colossians 1:20-23).
When we turn to the writings of John, the last surviving apostle, we find that by the end of the first century the twin evils of persecution and heresy were rampant enemies of the Church. In the letters to the seven churches of Revelation – which may represent messages regarding conditions extant throughout the Church as well as seven actual congregations – we find persecution (Revelation 2:10) and false teaching (Revelation 2:16, 20) to be major problems. This situation also helps us to understand the epistles of John. Throughout his letters the last living apostle constantly stresses the two qualities of love and truth (for example, 2 John 1:3-7), as these are the spiritual opposites of the two threats of persecution and heresy that were becoming so widespread.
Although the beginnings of these threats to the Church are already seen in Acts, they become ever clearer as we move through the later New Testament writings, and they have continued, of course, to the present day. It is sobering to think that the early Church was threatened so soon by these attacks; and its story certainly remains as a lesson to us today that we must be aware of these ongoing dangers and willing to do what we can to fight them.
We need only look at today's news to see that new persecutions and new heresies arise around the world almost daily. The history of the early Church shows we must never grow complacent about these threats, but that we can also be encouraged. The words of the One who promised the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church cannot be broken. The evils that assailed Christianity from its beginning did not overcome the early Church, and although we must still struggle against them, we know they will not overcome it now.
AFTERWORD
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