Les Feldick Bible Study

What odds did Paul face when he brought the Gospel to pagan Gentiles?

Paul faced insurmountable odds: entering strange pagan territory where Gentiles knew nothing of the God of the Bible, with no Jewish evangelistic precedent. He also endured beatings, shipwrecks, imprisonments, cold, hunger, thirst, and constant misuse while bringing the Gospel to a lost world.

Les explains that Paul faced insurmountable odds when he went into the absolute strange territory of pagan Gentiles who knew nothing of the God of this Bible. The Jews never evangelized or took their knowledge out to the pagan Gentiles, so Paul came into cities like Antioch, Derbe, Lystra, Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, and Corinth—every one of those places was abject pagan. Along with that, he endured the thorn in the flesh, beatings, shipwrecks, imprisonment, cold, miserable, hot, thirsty conditions, and constant misuse, all for the sake of taking the Gospel to a lost world. He cared nothing for power, circumstance, or political clout; he was willing to be a nobody so God could use him, glorying in his infirmities that the power of Christ might rest upon him.