“Paul spent the ten years from AD 47 to 57 in intensive evangelization of the territories east and west of the Aegean Sea. During those years he concentrated in succession on the Roman provinces of Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia and Asia. Along the main roads of these provinces and in their principal cities the gospel had been preached and churches had been planted. Paul took with proper seriousness his commission as Christ’s apostle among the Gentiles, and now he might well contemplate with grateful praise not (he would have said) what he had done, but what Christ had done through him. His first great plan of campaign was concluded. The churches he had planted in Iconium, Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Ephesus and many another city in those four provinces could be left to the care of their spiritual leaders, under the overruling direction of the Holy Spirit. …show more content…
During the winter of AD 56-57, which he spent at Corinth in the home of his friend and convert Gaius, he looked forward to visit which had to be paid to Jerusalem in the immediate future – for he had to see to the handing over to the elders of the church there of a gift of money which he had been organizing for some time past among his Gentile converts, a gift which he hoped would strengthen the bond of Christian love between the mother church in Judaea and the churches of the Gentiles. When that business had been transacted, Paul looked forward to the launching of a plan, which had been taking shape in his mind over the past few years. He must find fresh fields to conquer for Christ. His choice fell on Spain, the oldest Roman province in the west and the chief bastion of Roman civilization in that part of the