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00:01This is the story of a man who changed the hearts and minds of the Western world.
00:07He began as the enemy of Jesus.
00:11But after a life-changing experience, he became his greatest champion.
00:16This hot-headed revolutionary was set on a path of conflict and adversity.
00:22And now we can reveal new scientific evidence
00:25that has shed light on the state of mind of the man known as Saint Paul.
00:32We'll investigate the life of one of Christianity's most brilliant tacticians.
00:37A man who spread the new faith into the heart of the Roman Empire.
00:42But yet a man who never even met Jesus of Nazareth.
00:55The story starts here, just outside Jerusalem, with the crucifixion of Jesus, Jewish rebel.
01:11It looked like the end of the road for the fledgling Jesus movement.
01:18But within days, Jesus' followers were convinced that he'd physically risen from the dead.
01:23Fueled by these rumors, the Jesus movement started to grow.
01:31But for the Jewish authorities, talk of resurrection was blasphemy.
01:36It made them all the more determined to crush the movement once and for all.
01:40That's when Paul, then known as Saul, enters the story.
01:52The Bible tells us that an angry crowd of Jews is calling for the death of a follower of Jesus, a man named Stephen.
02:00Stephen had called for the destruction of the Jewish temple.
02:06This was blasphemy, and under Jewish law, punishable by death.
02:11Executions usually took the form of a public stoning in quarries just outside the town.
02:17Throw him!
02:24Watching the stoning of Stephen was a zealous Jew called Saul.
02:29He was committed to wiping out this dangerous Christian sect before it did any real damage.
02:34And yet it's thanks to Saul that the tiny Jesus movement became a world-wide faith.
02:41So how did Saul, sworn enemy of Jesus, become Paul, his greatest defender?
02:55Paul himself gives us the answers.
03:01Uniquely, amongst early Christian figures, Paul was an obsessive letter writer.
03:05As was the custom, he dictated them to faithful followers.
03:12The letters give us an insight into Paul's thinking and personality.
03:16And these in turn can be cross-referenced to another remarkable source.
03:23Paul was often accompanied in his travels by a physician called Luke.
03:28The same Luke who wrote the gospel of that name.
03:30But Luke also made a record of Paul's mission in a book called The Acts of the Apostles.
03:38Thanks to these sources, we're able to build an unusually rich and intimate picture
03:43of how Paul turned a tiny Jewish sect into a world religion.
03:47Paul tells us that he worked with his hands, a tent maker by profession, but that he was also an educated man.
04:02He was born in the cosmopolitan university city of Tarsus, now in Turkey, but then part of the Roman Empire.
04:09This qualified him for Roman citizenship, a valuable trump card in the event of trouble.
04:19But at this stage in his life, there's nothing to suggest that Saul would become a troublemaker, never mind a Christian hero.
04:26On the contrary, Saul was first and foremost a Jew, who observed the Jewish laws with great zeal.
04:35So much so, that the Jewish authorities hired him as a hit man.
04:41Indeed, by his own admission, Saul was appointed chief persecutor of the followers of Jesus.
04:46After Jesus' death, the Christian movement was kept alive by two men.
04:54James, said by the Bible to be the brother of Jesus, and Peter, Jesus' first disciple.
05:00To the alarm of the Jewish authorities, this Jesus movement was spreading beyond Jerusalem, to cities like Antioch and Damascus.
05:22They had thriving Jewish communities, and many Jews there were converting.
05:28In fact, it was in Antioch, where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians.
05:37It was Saul's job as chief persecutor to hunt these Christians down.
05:46Perhaps Saul's most famous trip was to Damascus, a city 140 miles north of Jerusalem.
05:53The journey would have taken a full week, and Saul would have travelled in a group, partly for his own protection, and partly to help him do the job when he got there.
06:02But on the road to Damascus, something happened.
06:08What happened?
06:09What happened?
06:10What happened?
06:11One.
06:12One.
06:13Two.
06:14Four.
06:15Four.
06:16Five.
06:17Four.
06:18Four.
06:19Four.
06:20Four.
06:21Two.
06:22Two.
06:25Eight.
06:26Two.
06:27One.
06:28Two.
06:29Two.
06:30Four.
06:31Two.
06:32Two.
06:33Four.
06:34Four.
06:35Paul says that he heard a voice ask,
06:37Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?
