PLMN058 - I Think Nero Would Have Killed Paul if Paul Hadn’t Sent Onesimus Back to Philemon
The Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast
Matt Whitman
4.9 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2026
⏱️ 14 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible Hour podcast, and yesterday we started the |
| 0:05.4 | process of working through the question, what would have happened if Paul hadn't sent Onesimus back? |
| 0:12.2 | What would the implications be, particularly for Paul and all that Paul affected in the Bible, |
| 0:18.0 | in the early church? And we got about halfway through those implications and halfway through gaming that out. |
| 0:24.0 | So I'm just going to pick up with where we left off yesterday after my friend Jeff plays some |
| 0:28.5 | music and keep thinking through, you know, what if, what if, what if? |
| 0:31.6 | Finally, men. So I think we can say with a very serious risk of getting |
| 0:52.3 | executed if the charges of harboring a runaway slave |
| 0:56.7 | stuck in addition to the other charges that were already there. If that happens, that means that |
| 1:02.7 | means that Paul dies half a decade six, seven years earlier than he actually died. This decision about |
| 1:10.5 | whether to harbor Onesimus or send him back, |
| 1:13.7 | therefore really affects the way the Bible and early Christianity play out. Because, again, |
| 1:21.1 | Paul didn't get executed at the end of this day, the imprisonment that's described at the end of |
| 1:26.3 | the book of Acts. Paul doesn't die at the end of |
| 1:29.2 | that. It looks like Nero just got bored and never heard his appeal, and Paul probably just got |
| 1:33.9 | let go. Like, there's some sort of thing. Like, if you have to wait for more than a year for your |
| 1:38.3 | appeal, then that's it. I guess we didn't care enough to give you 15 minutes, so it's just over. |
| 1:46.5 | Looks like that's what happened with Paul. We've got little details here and there throughout |
| 1:50.4 | the New Testament and a bunch of details outside the Bible that indicate that Paul made more |
| 1:55.3 | travels around some of the places that he had visited before. Some people think he even maybe |
| 2:00.5 | made a fifth missionary journey |
| 2:02.6 | to Spain, to the Roman province of Hispania, and that eventually he was abruptly arrested and taken to |
... |
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