What does Acts 20:25 mean?

When Paul planted a church, he usually returned to it several times. He visited the churches in Galatia three or four times, the churches in Macedonia at least three, and Corinth at least twice: once for eighteen months and once for three months. Ephesus is a little different. He first visited the city for one synagogue visit, then returned to plant the church and build it for three years. Now, he is meeting with the elders in a different city for a few hours before he returns to Jerusalem. He will not see them again.

This is the very end of Paul's third missionary journey. Tradition says he takes a fourth journey, but scholars disagree as to what that means. Those who say Paul dies during his one and only imprisonment in Rome call his fateful sea voyage to Rome his "fourth" journey. More likely, however, Paul is released from prison (2 Timothy 4:16–17) and completes another trip before his second imprisonment and corresponding death.

After Paul is acquitted in Rome, he seems to sail to Crete (Titus 1:5) and then to Nicopolis (Titus 3:12) on the western coast of Greece, west and slightly north of Athens. From there, legend says he goes to Spain and possibly even Britain before returning to Rome for his final, and fatal, imprisonment. If he wrote 2 Timothy during his second imprisonment, it sounds like he goes to Troas, Corinth, and Miletus not long before (2 Timothy 4:13, 20). We don't know for certain if he ever reaches Spain (Romans 15:24).

Paul's work is not in vain, however. The church in Ephesus stands until 1923. After the Turkish war, the ethnic Greeks left Turkey, taking their church with them. Although these Ephesian elders never see Paul again, generations after served Paul's God.