06:45It is one of the most well-known events in Christendom.
06:49So what exactly happened?
06:52In both the letters and the Acts of the Apostles,
06:55it's written that he was blinded for three days.
06:58When he recovered his sight, Saul, scourge of the Christians,
07:02became Paul, their most powerful champion.
07:08The change of name was a symbol of that transformation.
07:13And Paul himself tells us in his letters
07:16what caused this change of heart.
07:19He says that he'd met Jesus face to face.
07:25But what are we to make of this today?
07:28On the one hand, there are people who believe
07:31one can meet God.
07:35And on the other, there are those who say
07:37it's all in the mind.
07:47Now, some scientists are beginning to argue
07:50that both views may be true,
07:52that we may be created or hardwired
07:56for religious experience.
08:01So basically what's going to happen is
08:03you're going to see some words flash up on the screen
08:05for about three seconds.
08:07Talk of religious visions is commonplace here.
08:10But this is no church.
08:12It's a clinic.
08:13And this patient is suffering from epilepsy.
08:15Dr. V.S. Ramachandran specializes in the study
08:21of these sudden seizures of the brain.
08:24For almost over a century,
08:26neurologists have been aware of the fact
08:27that patients with seizures often have intense
08:30mystical experiences and religious experiences.
08:33They'll often say things like they,
08:35God is visiting them,
08:36or they're in direct communication with God,
08:39or they have a sense of being one
08:41with the entire cosmos.
08:43And they finally see the meaning of it all.
08:45They understand the nature of existence.
08:48Of course, epilepsy is a relatively rare condition.
08:51And yet huge numbers of people around the world
08:53have had religious experiences.
08:55Is there any evidence from the Damascus Road accounts
09:02to suggest that Paul was epileptic?
09:06There are some clues.
09:08In one letter, Paul complains of an ailment
09:11which could be a reference to epilepsy.
09:15He refers to a thorn in the flesh
09:18that kept him from being too proud.
09:20And present-day sufferers
09:26give us another telling insight.
09:29After bouts of epilepsy,
09:31John Sharon is overwhelmed
09:33by a feeling of moral certainty.
09:37I am absolutely correct
09:40with what is coming through into my head
09:41when I'm like that.
09:43I get the whole little Caesar complex thing going,
09:47and I think I can just take over
09:48and rule everything,
09:49and that's...
09:51that's a scary feeling.
09:56And it's not just epileptics
09:58who feel like this.
10:00Paul's letters reveal a similar conviction.
10:03He did believe that he was right
10:05and everyone else who disagreed with him
10:07was wrong, no doubt about it.
10:09And if they disagreed with him,
10:11it was virtually always for unworthy motives.
10:17Reducing Paul's vision of Jesus
10:19to electric currents in the brain
10:21is deeply controversial
10:23because it seems to take God out of the equation.
10:27But that's not how many scientists see it.
10:31Obviously, if God exists
10:32and he is interacting with us humans,
10:36he could have put an antenna in your brain
10:37to be sensitive to him or her.
10:40and it could be God's way
10:44of manifesting himself or herself to certain people.
10:53Perhaps those who suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy
10:56have an ability that allows them
10:58to access a spiritual dimension
11:00that lies beyond our physical world.
11:03But for many Christian scholars,
11:05epilepsy is just too simple an explanation.
11:08I personally think it's quite unlikely
11:13that Paul was an epileptic
11:16or at least that the thorn in the flesh
11:18can be explained as epilepsy.
11:22To 1st century Jews,
11:24epilepsy would have been something
11:26they regarded as demon possession
11:28and people like Jesus
11:31tried to cast it out of people.
11:37We just don't know
11:38if the Damascus Road encounter
11:40was connected with Paul's thorn in the flesh.
11:47We'll be looking at alternative explanations later.
11:50But something very real
11:53must have happened to Paul
11:54because from that moment on,
11:57everything changed.
12:00Paul believed that God,
12:02through his son Jesus,
12:04had told him to go to Damascus
12:05where he'd find out what he had to do.
12:09Still confused and blind,
12:11Paul was received there by local Christians
12:13and he was welcomed into the faith
12:15with a ritual common
12:16to all new followers of Jesus.
12:20Baptism.
12:21The Lord's Son of the Son of the Son
12:27In his letters, Paul says that baptism made him realize
12:56that he now had a new mission,
12:58to tell the world about the Jesus he had met.
