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Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea. I have traveled on many long journeys. I have faced danger from rivers and from robbers… I have been hungry and thirsty and have often gone without food. I have shivered in the cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm (2 Corinthians 11:25-27, NLT).
If we traveled over the 4th of July through an airport with possibly delayed flights or drove in traffic jams, we might think . . .
HHHHMMMHHM, what the Apostle Paul describes about his travels sounds like my recent trip to Cleveland, Ohio.
But let’s be realistic. How many of us have experienced danger while traveling?
A few years back, I was in a city in the Philippines that was having difficulties with extremists. As I sat eating breakfast by a window in the hotel’s restaurant, I looked to my left to see a young teenager standing on the other side of the window . . .
Pointing a gun at my head.
It turned out to be fake, but learning this fact did nothing to quell a spike in my blood pressure and several shouts of “Help me, Jesus!” during the actual event.
The Apostle traveled over 10,000 miles in his missionary journeys. There were no first-class cabins. Those who paid for passage on a ship had to find a place on the deck with no protection from the weather.
Realize the importance of the ability to travel in the first century. After the Roman Empire subdued the nations surrounding the Mediterranean, travel with relative safety became possible.
Scripture says, “When the fullness of time came. God sent forth His son” (Galatians 4:4, ESV).
One historian estimated that during the Roman Empire, the tonnage of cargo in the Mediterranean was so great that after the demise of the Empire, this amount of tonnage wasn’t equaled again until after the advent of steamships in the early 1900s.
When Jesus gave the Great Commission to “go into all the world,” it wouldn’t have been possible to literally “go” before the rise of the Roman Empire!
Personally, I have about 1.6 million travel miles with Delta® Airlines. Delta says that their million milers take an average of 22 years with consistent travel to reach this milestone.
I’ve been able to go on 90 trips around the world, teaching the Great Commission.
But the ability to travel with relative ease has existed historically only in the past 60 to 70 years. There is a prophecy from the Book of Daniel describing the end times . . .
But you, Daniel, keep this prophecy a secret; seal up the book until the time of the end, when many will rush here and there, and knowledge will increase (Daniel 12:4, NLT).
Let’s ask: The ability to travel was available just before the first coming of Jesus.
Is the ease and ability to travel the way we do possibly just before the second coming?
Soon and very soon!