Paul and his companions

Contents Note No. 1
Table 1 shows on the left hand side the two long durations marked "Damascus and Arabia" and "Tarsus" and this is quite a long time in Paul’s life after he became a follower of Jesus Christ. In Galatians 2:1 we read: "Then fourteen years after I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and took Titus with me also." In these 14 years is his time in Damascus and Arabia and Tarsus included and that was a time of little physical activity but of much spiritual activity. After Paul’s Damascus experience he immediately became an active Christian and in Acts 9:19-20 we read: "And when he had received meat, he was strengthened. Then was Saul certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus. And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God." But then Paul seems to have started his long time of physical inactivity in Arabia and Tarsus, Galatians 1:17: "Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus." This long time was only interrupted by Paul’s visit to Jerusalem as it is recorded in Acts 9:26-30 and where it then says that the brothers sent him off to Tarsus. So this long time in Damascus and in Arabia and in Tarsus was a time Paul spent with Jesus. Such a time is vital for all of us. It is a long time. And when Christians, especially preachers, and especially those who preach on radio and television, have not spent such a valuable time with Jesus, then you can hear their shallowness. They have never become real Christians who know Jesus and know the Bible and know the difference between the man-made church and the real church and therefore do not lead people into the kingdom of God but into the regiment of Antichrist. Now Paul therefore spent many years using his heart and his intelligence to find out what Christ was really all about and his letters give us an impression what the outcome of this was. Paul did not go to church all these years and he even did not seem to have spent time in fellowship with other believers.

Contents Note No. 2
In the previous note Titus was mentioned. Now Titus is not mentioned the Book of Acts. But Titus was a co-worker of Paul whom he employed for important tasks. In 2 Corinthians 2:18 it is mentioned that Paul sent him to Corinth where there were problems and he achieved there something that even Paul and Timothy might perhaps not have achieved. And then Titus met Paul in Macedonia and could report to him that everything had been ordered in the assembly in Corinth. In 2 Corinthians 2:13 Paul says that he had no rest in his spirit because he found not Titus his brother in Troas and Paul went from thence into Macedonia. And then in Macedonia, 2 Corinthians 7:6 and 7:13-14, he writes that God comforted him by the coming of Titus and his good report about the Corinthians and that Titus’ spirit was refreshed by all the Corinthians. In the 8th chapter in 2 Corinthians Paul mentions Titus three times in connection with the collection and in 2 Corinthians 8:23 Paul says that Titus is his colleague and shares his work in the Corinthians’ service; and as for the other two brethren, they are the special messengers of the churches, and a credit and glory to Christ, the Messiah. And this is an excellent description of the work of Paul and his companions and the existence of these travelling messengers of Christ was vital for the well-being of the church and the non-existence of these important members of the body of Christ today in the man-made churches is characteristic for the deadness of them. In Titus 1:5 we hear that Paul left Titus in Crete that he should set in order the things that are wanting and in 2 Timothy 4:10 Paul reports that Titus has gone to Dalmatia. So Titus is a good example of the work done by Paul and his companions.

Contents Note No. 3
Now this ministry that Paul and his companions carried out is sometimes called the itinerant ministry. And the ministry that they served is called the settled ministry and that are the churches they visit and serve or that they establish and serve. But this settled ministry is, or at least was, not so settled as we now know it. Today the most outstanding sign of such a settled ministry is the church building. It signifies and downright demonstrates the settled situation of a church. But church buildings always belong to man-made churches. The real church does not have church buildings. The real church meets in the home of one of its members. The Bible gives us four examples of such a church that meets in the house and that is Romans 16:3-5 in a house in Rome and 1 Corinthians 16:19 in a house in Ephesus and Colossians 4:15 in a house in Laodicea and Philemon 1-2 in a house in Colossae. Now the first two cases, the one in Rome and the one in Ephesus, were made available by the same people, by Aquila and Priscilla. Paul met Aquila and Priscilla in Corinth and when Paul travelled from Corinth to Ephesus they accompanied him and when he left Ephesus they stayed on in Ephesus and made their home there available for the church to meet. And after Paul’s next visit to Ephesus they, Aquila and Priscilla also left Ephesus and went to Rome and there they again made their home available for the church in Rome to meet. And in 2 Timothy 4:19 Paul writes: "Salute Prisca and Aquila" and that letter was written to Ephesus, and therefore it can be assumed that Aquila and Priscilla not only lived again in Ephesus but that they also had again meet the church in their home. So the church is also not so settled as we might assume, is not fixed to one place to meet, but moves according to the situation of the people involved in the church meeting and especially according to the people who make their home available for meetings. So the people who came to the house of Aquila and Priscilla at their first stay in Ephesus had to go to another house for meetings after Aquila and Priscilla left for Rome. And when they came back to Ephesus and opened again their house for meetings, then the people coming to their house might have been completely different people. So the real church is almost as mobile as the itinerant ministry.

Contents Note No. 4
The bottom of Table 2 shows the different places where Aquila and Priscilla lived. Time-wise only their move with Paul from Corinth to Ephesus is known. But this information about the movements of this couple demonstrates the mobility of the real church.

