After Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus, the bible tells us, Paul spent the next 30 to 31 years teaching and preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost, as well as to believers in various churches throughout the Middle East, Europe and Asia. He took four missionary journeys during his "born-again" ministry years. But just prior to the first of those trips, he tells us in his letter to the Galatians, that he spent some portion of time receiving instruction from the Lord alone, in Arabia, before he returned to Damascus where there were a group of believers of whom Ananias was one (the man who healed Paul's blindness):
"For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it. And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the tradition of my fathers. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His son to me, that I might preach Him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter; and abode with him fifteen days." (Galatians 1:13-18)
After meeting Peter in Jerusalem, approximately in the year 36 or 37 A.D., Paul fled to avoid capture:
"And he spake boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Grecians [in Jerusalem]: but they went about to slay him. Which when the brethren knew they brought him down to Caesarea, and sent him forth to Tarsus." (Acts 9:30)
Paul sailed from Caesarea north to Syria and Cilicia ["afterwards I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia." (Galatians 1:21)] where he remained for sometime between 8 and 14 years, after which he traveled to Antioch with Barnabas, remaining there for 1 year.
It was shortly after Antioch that Paul made his first missionary journey: one that lasted 6 to 9 months, returning by the fall of 48 A.D. It was in approximately 49 A.D. that Paul began his second missionary journey. The third missionary journey began in the spring of 52 A.D. This was the trip, near the end of which, Paul would arrive in Rome (approx. spring of 58 A.D.), but it was wrought with obstacles all along the way:
-Paul was arrested in Jerusalem in 55 A.D. and taken to Caesarea where he was imprisoned for 2 years (Acts 24:27)
-When freed, Paul took a very "slow" boat to Rome (Acts27:7) which shipwrecked at Malta, causing Paul to remain there for 3 months;
- And when he finally arrived in Rome he was placed under house arrest for 2 more years - until 60 A.D. (Acts 28:30)
The letter to the Romans was actually written from Corinth, Greece, during a three month stay there in the year 54 A.D. (Acts 20:3).
It appears that Paul's fourth (and final) missionary trip happened right around 60 A.D., when Paul was released from his Roman imprisonment; but we know more of this from the early church father Clement of Rome than we do from scripture. In Paul's letter to the Roman Christians, Paul spoke of his proposed missionary trip to Spain (Romans 15:28). Clement indicates that Paul did make it as far west as he could possibly go at that time, which would have been Spain: "having reached the farthest bounds of the West" 1 Clement 5:6. And since we know of his other missionary journeys from the bible, then this fourth journey would have had to have been the one where he made it to Spain, but we have only Clement to tell us that.
Shortly after that last journey, Paul returned again to Rome, where he was martyred in 64 A.D. during the reign of Nero who used all Christians as scapegoats for his own insanities. Tradition holds that Paul was beheaded; because he was a citizen of Rome, his execution was most likely a privately held event, unlike the more public execution in which Peter was crucified upside down.
"For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing." (2 Timothy 4:6-8)
The righteousness of which Paul speaks "and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing" is the primary subject of his letter to the Romans Christians, as we will see when we begin our study in the Book of Romans tomorrow.
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