All right, we're gonna do a little what-if history today, and I love what if history. It's especially fun when you divorce yourself from your passions and just try to be analytical about how this would have played out and what the world would look like today if things had bounced differently. I mean, what's the most obvious what-if history of all time? I mean, come on, it's World War II, right? And you're like, oh, what if the Germans, the Axis powers had won World War II and the Man in the Highcastle, the book and the Amazon Prime series kind of explore that question? That's a pretty fascinating one. It's hard for me to be impartial on that. I'm I'm pretty glad that the Allies won World War II. But let's do some more recent ones, shall we? What if Florida in 2000 went to Al Gore and didn't flip to George W. Bush? What do the next four years, eight years look like? That's kind of interesting to think about. What if Ron Paul, who I think mathematically maybe should have had the nomination for the Republican Party in 2012, or at least it was close? What if it plays out at the GOP convention that you get Ron Paul instead of Mitt Romney running against Obama in my country in 2012? I don't know, but it sure would have been different. What if the Democrats went with Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton as their nominee in 2016? What if, are you noticing, by the way, that with each one that we move forward in history, it gets like your hackles go up more? Like the what if history game gets way more troubling and upsetting and is more likely to ruin Thanksgiving's the closer it gets to real time? But let's keep going. What if the global mitigation approach to COVID had been, hey, if you have pretty much no risk for mortality, just go out, live your life, get it, get better, get natural immunity. But we're going to use mitigation techniques, we're going to spend all our energy there on the most vulnerable. Whether you think that what I just threw out is a better idea or not, you got to admit it's good. What if history to consider how the world would look different now a few years later? Here's another one for you. What if Russia, in their initial blitz against Ukraine, had just won and Ukraine completely toppled and Russia quickly absorbed it? Where would they stop? Would Russia keep going? What would the world look like right now? Well, those were recent and they got a little bit more sensitive. Thanks for your patience with me. What if history is way more fun when it has some consequences and some teeth to it and the passions come out a bit? But let's go back and do some what if history that maybe won't agitate us quite as much. Some what if history from the New Testament. So we know from the book of Philemon that Paul must have encountered Onesimus along the way somewhere. Onesimus has become a Christian, and we know that Paul sends Onesimus back to his master, Philemon in Colossae. And Paul chooses some interesting language here, softer than you or I might choose, to suggest to Philemon what he might do. Let me read this little passage in the middle of Philemon to jog your memory before we play the what-if game here. Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul, an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus, I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he's become useful both to you and to me. I'm sending him, who is my very heart, back to you. I would have liked to keep him with me so that he could take your place in helping me while I'm in chains for the gospel, but I didn't want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do will be spontaneous and not forced. Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good, no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me, but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord. So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. Okay, at this point in our conversation, we've got a couple of sets of facts lined up. Set of facts number one is that we have at least a pretty good sense of what slavery was like in the ancient world. We spent some time talking about how the runaway situation was treated for the slaves, for the masters, and for whoever happened to find a runaway slave. So we've got that. That's one thing that we have out on our little invisible workshop table here to play the What if History game with the situation? The other thing that we have is a pretty good sense now of what the deal was in the church at Colossae, what the assumptions culturally were from all those flags that flew over Colossae. We've got a better sense of who Philemon is, the culture of the Colossian church. We know who Onesimus is, and we've got a great sense of what the tension of this book is. So now the what if game. All right, Paul, as he's writing the letters of Colossians and Philemon, is somewhere in jail. Now it's interesting because most books you'll read, and most of your little you know, page of the book at the beginning, your I what do you even call this? Like the little intro page at the beginning of a book of the Bible and the study Bible. And the great, and I mean, wow, soon-to-be legendary lightning fast field guide to the Bible, that book as well, they all pretty confidently say that Paul is writing this letter from Rome. But do we know that a hundred percent for sure? The truth is, yeah, mostly it's probably for sure. The big argument for Paul maybe being in a different prison than Rome is that it seems far-fetched to some people that Onesimus would have made it all the way to Rome. That maybe Onesimus, if he wanted to flee and start a new life, it would have made sense to go somewhere with less law, not more, and that was less Roman, not more, and where he would be less likely to run into people who had connections in Colossae, not more likely. And Onesimus, they think, maybe wouldn't have had the resources to make it all the way to Rome. It's just too dang far. So some people look at the some