operations by which the gospel was disseminated in Asia Minor, and over the water in Macedonia and Greece. It was on a return visit to Jerusalem that he was arrested, and eventually realized his lifelong ambition to preach the gospel in Rome. But Paul arrived in Rome as a prisoner. It was in A.D. 62, while still a prisoner there, that he penned the words we are now reading. Perhaps chained to a Roman soldier, and with very few companions around him, he wrote letters—one to his friend Philemon, one