13:02That's easier said than done,
13:04but the sources reveal Paul to have been a master tactician.
13:15After his sudden conversion on the road to Damascus,
13:18Paul set out on a mission to tell the world about Jesus.
13:22But his letters show that there were huge obstacles in the way.
13:27In Damascus, he went to synagogues to preach to fellow Jews.
13:33They were an obvious target.
13:35Like Jews in Jerusalem,
13:37they were anxiously awaiting the arrival of a saviour, the Messiah.
13:41They were in for a shock.
13:43He is come!
13:46But...
13:47Many Jews were expecting a military Messiah,
13:50a rebel leader who would champion their cause
13:53and overthrow the Romans.
13:55So to claim that the true Messiah was a Galilean peasant
13:59who died a humiliating death was scandalous.
14:02Not the kind of message to win over converts easily.
14:05But Paul had an even more unsettling message.
14:14Before his experience on the Damascus road,
14:17Paul was a strict adherent to Jewish laws.
14:20These included avoiding pork and keeping the Sabbath free.
14:24But the most important law was circumcision.
14:32Circumcision was the preeminent sign of the Jewish people's covenant with God
14:36dating back millennia to the time of Abraham.
14:39After his conversion,
14:43Paul reversed his position.
14:47Paul claimed that they no longer needed to follow the laws,
14:51nor to perform circumcisions.
14:54They were having none of it.
14:56In Jewish eyes, this was nothing less than blasphemy.
14:59According to the Bible,
15:13the Jews in Damascus were horrified by Paul's message,
15:17and they plotted to kill him.
15:20But Paul got wind of the murder plot.
15:29And he escaped just in time.
15:59Paul's mission was faltering from the outset.
16:03He could, of course, have gone and tried his luck elsewhere,
16:05preaching to Jews in other towns and cities.
16:09But an even bigger obstacle was looming.
16:21One of Paul's letters reveals that news of his mission
16:24had reached the elders of the Christian church back in Jerusalem.
16:27And it's clear that Peter and James
16:30had grave doubts about Paul's explosive ministry,
16:34in particular, his attitudes towards the Jewish laws.
16:37I think James and Peter are both in a difficult position.
16:45They're living in Jerusalem.
16:46They're living amongst both Christian Jews,
16:49but primarily non-Christian Jews.
16:51And they need to be seen by their Jewish brethren
16:53to be acting like faithful Jews.
16:58The danger for Paul was clear.
17:00As leaders of the Christian movement,
17:02James and Peter had the authority
17:04to stop Paul's mission before it started.
17:06In his letters, Paul often writes about the awful dilemma he faced.
17:14He couldn't afford to alienate Peter and James.
17:17On the other hand, he believed that what he was doing was right.
17:22What Paul was really concerned with was not so much what Jesus did
17:28or what Jesus said, but who he was.
17:31And he recognized much more clearly than Peter or James
17:34or any of the others that Jesus was the Messiah,
17:38therefore this is a completely new world.
17:41None of the old religious taboos,
17:44none of the old ways of reaching God,
17:47none of these had any relevance as far as he was concerned.
17:50Now it was Jesus was the touchstone of salvation.
17:55How Paul handled his relationship with Peter and James
17:59could make or break his mission.
18:06The test came shortly after in Antioch,
18:09a city in Syria where Paul was now based.
18:13To Jews, anyone who wasn't Jewish was a Gentile.
18:17In Paul's house, Jews and Gentiles sat together at meals.
18:22It was yet another direct breach of Jewish law.
18:31Soon, they had a visit from Peter.
18:34Paul didn't know whether Peter would eat with his Gentile friends.
18:38To Paul's relief, Peter did defy the law
18:57and sat with Gentiles for his meals at Antioch.
19:00But it was a short-lived victory.
19:11In one of his letters, Paul says that Peter changed his mind.
19:17Peter learned that news of his transgression
19:19had reached the Jerusalem church.
19:21He decided he could no longer flout the law
19:43and eat at Paul's table with Gentiles.
19:45Paul was furious and threw Peter out of Antioch.
19:54We are Jews.
19:55Paul's row with Peter reveals an uncompromising side to his personality
20:20that might easily have scuppered his mission.
20:23But there's evidence in the Acts of the Apostles
20:26that Paul was prepared to make compromises.