practicals like that and they say, okay, well, maybe this is a different imprisonment. Some have proposed that maybe this is an imprisonment in Jerusalem, right before Paul got shipped off to Rome, which would bump up the writing of Philemon to like 59 or 60 A.D. Others have said maybe Colossians and Philemon were written during Paul's lengthy stay at Ephesus, which would really move up the writing of Philemon. The problem with that position is I don't think we know about any imprisonment in Ephesus. I mean, it might have happened for a little while. There were tensions in Ephesus, there were riots. I mean, maybe Paul was meaningfully in prison there. Maybe something more than just like holding for your own safety for a minute. I don't know. Maybe you know some details that I'm forgetting there. So some people, the second most popular proposal is that Paul was in Ephesus writing from a jail. But when you look at the whole timeline of Paul's life and other letters, and you kind of triangulate it out, I still think Rome is our best guess. Either way, wherever Paul wrote this letter from, it was under Roman authority, and there were Roman authorities present, and Roman law, which we went and read about, would have applied. So the expectation for Paul upon encountering somebody else's runaway slave is that he is like what we now would call a mandatory reporter. Paul is obligated to send the guy back. He's obligated to notify the authorities. Here's some of that exact language that we looked at the other day. This is from the Digest of Ulpian. This is a Roman law that would have included Roman laws at the time that Philemon was written. Anyone who has hidden a runaway slave is guilty of theft. Okay, well, that's not a good look. I mean, if you're Paul, you don't want to be that. The Senate has decreed that no runaways must be allowed onto country estates or be sheltered by the estate managers or agents of the landowners and has laid down a fine. But if anyone restores such runaways to their owners within 20 days or brings them before the authorities, their previous behavior is to be overlooked. Okay, as we discussed the other day, there's a little grace window there. This restating of Roman law goes on. Any person whatsoever who apprehends a runaway slave has an obligation to produce him in public. It goes on. And the authorities are very properly required to guard them carefully to prevent them from escaping. Carefully guarding them may even include chaining them up. And then in later Roman legal digests, we get more of a sense of what those fines and civil punishments might be for harboring a slave, or even possible jail sentences for harboring a slave, or just lazily not really doing anything about a slave having shown up or you encountering a slave. So I can demonstrate with great certainty that there were strong expectations ranging from, hey, you're gonna get fined to you're gonna go to jail or maybe even suffer physical consequences beyond that. If you become aware of a runaway slave, they're in your custody or in your home or in your context and you don't do anything about it. So just to make sure all of our factors in this game of what if history are rooted in likelihood and rooted in evidence. Okay, one, Paul is definitely in prison somewhere. He mentions it five times in the book of Philemon. Literally, that's one out of every five verses. Twenty peres in Philemon have Paul in some way saying, I'm a prisoner. I think that's a really big deal, and we'll unpack why that matters so much later on. So, one, Paul is definitely in prison. Two, Paul is probably in prison in Rome, given where we're at with the timeline and considering all the factors involved, including where Onesimus might have gone. Three, Paul definitely sent Onesimus back, and he definitely did not four order Philemon to do anything, but rather strongly suggested and firmly politely asked that Philemon would respond to the situation in a given way. Five, we know that Paul was on the Romans radar, and if he was indeed in prison in Rome, he was really on the Romans radar and was in the pipeline for an appeal to Caesar. This would be Nero, who was notoriously pretty unstable. And so Paul is sitting there waiting for that. And six, if this was Paul's imprisonment in Rome, we know that he had a tremendous amount of freedom and flexibility during this time to receive guests, and we know that he told people in Rome about Jesus and that they believed during this time. He's in a pretty good situation if this is that Roman house arrest imprisonment that we hear about right at the end of Acts, and I think it is. So, with all of the parameters of our two-day what-if history game set up, this to me then would be the big what if question. What if Paul hadn't sent Onesimus back? What if Paul operated from the moral context of right now, as you and I are having this conversation, and was like, no, absolutely I'm not sending a slave back to his master? I don't care how nice the master is. Slavery is an evil institution, and I just won't do that. What if Paul had come at it that way? What would have been the consequences of that? How would things likely have worked out? Tomorrow we'll play that game out to its conclusion. Quick note, and I should have said it sooner. Thank you to everybody who pre-ordered the book. I continued to see those coming in. That's just unbelievably encouraging. It makes a guy who's sort of been a hermit and disappeared for a while to write a book and became very antisocial for a while with fingers to keys hunched over out of my shed. It just makes it feel like that was maybe a little bit more worth it. It really means a lot. Thank you so much for checking it out. If anybody else wants to check it out, I'm keeping a link down below. The Amazon affiliate link is in the show notes. You can pre-order that thing if you feel like it. All right, that's good for now. More What If History Tomorrow. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.