Paul the Apostle in Rome: The Final Journey

[Music] you've heard the old axiom that all roads lead to Rome well in Paul's day 2,000 years ago this road the Via Appia Ruta led all the way from Rome to the southernmost Seaport in Italy and it's the road that Paul took to Rome you know there were already Christians in Rome when Paul arrived and they got wind that he was in town and they came running down the Via Appia I mean this is a couple of days journey and they met him at a place called the three fountains and together they traveled on to Rome I can imagine what their conversation was like as they traveled this this well-worn road bear in mind in those days did a lot of chariots flowing back and forth and wagons and it was a busy road in those days but Paul had come to make an appeal to Caesar and you know I don't know I tried to put myself in his place and and to think you know I'm taking this road into Rome the the center of this this mighty empire and I'm going to make a petition to Caesar in person I mean Caesar in those days by everybody else was considered a God and here Paul is walking along this road and putting his trust in God and his fate in the hands of Caesar that Caesar in this is at the end of Paul's fourth journey now there's a lot of interesting scholarship about how many journeys Paul actually took how many times he was in prison and frankly nobody knows for sure even though there are people who will die defending their personal beliefs about what happened but it seems to be based on on indications given in Scripture and Paul's own letters that he was arrested twice the first time he was aquitted that would have been this time the second time though I should say after the first time he was acquitted and he continued on his journey this is the ruins of the Roman city of Ostia which was basically Rome's Harbor it's about 15 miles from Rome up the Tiber and this it's now called Ostia Antica means old Ostia assuming that that Paul did make a fifth missionary journey that after he was acquitted during his first trial in Rome and he really scholarship is very conflicted about what happened then all it is little hints and little clues mostly taken from his own letters and the letters of the early church fathers as to what happened next but there is strong speculation that he went to Spain and then there's further speculation that after Spain he went to Britain but you know the evidence for that is scant at best there is there is some evidence that he may have gone to Spain in any event that would have been his fifth missionary journey and when he returned it's very likely that he returned here to this thriving seaport which is now about two and a half miles from the heart from the ocean because it's silted over the years which is the reason largely that was abandoned but abandoned intact I mean the city was never burned down it was never sacked is never destroyed they just slowly sort of sank into the earth a lot of it and I assume a lot of it was used for building materials for other places over the years of the sort of became a quarry but this in that event this is the road that Paul would have taken to Rome and I'm looking at pillars now roll of five pillars that are standing that we're standing in Paul's day and if he'd been walking this way that he would have seen those very and his voice as he traveled with his companions would have echoed from these walls I would have loved to have heard what he what he had to say I would love to hear the the whispers of the echoes of his voice from these walls it's a remarkable place I'll give you a little little brief video tour of the extent of these ruins but even that you won't really be able to appreciate the vastness of them this was a thriving home to about 50,000 people in its heyday it was I as I recall correctly and I'm just going off the top of my head the city was founded in around 137 BC and then it was updated by by the various Caesars by Augustus and by Julius Caesar predominantly and also by Claudius later it was a very important port and very likely it was one of the two major seaports really in Italy of the day and one of them would have been at the southern tip of Italy actually by natan Naples or what is now Naples and then this one in Ostia if you ever get a chance and and you love history the way I do come see this place is remarkable but it really doesn't hold a candle for me to the fact that this was the road very likely the road that Paul took to Rome on what he probably suspected would be his last trip when he got to Rome something happened nobody knows what but he could have offended the authorities he could have offended the Jews he could have he was he gave offense pretty easily in any event he was thrown in prison this time the first time awaiting his trial he was in Rome for two years and he was under house arrest he had his own apartment he could come and go and that's that's when he did a lot of his ministry and wrong you may remember there was a church already in Rome or a Christian community already in Rome when he arrived and Peter was there and there's so much that's not known about lessons less is known about Peter than about Paul and what he was doing in Rome how long he'd been here you know what what precipitated his arrest but anyway Paul made this journey into Rome probably confident of the fact that things just wouldn't go well for him because they just never did he always ended up getting the short end of the stick and being abused somehow and he had to remember the thing about Paul and I don't think I've mentioned this and in all these videos I've done Paul was a little guy according to the the earliest physical descriptions of him he was about four foot six would have been very wiry and and four foot six he would have been about this this tall and he was very wiry and he needed to be wiry to survive the things that he survived but when you consider a man of that stature making the impact that he made on the civilized world it's phenomenal and he could only have done that with the backing of the holy spirit he was being obedient and obedience doesn't always end happily in this life for those who obey but ultimately the reward is great I'll see you in Rome the ruins of the forum in Rome if you were put Paul back here right now you'd be able to walk down that main road over there and tell you well this building used to be here he can identify by these by these ruin some of which are just entirely [Music] laid bone others their buildings I can several columns [Music] as are a lot of diesel [Music] that was wrong legend of Romulus and Remus who may be familiar they'd be up in that bill and recently well in 2004-2005 so they're about and a small Iron Age settlement was discovered much to the surprise of archaeologists here by lending credence to the Colosseum is over that way before that was built in together in 70 AD after the revolt of Jews the gym is taking captivity from true used to build Colosseum which is something I didn't