20:30Compromises that would ensure he could resume his mission.
20:36Luke writes that Paul decided to travel to Jerusalem
20:40to meet Peter and James
20:41and try to resolve their differences.
20:43Though they argued, eventually, says Luke, they reached a compromise.
20:57Peter and James would continue preaching to the circumcised, the Jews,
21:01whilst Paul would preach to the uncircumcised, the Gentiles.
21:06In return, Peter and James asked only one thing.
21:10For Jews, not for everyone.
21:12The only thing they suggest is that he should make a collection
21:14for the saints in Jerusalem, the poor saints in Jerusalem.
21:17And he says, in any case, I've already wanted to do that.
21:20That's the very thing I wanted to do.
21:22One thing is clear, they came to some kind of basic compromise.
21:26They worked out a way of living together
21:28as Jews with different views on things like circumcision.
21:31The gathering of the earliest Christian leaders,
21:43known to history as the Jerusalem Council,
21:46removed the obstacles confronting Paul.
21:49He was free to cast his net wider,
21:52opening the doors of Christianity to the non-Jewish world.
21:56In practice, the world meant the Roman Empire,
22:01from Asia Minor, modern Turkey, and through Greece.
22:07But the ultimate prize was Rome itself,
22:11the pagan capital of the empire.
22:14Paul had to make it there if his mission was to be a success.
22:20Targeting Rome from the outset was fraught with dangers.
22:23If he failed there, it could make relaunching the mission elsewhere
22:27well-nigh impossible.
22:29But Luke's Acts of the Apostles
22:31suggest that Paul devised a more cautious strategy,
22:36aiming for the outlying provinces of the Empire first,
22:39and only gradually closing in on its capital.
22:44Such a plan presumed familiarity
22:46with the geography of the Mediterranean,
22:48and first-century maps bore very little relation to the real world.
22:51But archaeological finds reveal that maps were only rough guides.
22:59For the journeys themselves,
23:00first-century travellers relied on precise itineraries,
23:04which listed the distance and direction of their destinations.
23:07The Acts of the Apostles also reveals that Paul undertook
23:16no less than five missionary journeys over 35 years.
23:21He covered a staggering 13,000 miles,
23:25the equivalent of more than halfway around the world.
23:27All this meant that Paul would need to travel huge distances
23:34over dreadfully rough and dangerous terrain,
23:37and like all travellers, he'd be easy prey for bandits.
23:40But the Roman Empire gave Paul a key advantage, its roads.
23:48They were the vital communication network of the Empire.
23:51And he always had his Roman citizenship,
23:54a potential lifesaver throughout the Empire.
23:57One of the first stops on Paul's missionary journey
24:04was the Roman colony of Philippi in modern Greece.
24:08In the first century, it was the gateway from east to west.
24:12Philippi was a tough frontier town,
24:34bristling with Roman troops on the lookout for troublemakers.
24:38Paul had to be careful.
24:39He fitted the bill.
24:42But that was the least of his worries.
24:45A daunting task lay ahead.
24:47How could he, a Jew,
24:49convert pagans to an alien new faith?
24:57Pagans had their own rituals and beliefs.
25:01Yet Paul had good reason to believe he could succeed.
25:05Many of these cults had surprisingly close parallels to Christianity.
25:09The cult of Mithras, for example, which centred around a god who, like Jesus,
25:15had also conquered evil and risen to heaven.
25:20Its members even took part in a ritual meal with wine,
25:24rather like the Last Supper.
25:25But most pagan cults also had their drawbacks.
25:31For one thing, they only accepted men.
25:33Worse still, their gods didn't always command respect.
25:38In fact, historians believe that the pagan world at the time was ripe for conversion.
25:44The first centuries of our era were an age of anxiety.
25:49People were beginning to become a little more sophisticated.
25:52The old gods, you know, looked like spoiled children in their attitudes.
25:58And then, of course, to trick your fingers and an evil emperor is proclaimed as a god.
26:05You know, an awful lot of people said,
26:07Come on, you know, but where else did they have to turn to?
26:11And Paul came into that anxiety to preach a gospel of strength and weakness
26:16to those people with certitude.
26:19But as a stranger in Philippi, Paul had to focus on a more practical problem.
26:28How to meet his first potential convert.
26:31Hopefully the first of many.
