2 Timothy 4:21 Do your diligence to come before winter. Eubulus greets you, and Pudens, and Linus, and Claudia, and all the brothers. Do thy diligence to come before winter. Travelling would be difficult then, if not impossible, and perhaps the white snow would be the shroud of the apostle. Anyway, he has been delivered once for a brief space out of the mouth of that lion - Nero. But it is not easy to believe that this ferocious lion, satiated for the time with blood, should seek to devour him no more. But a Roman prison in winter is a very desolate place, and he who has been hurried from place to place by his keepers has left even his warm cloke behind him, and hopes to cover himself with that black goat's-hair skin when winter comes. Bring the cloke, Timothy, and the papyrus books - old vellum manuscripts, perhaps the roll of Isaiah and the prophets; let not Timothy forget them, for there are songs of prisoners in those inspired prophetic rolls. And let Timothy remember that St. Paul wants to see his face again. I. HERE IS ABSENCE OF MURMURING. We may and ought to learn what the gospel can achieve. Here is Paul prevented from preaching, with arrest laid on all his missionary work. In a dreary Roman dungeon he is "persecuted, but not forsaken;" "struck down, but not destroyed." Yet mark this - he never suffered one murmuring word to pass his lips. II. HERE IS PRESENCE OF GREETING. He would cheer Timothy, and sends him various greetings, from the Roman saints, as we may see by their names - Eubulus, Pudens, Linus, and Claudia, and all the brethren - send greeting. What sublime self-abnegation there was in St. Paul! Forgetful always of himself! How like the Master! In the hour of expected dissolution he is thinking only of others. - W.M.S. Parallel Verses KJV: Do thy diligence to come before winter. Eubulus greeteth thee, and Pudens, and Linus, and Claudia, and all the brethren. |
    |