Paul the Apostle in Rome: The Final Journey

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, 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 well-worn road. Bear in mind, in those days, there were a lot of chariots going 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 try to put myself in his place and to think, you know, I'm taking this road into Rome, the center of 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. Now, Caesar, and 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 imprisoned. 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 indications given in Scripture, in Paul's own letters, that he was arrested twice. The first time, he was acquitted. That would have been this time. The second time, or 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. Now, assuming 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, 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 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 ocean because it's silted over the years, which is the reason largely that it was abandoned, but abandoned intact. I mean, the city was never burned down. It was never sacked. It was never destroyed. It just slowly sort of sank into the earth, a lot of it. I assume a lot of it was used for building materials for other places over the years. It 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, a row of five pillars that are standing that were standing in Paul's day. And if he'd been walking this way, that he would have seen those very pillars. And his voice as he traveled with his companions would have echoed from these walls. I would have loved to have heard what he had to say. I would love to hear the whispers, the echoes of his voice from these walls. It's a remarkable place. I'll give you a 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, 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 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 in Naples, what is now Naples, and then this one in Ostia. If you ever get a chance, and you love history the way I do, come see this place, it's 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 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 when he did a lot of his ministry in Rome. 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, less is known about Peter than about Paul, and what he was doing in Rome, how long he'd been here, 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 you have to remember, the thing about Paul, and I don't think I've mentioned this in all these videos I've done, Paul was a little guy. According to the earliest physical descriptions of him, he was about 4'6", would have been very wiry, and 4'6", he would have been about 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. These are the ruins of the Forum in Rome. And if you were to put Paul back here right now, he'd be able to walk down that main road over there and tell you, well, this building used to be here, and that building used to be there. He could identify by these ruins, some of which are just entirely laid low, laying on the ground. Others, as are a lot of these over here, the legend of Romulus and Remus, you may be familiar with that. They began on top of that hill. And recently, well, in 2004, 2005, something, thereabouts, a small Iron Age settlement was discovered, much to the surprise of archaeologists, thereby lending credence to the legend. The Colosseum is over that way, but of course that wasn't here in Paul's day. That was built and begun in 70 AD after the revolt of Jerusalem. And the Jews, taking captivity from Jews, were used to build the Colosseum. It's something I didn't know until I began studying the history of it. But this marketplace would have been very familiar to both Peter and Paul. And this was the last stop on their way, after Paul's fifth missionary journey, on their way to the Mamertine prison, which is behind us, which I'll show you in a minute. It's fascinating to think that after 2,000 years all of this is still here and so identifiable. All of this was under about 20 feet of rubble until a couple hundred years ago, when it was, 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. It's in place. The last stop on a long, long journey that began on the road to Damascus, really. Here, at the end of his life, Paul was somewhere between 64 and 67 years old. This is where it ended, with his imprisonment at the Mamertine prison. His execution by beheading, also where Peter was executed by crucifixion. He was inverted on the cross and crucified. The last few days of their lives were spent in a dungeon, into which they were dropped through a hole in the ground. If you juxtapose that image with that of the Basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican, there's some really jarring images there. I wonder what Peter and Paul would have thought of that contrast, to see what time has done to the message. Anyway, next stop after the prison will be the tomb. We'll see you there, off to the prison. This was Paul's last stop on his way, as he awaited execution. This is the Mamertine prison in Rome. It's very possible, it's not at all unlikely, that 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 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 or the chain was raised up. And perhaps they must have had something for light, or even just using the light from the hole to write by. But this used to be, in its earliest days, 300 or 400 B.C., this was a place where people would come for fresh water, because water seeps out of the ground here, and it's very fresh water. And that can be good, and it can be bad. In this particular situation, it gave them something to drink. But it also is where their refuse would have flowed. And 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 and his ministry. The last stop will be his tomb. We'll see you there. So this is a church called St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. And this marks the end point of Paul's long journey. He would be astounded to see this. This had very little to do with his life, but it's a commemoration. His tomb is up here. And if you followed his story, this was the next-to-last chapter. The last chapter, of course, is his trip to glory. It's been a long trip. I brought him here. This is sort of a demonstration or an illustration of the fact that it's easier to edify than emulate. This is the Paul that I think we imagine, in a way, strong and bold and fearless. And really, this could be a conqueror. And so his physical appearance, or the physical appearance that we imagine for him, sort of accommodates the myth that we have that somebody who had gone through all he went through must be somehow superhuman. But this does not illustrate who Paul was. The earliest accounts, as I've said earlier, of his physical appearance, that he was about 4'6 to 4'9, very wiry, very skinny, very frail. He had bold legs. He had what we call a unibrow and a slightly hooked nose and a short, stubby beard. That's not the Paul we see here. But I guess, in a way, the Paul that we 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 regard, I think it falls short of the mark. 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're all called to manifest in the world in whatever way the 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, 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. Following this exceptional person who was possessed of a 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 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 in 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 Barb and I to tell it to you. We appreciate so deeply and 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 I just want to conclude by saying God bless you and God bless your journey. Rocky, Rocky In his footsteps Nowhere to call home Here among the stones Make my life a sacrifice Pleasing in your sight Make my heart a haven and My words ending a lie Many, many Names are called But those who will not know Never will get home Times of wonder Teach us how to grow Here among the stones Make my life a sacrifice Pleasing in your sight Make my heart a haven and My words ending a lie