Paul's third missionary journey. The destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D.

It is probable that shortly after his return to Israel, in that same year 52 A.D., Paul left on his third and last missionary journey. This time he stayed away for four years. During this journey he visited all the places where he had been on his first and second journey. All these places are situated in present day Turkey and Greece. He went to Tarsus, Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, Antioch, Ephesus, Troas, Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, Corinth, Assus, Chios, Samos, Milete, Kos, Rhodos and Patara. It is good to know that in all the places he visited Paul found Jewish communities and that he usually started his preaching activities in the Jewish synagogues. However, sometimes this became impossible for him after a while when his speeches aroused too many negative emotions and too much aggression among the Jews. Then he moved to other places.

As we have said before, on his third missionary journey Paul visited many places where he had established Christian congregations. In such places he tried to find out how the converts were doing and he did everything he could to build up the congregation further and to increase its numbers.

Thus he found out in Ephesus that quite a number of people had been baptized with the baptism of John. He explained to them the meaning of the baptism in the name of Jesus and baptized them again. Paul stayed in Ephesus (situated on the west coast of present day Turkey) for three years. During these three years the Christian congregation grew very fast. This highly irritated the silversmiths in the town who earned a lot of money making and selling silver miniature temples devoted to the Greek god Artemis. The more people became Christians the fewer Artemis temples they could sell. One day the silversmiths in Ephesus organized such violent riots in the town that the authorities needed many hours to restore order.

Then Paul left Ephesus and went to Macedonia and Greece, where he visited all the congregations he had founded. On his way back to Israel Paul traveled from north to south along the entire west coast of present day Turkey. In Milete, which lies near Ephesus, he organized a meeting with the leading older men of the Christian congregation in Ephesus. He told them that they would not see each other again and admonished them to take good care of the parishioners.

Paul traveled from Milete back to Israel by boat and arrived in the port of Tyre. On his way from Tyre to Jerusalem Paul was approached by a man who told him that he had received a message from God which said that he had better not go to Jerusalem. If he should go in spite of the warning he would be arrested in Jerusalem by the Jews and he would be handed over to opponents who would cause him much harm.

Paul went to Jerusalem anyway and told the apostles and the members of the congregation how well things were going in all the places he had visited. It stands to reason that he made them very happy with the good news he could tell them.

However, when Paul entered the temple shortly afterwards he was confronted with violent aggression from the side of groups of Jews and if he had not been saved by a group of Roman soldiers he would probably have been killed on the spot. The soldiers took him with them after they had handcuffed him and took him to their chief. The chief did not understand anything of the extreme aggression of the Jews towards Paul, but he realized that Jerusalem was in commotion and that order had to be restored. Therefore he decided to have Paul whipped, hoping that after that he would confess what wrong he had done. Then Paul told him that he owned the Roman citizenship and consequently could not be whipped. Then the army chief decided to have Paul tried by the Jewish Sanhedrin.

During the court session there arose such a chaotic and explosive situation that the Roman soldiers got afraid of an attempt on the life of Paul and led him away, protected by heavily armed guards. And during the night they hurriedly led him out of Jerusalem and took him to Caesarea. In Caesarea he became the prisoner of Governor Felix. This governor also organized a court session to find out why Paul had caused such an uproar in Jerusalem. The prosecutors of Paul accused him of unacceptable attacks on the Jewish faith and the Jewish laws, but Paul defended himself very capably. Felix knew quite a lot about the new Christian faith and he understood the meaning of Paul’s defense very well. But he found it hard to take the side of either party in this difficult conflict and for two years he postponed passing judgment, during which time Paul had to remain in prison. When after two years Porcius Festus succeeded him as governor, this new dignitary decided to finish the matter for once and for all. A new trial was started and again Paul was accused by the Jews of serious transgressions of their religious laws. This time too Paul defended himself excellently. The result was that Porcius Festus did not know what to do with the case either and he decided to have Paul tried by the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. Paul knew that he had proved beyond any reasonable doubt that he was innocent and he refused to let his case be tried again by a Jewish religious court of justice. As a Roman citizen he demanded a trial of his case by a Roman non-religious judge: he appealed to Caesar: he wanted to be judged by the Roman emperor in Rome.

