Paul was 51 years old.

Working with his hands making tents lent time to ponder and muse. His brilliant mind was filled with the wonder of his Lord.

His thoughts wandered around the world while his body remained at Corinth where he was in the midst of the greatest move of God he had yet to witness.

It had been a near fatality.

He had arrived on the brink of despair.

Then the simple decision to preach just Jesus and nothing else had exploded the city of Corinth.

The conversion of many high officials, as well as thousands of ordinary people, had kept his mind occupied for almost a year and a half. No one had ever seen anything like the revival in Corinth.

Today his mind had dreamed of something akin to this happening in Rome. From that epicenter his precious gospel could truly turn the world upside down.

It had begun with a conversation with Sister Phebe.

She commented she was going to Rome. Instantly Paul had pleaded with her to take a greeting from himself to the saints there in the center of the empire.

Laying aside his tools, he picked up his writing instrument and began….

Paul a servant of Jesus Christ…..to all that be in Rome…..

The letter to the Romans. The book that offers the grand view of the Gospel.

The overview of the majesty of God’s plan to man. Sweeping vistas, mountain peaks, and unparalleled heights of revelation.

In Romans Paul unveils God’s plan, man’s depravity, and the ultimate solution to sin.

He scales the ramparts of Jew and Gentile relationship. He plumbs the depth of the death, burial and resurrection.

He laughs at the Law’s ineffectual conclusion and exalts grace as man’s only hope.

What began as a greeting to a far off fraternity of believers, becomes the grand work of the Gospel to the world.

When Phebe stopped by to pick up the greeting Paul had asked her to deliver, she held in her hands the greatest masterpiece of God’s purpose to His creation.

She carried on that ship the summation of 4000 years of law and it’s failure.

She carried Heaven’s solution to Eden’s tragedy.

In about ten to fifteen years Paul would finally catch up with his letter. When he arrived in Rome many years later, he would discover his letter had been received and circulated.

He arrived a prisoner of Jesus Christ, for no mere Caesar could imprison an Apostle.

It was there in Rome, where his mind had gone ten years before, while working on a tent during the Corinthian Revival, that his incredible life came to an end.

He ended his life in a prison.

The irony is the prison was the place he had desired to send others when Jesus called to him on the Damascus Road some 30 plus years ago.

But the dream of the Corinthian Revival also happening in Rome, and ultimately the Roman world, was unfolding.

In the next three hundred years, ten percent of the Roman Empire became Christian.

The gospel to the Romans became the Gospel to the world, watered with the blood of the man who dreamed it could be!

Thanks for reading today!

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