Following Paul’s return from his third missionary journey, he was taken into custody by the Jewish authorities. That led to a trial before the Sanhedrin, the supreme judicial authority within the Jewish legal system of that era. Paul then faced additional legal proceedings under two successive Roman governors. His case dragged on for over two years until he finally invoked his right as a Roman citizen and appealed his case to Caesar, the Roman Emperor. The governor who presided over his hearing subsequently replied, “‘Very well! You have appealed to Caesar, and to Caesar you shall go!'” (Acts 25:12 TLB).
So Paul was dispatched to Rome to appeal his case before the Emperor, a journey that marked Paul’s fourth and final missionary endeavor. That began a lengthy odyssey that spanned thousands of travel miles and featured a harrowing shipwreck off the coast of the island of Malta. However, our last glimpse of Paul in the book of Acts finds him residing as a tenant in a rental home and preaching openly in Rome…
“Then Paul dwelt two whole years in his own rented house, and received all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no one forbidding him” (Acts 28:30-31).
Noticeably absent from that account is any mention of a trial before Caesar. But even though that narrative represents the end of the book of Acts, it does not represent the end of Paul’s story. You see, Paul was about to enter a period of intense persecution that was far harsher than any he had previously known.
When Paul exercised his right of appeal before Caesar, his case was remanded to the Emperor Nero who ruled from A.D. 54 – A.D. 68. The ancient church historian Eusebius offered the following assessment of Nero…
“To describe the greatness of his depravity does not lie within the plan of the present work.. after he had accomplished the destruction of so many myriads without any reason, he ran into such blood-guiltiness that he did not spare even his nearest relatives and dearest friends, but destroyed his mother and his brothers and his wife, with very many others of his own family as he would private and public enemies, with various kinds of deaths.” (1)
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs adds…
“So prodigious a monster of nature of was he (more like a beast, yea, rather a devil than a man) that he seemed to be born to the destruction of man.” (2)
Nero, of course, is widely known for initiating the wave of Roman persecution against the early church that began in A.D. 64. The event that triggered that response is known to history as the Great Fire of Rome. We’ll take a closer look at that tragic event (and the horrors that followed) beginning next.
(1) Philip Schaff: NPNF2-01. Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine – Christian Classics Ethereal Library. (n.d.). https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.vii.xxvi.html
(2) John Foxe, Foxe’s Book Of Martyrs [pg. 5] © 1981 by Whitaker House https://archive.org/details/foxesbookofmarty00foxe_1/mode/2up