2 Trouble in Galatia

Barnabas, Titus, and I returned to Antioch in good spirits. We were so encouraged we decided to return by land through Damacus. We traveled down to Jericho and then up the Jordan River to the Sea of Galilee.

I had fled Damascus some fourteen years previous. The leader of the city's Arabs was waiting to arrest me at the city gate, so the believers let me down the outer wall in a basket. Normally, Herod Antipas would not have stood for such an intrusion from the Arabians. King Aretas, who ruled the Arabian kingdom just east of the city, was Herod's bitter enemy. But it was just after the death of Tiberius, and Herod did not have the Roman back-up he normally did.

Aretas took Tiberius' death as an opportunity to get revenge against Herod. Herod had divorced Aretas' daughter so he could marry his own brother's wife, Herodias. You'll remember that Herod beheaded John the Baptist for criticizing him for this marriage. So when Aretas drove Herod into flight that year, the Jews believed God was judging him for his marriage and what he did to John the Baptist.

As for me, I was wanted back in Arabia at that time for the preaching I had done there. Before Christ appeared to me, I had persecuted followers of the Way as a Pharisee because they blurred all the lines between clean and unclean among the Jews. But they were just doing what Jesus himself had done when he ate with toll collectors and prostitutes.

So when God showed me that Jesus was His Son, I had to rethink all these things. The message of reconciliation became clear to me: if God was reconciling the unclean in Israel to Him, He would not stop with just unclean Jews. God would bring the good news to the whole world so that He could be reconciled with all humanity. God revealed to me that he was sending me to the Gentiles.

So I launched into the cities of Arabia: Petra and Hegra. The sons of Ishmael seemed like a logical place to start the spread of the good news, and I was fluent enough at Aramaic to understand Nabatean, which is closely related.

But as things began to heat up between Aretas and Herod, the message that the Messiah of the Jews would return to Zion and judge the world seemed very subversive to Aretas. He sent men to arrest me and throw me in prison. I narrowly escaped to Damascus. Then he charged the ethnic leader of Damascus to arrest me as well. But God granted me escape again.