26:39The answer lay in a shop full of fabulous purple fabrics.
26:44The dye was made from a tiny shellfish.
26:47They were worth their weight in gold.
26:50The owner, who traded in this opulent color, was a Gentile.
26:55A Greek woman named Lydia.
26:58Linking up with a trader was a masterstroke.
27:02As a businesswoman, Lydia would have had a big network of contacts.
27:06If he succeeded, then she could introduce Paul to many more people.
27:11And perhaps she took pity on a fellow craftsman.
27:15A tentmaker, miles from home.
27:19But perhaps Paul's smartest move was to approach the kind of person that would have been excluded
27:29from most pagan cults, a woman.
27:31Paul has an enormously respectful attitude towards women.
27:35And we can see it straight away in his attitude towards Lydia.
27:38I mean, he accepts her for who she is.
27:40A very important woman in that period, in that culture.
27:44She's pivotal in the early conversions and, of course, she herself becomes a faithful believer.
27:51Lydia's conversion was truly groundbreaking.
28:07She was possibly the first Christian convert in Europe.
28:18And, as Paul hoped, she led him to other Philippians, amongst them, many women.
28:27Paul's letters suggest that he won many new converts in Philippi.
28:40But that success came at a price.
28:44Brimming with confidence, Paul couldn't stop himself from preaching and healing in public.
29:03Acts which disturbed the peace.
29:05This brought him into conflict with the authorities, who arrested him and threw him in prison.
29:21The revolutionary was silenced.
29:46His mission was grounded almost as soon as it took off.
29:50But the story doesn't end in Philippi.
29:54According to Luke, an act of God freed Paul.
30:15An earthquake, to be precise, burst to the doors of his prison cell.
30:20Paul then played his trump card.
30:25According to Roman law, Roman citizens could only be held on the orders of a Roman magistrate.
30:32Paul berated the local magistrates for putting him, a Roman citizen, in jail.
30:38They had to set him free.
30:43So, did he give up preaching and stay out of trouble?
30:48Don't bet on it.
30:51What was it that drove Paul on despite these setbacks?
30:54We keep returning to that encounter on the Damascus road.
30:58It must have been very powerful to take him so far.
31:04In spite of all the setbacks Paul endured, he was determined to press on with his mission.
31:09Something very powerful must have driven him onwards.
31:12In fact, some experts believe that the power that drove Paul on was geological as well as spiritual.
31:25They've begun to think that the tremor that freed Paul from prison wasn't the first time an earthquake had changed the course of his life.
31:35This part of the world is something of a hotspot for quakes.
31:39And some scientists believe this could provide another explanation for the mystery of Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus.
31:56This is an earthquake monitoring bunker at the University of Albuquerque in New Mexico.
32:04Here, scientists discovered that earthquakes can produce some astonishing effects.
32:10It's now understood that they can release electromagnetic forces similar to ball lightning.
32:22Was Paul hit by an earthquake light?
32:34Luke tells us Paul was struck by a dazzling light which left him blind for three days after his Damascus experience.
32:41I think the typical effects would be like being struck by lightning.
32:47They're certainly knocked unconscious.
32:49When they're restored to consciousness and breathing, they can be blind for several days.
32:56Of course, this theory doesn't hold unless there was an earthquake on that day in Damascus.
33:03And there's no evidence for that.
33:06But there was a massive quake 190 miles away in Antioch in 37 AD.
33:11The same time frame that Paul made his journey.
33:18If there was an earthquake that destroyed Antioch, it would have been felt very strongly in Damascus.
33:23But even if Paul was caught in an earthquake, could an earthquake light have triggered his sense that he'd met Jesus?
33:38Dr. Michael Persinger has devised a helmet that can be used to mimic the effects of earthquake lights.
33:59All right, so for the next steps, I'm going to place the helmet on.
34:04Let me know if I grab yours. Is that okay?
34:06That's good.
34:07The helmet uses electromagnetic waves to stimulate the right temporal lobe.
34:12The part of the brain that deals with mystical experiences.
34:15Can you see any light?
34:17Nope.
34:18Perfect.
34:19I was a little afraid, of course, because I'd heard that some people have really wild experiences in here.
34:29But I felt a presence which was not something I expected.
34:34And a little bit of a visual experience, but the presence was very memorable.
34:40It was kind of like having a person in the room.
