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Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-Minute Bible Hour Podcast. And yesterday we started the process of working through the question: what would have happened if Paul hadn't sent Onesimus back? What would the implications be, particularly for Paul and all that Paul affected in the Bible in the early church? And we got about halfway through those implications and halfway through gaming that out. So I'm just going to pick up with where we left off yesterday after my friend Jeff plays some music and we keep thinking through, you know, what if, what if, what if. So I think we can say with some degree of certainty that Paul ran at least a very serious risk of getting executed if the charges of harboring a runaway slave stuck, in addition to the other charges that were already there. If that happens, that means that Paul dies half a decade, six, seven years earlier than he actually died. This decision about whether to harbor Onesimus or send him back, therefore really affects the way the Bible and early Christianity play out. Because, again, Paul didn't get executed at the end of this stay. The prison, the imprisonment that's described at the end of the book of Acts, Paul doesn't die at the end of that. It looks like Nero just got bored and never heard his appeal, and Paul probably just got let go. Like there's some sort of thing. Like if you have to wait for more than a year for your appeal, then that's it. I guess we didn't care enough to give you 15 minutes, so it's just over. Looks like that's what happened with Paul. We've got little details here and there throughout the New Testament and a bunch of details outside the Bible that indicate that Paul made more travels around some of the places that he had visited before. Some people think he even maybe made a fifth missionary journey to Spain, to the Roman province of Hispania, and that eventually he was abruptly arrested and taken to Rome under much harsher circumstances later in Nero's reign, when Nero was getting crazier and when he was a little more familiar with the whole Christian thing and had maybe already used it as a convenient scapegoat for the burning of Rome, something that he was being blamed for in Roman circles. That is the time at which Paul's life comes to an end. Nero gives Paul the type of state-sponsored execution that was afforded to Roman citizens, which was a beheading. It happened in Tre Fontana Abbey, just outside of Rome, the site of that abbey now. You can still go there and see where Paul died. Peter, of course, did not get the luxury of that kind of execution. He was not a Roman citizen, so he could be crucified legally by Nero. But this is really important. A lot of very significant stuff happened between the imprisonment that we're dealing with here, where Onesimus came and found Paul, and the imprisonment that was really harsh, where Paul wrote 2 Timothy and was like, I'm gonna die, bring me my scrolls and my coat. There's a big gap of time between the two, and Paul did a lot. He was very active during that time. We lose all that time if Paul harbors Onesimus, doesn't send him back to Philemon, and dies. So what does that mean? What would we be out in terms of early Christianity? Okay, well, the most obvious thing is we would be out several books of the Bible. We would lose Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, First Timothy, Titus, and Second Timothy, and we also obviously we obviously also wouldn't have the book of Philemon. If Paul didn't send Onesimus back to Philemon, he wouldn't have written Philemon. Paul also wouldn't have written Philemon if he was dead when it was time for him to write Philemon. And look, every book of the Bible is pretty important, but they're different. And I'm not ashamed to say that if aliens with time travel capability came to Earth and they were like, You, are you the leader of the people? I'm like, I'm just a Q-doba, I don't even know why you're picking me. But they're like, we choose you. You speak for the world and your entire space-time continuum, and we are forcing you. You have to get rid of one book of your holy Bible. You have to do it. I'd be like, I don't want it, you can't make me. And they're like, no, we are aliens and we're not moved by your pathetic squirming and squealing. You must pick a Bible, choose one right now, or we will destroy Earth. I would be like, okay, well, none of the gospels for sure. We can't do without those. And look, just the truth of the matter is there's a little bit of a pecking order here. Then I don't know, what do I go with? Probably, probably third John. I really like it, but I think you can kind of get the point. Maybe like second or third John somewhere. Look, I'm not trying to diss on any parts of the Bible. What I'm trying to say is there's some books of the Bible that are really center cut. So look, in light of that, how important are the books we would have lost if Paul hadn't sent Onesimus back? Well, let me see here. Ephesians, according to this very handy guide that I keep right here by my desk called the Lightning Fast Field Guide to the Bible, which is available now for pre-order through the Amazon affiliate link down below. That was not a strong pitch. I'll get it figured out. I'll smooth it out. According to this, Ephesians is the 11th most searched, most popular book. Okay, Philippians is another book we would have lost. I got data from HarperCollins, Zondervan, Bible Gateway. They, I mean, they gave me access to it. So I was able to go through that and kind of composite together a score for each book as to how much people look at it, you know, like a popularity rank, which sounds really crass, but I thought it was really interesting. That's all in the book, in the vital statistics page for each part. So Philippians is 18th out of 66 in terms of how much it is searched. What do you think? Is Colossians going to be higher or lower than Philippians? It is. Oh, wow, it's way lower. I'm surprised. 