Then Porcius Festus decided to send him to Rome, where he could be tried by a Roman court of law. A few days afterwards Porcius Festus was visited by King Herod. This king had heard a lot about Paul and wanted to hear Paul’s defense from his own mouth. On this occasion Paul talked about the Christian faith so convincingly that King Herod admitted that he was tempted to become a Christian himself. He also admitted that Paul was innocent and could have been released if he had not appealed to Caesar.

Paul was taken to Rome by ship. It was a difficult voyage because there were hard adverse winds. When the ship had stayed on the island of Crete for a few days Paul advised the captain to stay there till the end of winter, but the captain did not listen to his advice and decided to sail on. Shortly afterwards the ship got into a terrible storm and out of control. For two weeks the ship was carried along by the wind and the waves and finally broke into pieces off the coast of Malta. Fortunately everybody survived the shipwreck and that winter the inhabitants of Malta took good care of the shipwrecked persons.

The following spring Paul reached Rome. He was heartily welcomed by the Roman Christians. Though he was officially a prisoner he was allowed to live in a house of his own, which he rented, be it that he was guarded by Roman soldiers. From his own house he continued preaching the Christian faith.

In the end Paul was tried by the emperor Nero and set free.

A few years later, however, Paul was again arrested and taken to Rome, probably about the year 65 A.D. It is generally thought (but there is no mention of this in the Bible), that he was again tried by the emperor Nero. But this time the emperor did not set him free, but had him killed.

It will be clear that Paul played a tremendous part in spreading the Christian faith in the first century. He was an extremely hard worker and did whatever he could for the cause he believed in. Without wanting to complain, he once summed up all the things he had had to endure serving the Lord: he was put in prison several times, whipped on numerous occasions, he almost died a number of times, the Jews gave him the forty minus one strokes with a stick on five different occasions, on three other occasions he was beaten with sticks in other ways, once he was nearly stoned to death, he was shipwrecked three times, he was constantly in all sorts of dangers, he had many sleepless nights and sometimes suffered hunger and thirst. In addition he complains in one of his letters about “a painful thorn in his flesh”, probably a very nasty physical ailment.

Besides his activities as a preacher of the good news and his three long missionary journeys he wrote 14 of the 27 Bible books which together form the Christian Greek Scriptures. In these 14 Bible books which he wrote, the 14 letters of Paul, he summed up and explained the teaching of Jesus in a very understandable way.

The sum and substance of insights, views and rules of conduct which together form the Christian faith are largely based on texts which Paul wrote down in the fourteen letters he sent to the congregations he had established.

In the year 66 A.D. the inhabitants of Jerusalem rebelled against the Romans. Immediately Rome sent troops to the rebellious city and besieged it. Just when the Roman troops had forced a way through the city wall, they withdrew. Nobody knows why.

After this withdrawal of the Roman troops the Christians, who knew that it had been prophesied that the city would fall, left Jerusalem.

Shortly afterwards the Romans came back and besieged the city again. Their commander was called Titus. Jerusalem was completely cut off from the outside world and as a result the people suffered from terrible starvation. In the year 70 A.D. the Romans forced their way through the town wall and destroyed the city, including the temple.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews died between the year 66 and the year 70 during the siege and the conquest of the city. The 100,000 or so Jews who survived were carried away by the Romans as slaves.

Readers of this website who visit Rome can still go and see the Titus Archway. One of the images shows how the Roman soldiers carry all sorts of items which were used during the Jewish religious ceremonies away from the temple after the fall of Jerusalem.

Between 40 and 70 A.D. all the Bible books of the Christian Greek Scriptures were written, except for the ones which were made by the apostle John: the Bible book Revelation, the gospel according to John and the three letters of John. John wrote the Bible books mentioned by the end of the first century, sometime between 96 A.D. and 100 A.D.