500-501 : Paul In Jerusalem
O all of God's beloved in Rome called to be saints:
"I make mention of you always in my prayers,
requesting that by some means through the will of God I might make a journey to come to you.
I long to see you to impart to you some spiritual gift, even as I have among other Gentiles.
I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise.
So I am eager to preach the gospel to you that are in Rome also.
THE LOVE OF GOD
"If God be for us, who can be against us?
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?
As it is written,
'For thy sake we are killed all the day long.
We are looked upon as sheep for slaughter.'
"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
PRAY THAT I MAY COME TO YOU
"Now having no place more to go in these parts, and having a great desire these many years to come to you, whenever I take my journey into Spain,
I will come to you. "But now I go to Jerusalem to minister to the saints.
For it has pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem.
When therefore I have delivered this to them, I will come by way of you to Spain.
"Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake,
that you strive together in your prayers to God for me,
that I may be delivered from them in Judea that do not believe and that my service which I have for Jerusalem may be accepted by the saints;
that I may come to you with joy by the will of God, and may with you be refreshed.
Now the God of peace be with you all.
Amen."
PAUL IS ARRESTED
In Jerusalem, enemies of Paul from Asia, when they saw him in the temple,
stirred up all the people and seized him with great shouts, accusing him of false teaching.
Then the whole city was aroused, and people hurried together,
and they took Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and at once the doors were shut.
As they were about to kill him,
word came to the chief captain of the soldiers that all Jerusalem was in anuproar.
He immediately took soldiers and centurions and ran down to the temple.
When his enemies saw the chief captain and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul.
Then the chief captain came and arrested him and commanded him to be bound with two chains,
and asked who he was and what he had done.
Some cried one thing, some another,
and when he could learn nothing certain because of the shouting,
the captain commanded Paul to be taken into the castle.
And when he came to the stairs,
he had to be carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the people.
For the multitude followed after, crying, "Away with him."
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