28 of 66. Man, I think Colossians is way better than that. I don't know what we're bumping down, but come on. And then, you know, first and second Timothy, I'm guessing they don't rank quite as high. First Timothy 32, 2 Timothy 31. Oh, how interesting. Right next to each other. Titus 48, and then Philemon's gonna be way down there. What are we doing with this season? Look at this. This season, we're in a book that ranks 65th out of 66 in terms of popularity. And yet, I picked it as the what are we on? Matthew, Esther, Nehemiah, Galatians, Philemon. I picked this for the fifth book that we would do. Well, sixty-fifth in the Bible Gateway online popularity rankings, but fifth in my heart. Again, look, I'm not trying to criticize parts of the Bible or praise parts of the Bible at the expense of others. The whole thing is meant to work together as a whole. I don't think the aliens are coming. I don't even like Qdoba that much. I'm just trying to say this isn't a small or inconsequential chunk of Bible that we would have lost if Paul had run afoul of the law by not returning Onesimus to Philemon and had been executed by Nero during this first day. What else would we have lost? Well, Paul probably had two more missionary journeys in there, at least one. We can establish from letters and stuff. We can piece together kind of an itinerary from Paul. He definitely did another missionary journey after he timed out waiting for an appeal in this Roman prison from which he wrote Philemon and Colossians. So he took another trip. We know a few places that he must have stopped. A lot of really smart people think that he went to Spain. I've read some of what they think about that. I'd like to think it was true. I just don't think I know enough about it to formulate a strong opinion, and people I really respect see that two different ways. So call it a coin flip. Maybe he did get to Spain, call it like even if it's a one in four chance, that's a pretty big deal. Also, Paul is pretty monumental in establishing Christianity in Europe, specifically in Western Europe. This next what if is going to be a little bit controversial because in this day and age, the moral sensibility is to say that all ideas and all religions are exactly equal and we like them all the same and we root for them all the same and we think they're exactly the same, beautiful. Look, I I'm okay with you being frustrated with me for saying this, but here's the truth: I don't like Islam as much as I like Christianity. It doesn't mean I think that Christianity has a perfect track record, but I do think it's true, and I do think Christ is the actual centerpiece of the entire redemptive plan of the actual God as described in Colossians 1. And I do think there's no other name under heaven by which people are saved than that of Christ. And I don't think he's just a prophet, which is what Islam reduces him to. Christianity spread in peacetime. Christianity was an abused minority for centuries, longer than the United States has existed. And it put down roots with no power in that sense. Islam was swinging the sword the second it rolled out of the cradle. Do I think they're equal in the same? No. Do I want Christianity to win in the world or Islam? I want Christianity to win because I think the gospel is true and it's real. Do I want Muslims to suffer? No. Do I want Muslims to become Christians? I mean, wouldn't it be weird if I didn't? Wouldn't you listen to me and be like, I guess you don't mean any of this? No, I I would like Muslims to become Christians. I don't need to steamroll all of the culture of the Middle East. That's not what I'm proposing. But to be clear, I think Christianity is true. And to be clear, I think one of the benefits of Paul remaining alive after the Onesimus Philemon incident and after his first Roman imprisonment. I think one of the benefits of Paul living for another five or six years, or whatever it was, is that he was able to help Christianity put down roots in Western Europe. And that really became important when Islam came to town quickly and violently a few centuries later. Islam shot across North Africa within just a couple generations of Muhammad, and then the forces of Islam crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and pretty much conquered the entire Iberian Peninsula, that's Portugal and Spain. And it was only by the hair of Europe's chinny chin chin that enough forces associated with historic Christianity were able to come together and check the advance of the Muslim invasion in 732 AD. I mean, it was close. I'm not a complete idiot. I understand that these tensions continue to exist and that they have political ramifications in discourse today. And so I guess for now, I've said what I said. But just to reiterate what I said, I don't know that Christianity gets down roots in Rome and in Western Europe without a few more years of Paul's influence. And if Christianity does not, Islam is gonna cut through Europe like a hot knife through butter in the 700s when they came knocking, and by knocking I mean swinging swords and conquering everything. Okay, this is a fun exercise for me, and I could speculate on and on, but it's gonna get more speculaty if we go much beyond this. So, for the two-part conversation we've had over the last two days with this what if thing, what if Paul hadn't sent Onesimus back to Philemon? I feel like I can safely conclude it would have been ruinous for Paul. It would have been highly damaging to the reputation of Christianity, and it would have cost us a whole lot of Bible and a whole lot of very important, like maybe some of the most important work that Paul did in really firmly establishing the churches he worked with, particularly his role in establishing the westernmost Christian church at this point, which was the church in Rome, which would prove to be hugely important in the unfolding of the Christian West down the road. Philemon, the book of the Bible, and the whole situation here with Onesimus is so often treated as this tiny little footnote, like, oh, this is a nice like makeup story, and it is that. I shouldn't have minimized that. But maybe it's just because the book of Philemon is so small. This feels like a thing that doesn't matter that much to the story. But I would argue that this is like Tom Hanks at the end of Castaway. He this is a crossroads pivotal moment in the foundation of the Christian church in Paul's life, in the establishment of the Bible, in the articulation of clear firsthand theology about who Jesus is and how right standing with God happens. I think that kind of a whole lot was on the line here with this crossroads decision that Paul and I think Anesimus with him had to make about how to proceed. And I think we'll understand those high stakes even better as we consider the other side of this what if equation next time around. All right, that's good for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.