34:43These balls of light are so energetic that if you were close to them, they could induce seizures within your brain,
34:52and actually produce unconsciousness, and stimulate areas of the brain that may produce tremendous mystical experiences,
34:58particularly the feeling of a sensed presence.
35:04An amazing 80% of those who've tried on the helmet have reported similar effects.
35:09But as with the epilepsy argument, doesn't all this talk of earthquake lights take God out of Paul's conversion?
35:22Well, throughout religious history, believers have reported encounters with God that have coincided with powerful natural events.
35:34There's actual reconnections that take place in the brains of these individuals.
35:38The brains actually rewire.
35:41And, of course, that allows the brain to detect stimuli that perhaps others cannot detect.
35:47But even if there wasn't an earthquake, one thing's for sure.
35:51Paul's experience drove him on towards even greater danger.
35:55Three hundred miles south of Philippi was Corinth, one of the most infamous cities in the Roman Empire.
36:10The very name Corinth was slang for sexual promiscuity.
36:13In fact, Corinth's reputation was of one big red light district.
36:26This city wasn't an obvious pulpit for a preacher like Paul.
36:31But Paul discovered that here, too, the pagan world was ready to listen to his message.
36:38Paul teamed up with a couple of fellow tent makers who told him that many people in Corinth were fed up with its immorality.
36:45This was too good an opportunity to miss, and it's clear from his letters that Paul made the most of it.
37:03The tent makers agreed to help Paul and found him a place where he could preach to disaffected Corinthians.
37:21Paul's preaching fell on eager ears in Corinth.
37:24His impact was such, he says in his letters, that many of the congregation slipped into a heightened state of prayer called speaking in tongues.
37:38For many Corinthians, speaking in tongues was a sign that they were true Christians.
37:46Paul's preaching stirred his new communities, but this spiritual power was a double-edged sword.
37:54Not everyone spoke in tongues, and many thought it was a dangerous distraction.
38:01Paul had other things to worry about, though, and other cities to visit.
38:07But leaving the Corinthian church in such a state of turmoil was a decision that would come back to haunt him.
38:15Paul's preaching had won him many converts in small towns throughout Greece and Asia Minor.
38:19But if Christianity was to gain real ground, then he had to step it up a gear and hit the big cities.
38:28Paul headed for Ephesus, capital of Asia Minor and second only to Rome in importance.
38:33But Ephesus was an even bigger challenge for a missionary than Corinth.
38:41It was home to the cult of the pagan fertility goddess Artemis, an obvious target for Paul's anger.
38:47Once more, the ensuing trouble landed Paul in prison.
39:05His whole mission was in jeopardy again. Rome seemed further away than ever.
39:19To make matters worse, the Corinthian church wrote to tell Paul of problems there.
39:30Petty jealousies were tearing the church apart.
39:33And it's even been claimed that the Jerusalem church sent spies to Corinth to stir up trouble amongst the members of Paul's congregation.
39:41All of Paul's hard work there was unravelling.
39:49Under house arrest and unable to sort the problems in person, Paul came up with another tactical masterstroke.
39:57He wrote them a letter.
39:59It's one of the most famous letters in Christendom.
40:06We know it today as a passage read at weddings.
40:11But at the time, it was a remarkable plea for unity.
40:16Love is not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth.
40:23Love never gives up.
40:26And its faith, hope and patience never fail.
40:35Paul had a first class university education in rhetoric.
40:40He uses it like a master.
40:42That is a way of presenting material, all the tricks of the trade in terms of convincing people.
40:49All of that is automatic.
40:50But Corinth wasn't the only place from the past to come back to haunt Paul.
41:06As soon as he was released from jail in Ephesus, Paul decided to honour a promise he'd made years earlier.
41:12Just like the collections taken in churches today, Paul had been collecting money for the work of the Jerusalem church.
41:27It was something that had been agreed with Peter and James.
41:30But instead of sending the money, Paul decided to deliver it in person.
41:36But going back to Jerusalem was a high-risk strategy.
41:40At stake was the entire mission to Rome.
41:43Upon his release from prison in Ephesus, Paul made his last ever visit to Jerusalem.
41:59It was a trip fraught with danger.
42:03Paul's aim was to personally deliver money specially collected for the Jerusalem church.
42:10The collection was well received, but James confessed to Paul that he had a problem.
42:17Many Jewish Christians in Jerusalem wanted him to reject the collection.
