Did you know that the Apostle Paul was thrown before Roman lions?

by inkling 4 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  inkling

  Me neither. But the CO said so from the platform, so it MUST be true.

  His "source" was this text:

  For we do not wish YOU to be ignorant, brothers, about the tribulation that happened to us in the [district of] Asia, that we were under extreme pressure beyond our strength, so that we were very uncertain even of our lives. In fact, we felt within ourselves that we had received the sentence of death. This was that we might have our trust, not in ourselves, but in the God who raises up the dead. From such a great thing as death he did rescue us and will rescue us; and our hope is in him that he will also rescue us further. YOU also can help along by YOUR supplication for us, in order that thanks may be given by many in our behalf for what is kindly given to us due to many [prayerful] faces.

  2 Cor 1:8-10

  He said that possibly this meant that they were sentenced to death in the coliseum,
  to be eaten by wild animals. (while they were preaching in Asia?) Also that Jehovah
  possibly shut the mouths of the beasts, ala Daniel.

  Strangly enough, all of these "possibly's" didn't keep him from
  saying, two minutes later, "we today might not be facing vicious
  animals like Paul did..."

  Funny how in Paul's list of all of his near-death experences he
  forgets to mentioned "danger from Coliseum beasts")

  And I can just imagine that people in the hall will be effusing
  on about what a great speaker he is to find such a gem in the
  Bible they had never seen before.

  [inkling]
• 

  Leolaia

  Are you sure he wasn't thinking of 1 Corinthians 15:32? "If I fought wild beasts at Ephesus for merely human purposes, what have I gained?"

  This ought to be taken metaphorically, compare Ignatius: "All the way from Syria to Rome I am fighting with wild beasts, by land and sea, by night and day, bound to ten leopards, that is, a detachment of soldiers" (Romans 5:1).
• 

  THE GLADIATOR

  Nonsense. I was there. This Paul guy was too busy spouting his opinions in between taking cold showers to keep his thoughts off women.

  Anyhow, he was a Roman citizen and protected from The Gladiator.
• 

  BurnTheShips

  According to Eusebius of Cesarea in Historia Ecclesiastica Paul was beheaded in Roma.

  This tradition, that Paul suffered martyrdom in Rome, is early and universal, and disputed by no counter-tradition and may be accepted as the one certain historical fact known about Paul outside of the New Testament accounts. Clement (Ad. Cor. chap. 5) is the first to mention the death of Paul, and seems to imply, though he does not directly state, that his death took place in Rome during the persecution of Nero. Caius (quoted below, §7), a writer of the first quarter of the third century, is another witness to his death in Rome, as is also Dionysius of Corinth (quoted below, §8) of the second century. Origen (quoted by Euseb. III. 1) states that he was martyred in Rome under Nero. Tertullian (at the end of the second century), in his De præscriptione Hær. chap. 36, is still more distinct, recording that Paul was beheaded in Rome. Eusebius and Jerome accept this tradition unhesitatingly, and we may do likewise. As a Roman citizen, we should expect him to meet death by the sword.

  http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.vii.xxvi.html
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  inkling

  Are you sure he wasn't thinking of 1 Corinthians 15:32?

  hmm, this is very possible. If he was thinking of this verse, he did not cite it.

  thanks for pointing that out.

  [inkling