know until I began studying history but this this marketplace would have been very familiar to both Peter and and Paul and this was in the West stop on their way after Paul's death missionary journey on their way to the memory in prison moochers [Music] which I'll show you [Music] fascinating to think that after 2,000 years old and so identifiers all of this was under under about 20 feet of rubble until a couple hundred years ago when it was when they began to dig it up that's one of the reasons it's so well preserved it was because it had been filled in by rubble for 1,500 years [Music] amazing place last stop a long long journey that began in New Jersey and on the road to Damascus really was where we began and here at the end of his life Paul was somewhere between 64 and 67 years old this is where it ended with his imprisonment with the poverty in prison his execution by beheading also where Peter was executed by crucifixion he was in verdant and across crucified the last few days of their life was spent in in the dungeon into which they were dropped through a hole in the ground and if you juxtapose that image with that of the Basilica of Saint Saint Peter in the Vatican [Music] there's some really jarring images there wonder what Peter and Paul would have thought that contrasts to see what time has got abducted message next stop after the prison will be the tomb [Music] see there after the up to the prison [Music] this was Paul's last stop on his way to as he awaited execution this is the man working prison in Rome it's very possible it's not at all unlikely to both he and Peter were imprisoned here at the same time that's not verified anywhere either in Scripture or anywhere else but it's known that they were imprisoned here either together or separately at one time this hole that you see in the ceiling is the way the prisoners were lowered into the prison now there's a set of steps that we can take over there as my lighting director works on that was very nicely those steps weren't there in Peter and Paul's time this was just a hole in the ground with these stones this is where they lived this is where Paul probably did some of his writing but they were lowered into it through that hole by a rope or a chain and then when they were put down here the rope where the chain was raised up and perhaps they had a something must have had something for light or even just using the light from the hole to write back but this used to be in its earliest days three or 400 BC this was a place where people would come for fresh water because - seeps out of the ground here in this very fresh water and that can be good and it can be bad in this particular situation who gave them something to drink but it also is where their refuse would have slowed and that made the dampness in this hole in the ground made life miserable but can you imagine the prayers that went up in this place imagine Peter and Paul Peter who knew Christ personally and Paul who had suffered so much for so long he's now 66 years old and he suffered so much and they both are prepared preparing for their execution and this is the next to last stop on our journey with Paul in his ministry the last stop will be his tomb we'll see you there [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so this is Church called st. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome in this marks the endpoint of Paul's long journey he would be astounded to see this had very little to do with his life but its commemoration his tomb is up here and if you followed his story this was the next last chapter last chapter of course his trip to glory [Applause] [Music] it's been a long trip I brought him here this is sort of the demonstration or an illustration of the fact that it's easier to edifies and emulate this is the Paul that I think we imagined in a way strong and bold and fearless and really this could be this could be a conqueror and so his his physical appearance of the physical appearance that we imagined for him sort of accommodates the myth that that we have that somebody who had gone through all he went through must be somehow superhuman but this does not Ellis trait who Paul was the earliest accounts as I've said earlier of his physical appearance that he was about four foot six to four foot nine very wiry very skinny very frail at bow legs he had to what we call a unibrow and the slightly hooked nose and short stubby beard that's not that's not the Paul we see here but I guess in a way this de Paul that we have are presented with here is the personification of the power of his will and of his faith rather than his physical appearance and in that in that regard I think it falls short of the mark he was his faith was powerful beyond anything I could imagine but at the same time he wasn't superhuman he was invested by the same power the same spirit that we are all called to manifest in the world in whatever way Lord has given us and whatever place he's put us and so we can all be warriors we're all possessed of the same spirit that possessed Paul to go through all he went through all the beatings all the imprisonments all the shipwrecks all the abuse the stonings the dead all of those things that we've seen as we've gone on this journey with Paul very very humbling it's been an amazing journey [Applause] following this this exceptional person who was possessed of the vision having met Jesus I pray that we can all meet Jesus in the same way that he did on the road to Damascus something that so touched him so transformed him that he devoted the rest of his life to spreading the good news the good news that Jesus came and paid the price for our sins and built a bridge back to God for us all we need to do is cross it and that was Paul's message and and despite the abuse he took that was all his message the Word of God and God's love and God's sacrifice the fact that we're all need of salvation and that God has provided a way that He loves us so much that he was willing to sacrifice his son the only perfect being who ever lived because perfection was required as a sacrifice in order to pay for the sins of us all that's a remarkable story and it's been a privilege and a blessing for Barbra and I to tell it to you we appreciate so deeply in so much more I think than we did at the beginning of this journey what an extraordinary man Paul was and those who traveled with him I don't forget Luke and Titus and Barnabas and the others who traveled with him exceptional people and just want to conclude by saying god bless you and god bless your journey [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] those who wonder times older teachers head here wonder stones make my sacrifice pleasing in your side [Music] make my heart my words and eat [Music]

Channel: David Crossman

Views: 5,011

Rating: 4.7222223 out of 5

Keywords: David Crossman, St. Paul, missionary journey, Christian

Id: vpoNay4_2Yo

Length: 26min 46sec (1606 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 27 2020