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."