Acts 20:25 - Exposition

Went about for have gone, A.V.; kingdom for kingdom of God, A.V. and T.R. I know that ye all , etc. It is a very perplexing question whether St. Paul in this statement spake with prophetic, and therefore infallible, foreknowledge, or whether he merely expressed the strong present conviction of his own mind, that he should never return to Asia again. The question is an important one, as the authenticity of the pastoral Epistles is in a great measure bound up with it. For, in the apparent failure of all hypotheses to bring the writing of them within the time of St. Luke's narrative, prior to St. Paul's journey to Rome, we are driven to the theory which places the writing of them, and the circumstances to which they allude, to a time subsequent to St. Paul's imprisonment at Rome. But this involves the supposition that St. Paul returned to Ephesus after his release from his Roman imprisonment ( 1 Timothy 1:3 ; 1 Timothy 4:14 ; 2 Timothy 1:15 , 2 Timothy 1:18 ; 2 Timothy 4:9-14 , 2 Timothy 4:19 ; Titus 1:5 ), and consequently that St. Paul's anticipation, that he was in Asia for the last lime, was not realized. The question is well discussed by Alford, in the 'Prolegomena to the Pastoral Epistles,' and in Paley's 'Horae Paulinae,' Acts 11:1-30 . But it can hardly be said to be definitively settled (see above, note to Acts 11:15 ). Bengel thinks the explanation may be that most of those present were dead or dispersed when Paul returned some years later.