42:22It was tainted by Paul's rejection of the law of Moses.
42:26In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke says that James, under pressure to put Paul to the test,
42:31asked Paul to use the collection to pay for a traditional Jewish purification ritual.
42:38A head-shaving ceremony in the temple.
42:41This would show the people in Jerusalem that Paul was still a good Jew.
42:46Paul went along with the idea, but it was a dangerous decision.
43:04He might be recognized as the Jew who preached a blasphemy,
43:09that Gentile converts did not need to observe the Jewish laws.
43:12The ceremony was supposed to last a week.
43:20The men involved were taking a major step.
43:23A vow to become extra holy.
43:26It was almost like becoming a monk.
43:29Everything was going smoothly until the last day.
43:33In his account of Paul's mission, Luke says that some people alerted the crowd to the presence of Paul.
43:40His appearance in the temple was not welcome.
43:45Neither was his message.
43:47Some thought he had to be stopped.
43:48There's a possibility that a group of Judaizers, a group of false brethren, as Paul would have called them, have betrayed him to the authorities.
44:06They actually think that Paul is so damaging to Judaism that it's better to have him arrested.
44:11To Paul's dismay, those who called for his arrest were fellow Jews who believed in Jesus the Messiah.
44:20Paul was arrested and sentenced to death.
44:33His mission was in tatters. Rome remained beyond his reach.
44:40On the face of it, his decision to come to Jerusalem was a major error of judgment.
44:46But perhaps Paul risked all because he knew he still had his trump card to play.
44:54As a Roman citizen, he demanded the right to have his case heard before the emperor.
44:59After two years in prison, the authorities finally agreed and put him on a boat to Rome.
45:05After 35 years travelling around the Mediterranean, Paul was at last in sight of the ultimate prize, Rome, the capital of the empire.
45:19But as ever, Paul's journey was not to go smoothly.
45:31For two weeks, his ship was battered by storms.
45:35Within sight of the Mediterranean island of Malta, and with their lives in grave danger, the crew ran their boat onto the rocks.
45:43This was the fourth shipwreck Paul had survived.
45:52They stayed in Malta to let the winter pass, and then hitched a ride on a grain ship heading for Italy the next spring.
45:59At last, Rome was in sight.
46:13On his arrival, Paul was met by some of his old friends from Corinth.
46:20They had high hopes that this would be the greatest triumph of Paul's mission.
46:30Of course, he was still under arrest, awaiting a decision on his fate.
46:35But he could still receive visitors, even in jail.
46:39In his epilogue to the Acts of the Apostles, Luke writes that Paul was held in prison for at least two years,
46:48during which time he was still able to preach freely.
46:52Despite all the setbacks, Paul had reached the heart of the empire after all.
46:58But was his mission a success or a failure?
47:01Unfortunately, Paul's letters stop there, and Luke isn't much help either.
47:08There's nothing in his Acts of the Apostles about Paul's fate.
47:12To find out what happened, we need to rely on later traditions kept alive by the Roman Church.
47:20And they paint a grim picture.
47:22A grim picture.
47:52The accepted view is that Paul was martyred, executed by the Roman authorities.
48:02But it was after his death that Paul's greatest mission began.
48:06But it was after his death that Paul's greatest mission began.
48:20He could never have predicted the effect of his words through the centuries.
48:25And as far as we know, Paul never planned or intended it.
48:29Through the efforts of friends and disciples, Paul's letters became missionary tools in themselves.
48:46Their eloquence and poetry continued to win converts around the Roman Empire.
48:54His mission was a success after all.
48:59When Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus, it changed his life and the future of Christianity.
49:07But despite his conversion, the earthquakes, the jailbreaks, perhaps the greatest miracle of Paul's story is the sheer power and persistence of his message.
49:22Who are you, Lord?
49:29That's great.
49:30ะพะฒัั'S plan
49:32I am
49:36Who are you.
49:39I am
49:40Who is the one who needs to get your life when you need to change this situation?
49:43The man who loves you.
49:45Who is he that's ever a police officer.
49:47He is to be the only one who knows if you have the fault of the hostile perhaps cities.
49:52I am a voice-educated business, Joe Gracielski.
49:53He is the Man in Jesus' South of Youth.
49:55That's just one that's still the purpose of everyone to Surely and Emperor.
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