Contents Note No. 5
The following Table 3 is a repetition of Table 2 but shows in addition the gridlines of the graph to make it easier to see the relation between the different places Paul visited and the co-workers accompanying him there.

Table 3: Paul and his companions, gridlines added

 

Contents Note No. 6
According to Table 1 Paul’s letter to the Romans was written during his third missionary journey. Paul’s third missionary journey was from 53 to 57 after Christ. At the end of this letter the King James Version of the Bible has this note: "Written to the Romans from Corinthus, and sent by Phebe servant of the church at Cenchrea." Now according to Table 1, and also according to Acts, the name of Corinth does not appear in Paul’s third missionary journey, but the name Greece does, and therefore it should be concluded that the word Greece includes the word Corinth. Now in the King James version the last verse in Romans, Romans 16:27 reads: "To God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen. Written to the Romans from Corinthus, and sent by Phebe servant of the church at Cenchrea." Cenchrea is the eastern harbour of Corinth. In Romans 16:23 Gaius and Erastus are mentioned and that they send their greetings to the Romans. Now Gaius was from Corinth because he was baptized by Paul according to 1 Corinthians 1:14 in Corinth, and Erastus was from Corinth according to 2 Timothy 4:20.

In his letter to the Romans Paul mentions many Christians he knows and who live there and the church in Rome was then already an important part of Christendom. I believe that the first disciple Jesus had in Rome was the Emperor Augustus and the reason for this is very simple. Augustus’ brother was Cornelius and Cornelius was a captain and in charge of the taxing in Bethlehem and he met Jesus when Jesus was one day old. This is narrated in Jakob Lorber’s book "Kindheit und Jugend Jesu" (Childhood and Youth of Jesus), in chapter 19 and verse 19. And another brother of Augustus was Cyrenius and Cyrenius was governor of Syria (Luke 2:2) and he met Jesus when Mary handed over Jesus to Cyrenius and he took the child into his arms and this is reported in chapter 35, verse 15. Cornelius had sent the family of Joseph to his brother Cyrenius who then organized their journey to Egypt. Now these two brothers most likely send official reports to the emperor and private reports to their brother and so Augustus was extremely well informed about the event of the first coming of Christ and the very positive reports probably caused him to become a follower of Jesus just like his two brothers. During the time Jesus walked on earth these two brothers met Jesus again and again and so their brother Augustus was, until the end of him being emperor and until the end of his life, kept informed about what Jesus was all about.

Now the Catholic Church is also mentioned in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul tells the believers in Rome, in Romans 16:17, to mark them which cause divisions and offences, and he instructs them to avoid them. So the dividers existed then already and were the origin of the Catholic Church and Paul says that they are not serving our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple, Romans 16:18. This is the exact description of the Catholic Church and the whole of Orthodoxy as it exists and operates still today. So the Catholic Church existed in Rome already years before Paul arrived in that city and so existed the animosity between this man-made church and Paul, and these deceivers were probably able to persecute Paul and finally kill him and then claimed him for themselves and build a gigantic structure over his grave.

 

Contents Note No. 7
Acts reports about Paul’s first missionary journey from Acts 13:1 to Acts 14:26. The second journey is recorded from Acts 15:32 to Acts 18:22. The third journey starts in Acts 18:23 and ends in Acts 21:17.

 

Contents Note No. 8
In the first chapter of our book "The Man-Made Church", the chapter called Organism – Not Organization we had the following:

Let us go to the second example: it is the setting apart of Barnabas and Saul for the work to which the Holy Spirit had called them (Acts 13:1-4). This setting apart was not done by the church at Antioch or by a meeting of prophets and teachers in the church at Antioch. It was done by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gave the command. The prophets and teachers did not send them on their way, no, it was the Holy Spirit. In Acts 13:3 the word "apoluo" is used, when it says "they sent them off". And this "sending" in Acts 13:3 is not that of commissioning, but of letting go, intimating that they would gladly have retained them. In the next verse, in Acts 13:4, we find who commissioned them; it was the Holy Spirit. It says there "The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus". A different word is used this time. This word "sent" (ekpempo) expresses - in contrast to "apoluo" - the act of commissioning by the Holy Spirit. So it was the Holy Spirit who was in control and not men. And contrary to common opinion the work that Barnabas and Saul did was not controlled by the church at Antioch. The church at Antioch did not control their movements, did not tell them what to do, did not finance their trip. All these ideas come up again and again because people who read the Bible have a certain idea of what the church looks like and try to see that picture of a church in what they read in the book of Acts. And this certain idea of what the church looks like comes of course from the man-made church they so well know and deal with.

Right from the first missionary journey the initiating agency was the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit remained in that position through all three missionary journeys. It was the Holy Spirit who guided Paul and also all his companions. There did not exist something like a missionary society, no missionaries were employed and no salaries were paid to them. The picture painted by the Book of Acts is the picture of the Holy Spirit. It is a picture completely alien to what is going on today in so-called missionary work.

 

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