The Apostle Paul was the anti-christ according to the first Christians
Well that's the kind
of issue facing Paul --
"I got these people lining up to
be baptised as Christians;
Do I have to tell them they've also
got to be circumcised and,
“No More ham-sandwiches!”...?
-- because if I DO,
They're Gonna LEAVE,
and it....
....can it really BE
that important ....?"
The Agenda of Paul
There were significant differences
in The Agenda of Jesus
to that of Paul — one of
the most important verses
in The New Testament
is Matthew 5:17 --
In 5:17 , Jesus states
why He is Here - -
Matthew 5:17-19 says, “Uh,
Don't think I came to abolish The Law and The Prophets;
I came not to abolish them but to fulfill them;
It would be easier for Heaven and Earth to pass away
than for a jot or tittle to pass away from The Law —
The Law that he is referring to is The Torah,
which is the first five books of The Hebrew Bible,
and what Christians called ‘The Old Testament’;
The Hebrew Bible and The Prophets Jesus
speaks of comprise The Foundation of Judaism —
Jesus is saying, ‘Think not that I have come
to challenge Judaism but to fulfill it —
Jesus was A Reformer; His Mission was
to bring The Jews back to the old ways of Theology —
He goes on to say, “You change not
a jot or a tittle in Scripture —”
What does that mean?
That means, that — a jot, and a tittle, are :
the little decorative squigglies that you put
onto a Hebrew Letter : He says, “You don't change a —
he doesn't say, “You don't change a Law,
You don't change a philosophy or a thought or a paragraph or a word or even a letter you don't change the tiniest little part of the law or the prophets you change nothing this is what he wanted to get back to that practice of of of what the scriptures say because Jesus is depicted as rebutting in advance Christian beliefs about what Jesus came to do Paul says the exact opposite of Jesus Paul could not convince Jews that Jesus was divine so he went outside of Israel to the Gentiles a gentile is anyone who is not a Jew and wasn't getting any place again for two main reasons number one was the dietary law he restricted the things that they enjoyed and ate all the time but the biggest one was the circumcision law in the first century or so most all Christians were Jews but Paul said you don't have to keep the Jewish law that's a legalism and you're saved by the blood of Christ not by keeping the Jewish law so that he admitted Gentiles without circumcising them without requiring them to observe Jewish dietary policies or going to the synagogue on Saturday as a result there developed what we call today two confessions or two denominations Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians but it took a long time for that bation to take place a lot of the so-called Gentile Christian Church were Jews but they didn't continue observing Jewish practices thanks to Paul but the point that I'm making is that Jesus says I'm here for this and Paul says I'm here for that Jesus says you change absolutely nothing and and he brings it to an extreme uh degree and Paul says we don't have to obey those cursor laws Jesus has freed us from them of course that's not what Jesus said Remember the word apostle was reserved for those who were with Jesus and witnessed his doings Paul claimed to be an apostle and the Christian Church calls him an apostle even even though he was not involved or even knew Jesus he had died long before Paul well if you take uh the conventional Christian Lutheran sort of a view of of Paul he is uh a convert from Judaism to Christianity Paul not only becomes a follower of the sect he persecuted but imagines himself to be an apostle and an authority on Jesus out of nowhere the guy says you know I'm not only a Christian I'm an apostle I'm on the level with the guys that Jesus actually taught and uh he however it happens he doesn't say in the Epistles uh the stories in Acts of the Damascus Road are transparently borrowed from the conversions of uh pantheus in Ides the Baki and uh heliodorus in second mccabes chapter 3 well-known works of the time but however it happened he he becomes a uh a Christian and decides that uh the Torah is no longer binding that Jews uh may keep it if they wish but they're they're grossly mistaken even to the point of spiritual Peril if they think they must he describes himself as being uh Born Into the Jewish tradition but he does not think we we should follow the law as Christians and he's being opposed there by sephus a lot of people say it's Peter um who was an actual disciple of Christ now in any argument between Peter and Paul guess who would have the advantage right it wouldn't be Paul it would be Peter Peter could say to Paul all the time listen uh Paul I was with Jesus I was a friend of Jesus and you are an interloper you you never even met the guy right uh so who are you to tell me what Jesus thought I was there and you weren't --
"So it's in actuality interesting that this NON-Disciple of Jesus ended up being so dominant in early Christianity because you know he never met Jesus by his own account -- everything he got uh he got from Revelation.
How are we to verify that Jesus actually revealed anything to Paul...?
"....and clearly a lot of the early Christians did not agree with him so Paul insists in Galatians that he was sent by the resurrected Christ and made the point,
"Hey, I'm as much sent as you are, and if you knew Jesus before the crucifixion that doesn't make a bit of difference everything is NEW now!" in second Corinthians --
"...now, this seems to be the tip of an iceberg,
though, where he's trying to decide a larger issue :
If these Gentiles, who really LIKE our new religion
want to join but don't want to become Jews --
and this is very common, there were loads of Greeks and Romans
going to the synagogue every Sabbath and they said, "This is great!,
This is better than the Pagan garbage we were brought up with,
these bed hopping deities and so on, these people
have a real uh uh Faith, here, but uh --
To tell you the truth,
I don't want to get circumcised,
I don't want to stop having shrimp
cocktails and ham-sandwiches --
Uh, you mind if I just attend and listen
to the scripture and the sermon....?"
Jews say, "Come on, no problem!
Uh, You're not Jews, but that's alright --"
Well that's the kind of issue facing Paul --
"I got these people lining up
to be baptised as Christians;
Do I have to tell them they've also
got to be circumcised, and no more
ham-sandwiches --"...
-- because if I DO,
They're Going to LEAVE, and it....
....can it BE that important ....?"
this raised a huge problem with the ebionites they said look I mean uh it may not be the most important thing but Jesus is the Jewish Messiah I mean what what's the last thing you think the Jewish Messiah is gonna do is say let's let's just drop the Torah of Moses we don't know there's no way this is all right it's the least of The Commandments but there's no way that Jewish Messiah is going to say that Jewish law is unimportant so they said this Paul is an antichrist he's a false Apostle he's a servant of the devil especially the ebionites oh they really hated him but Matthew did too but remember what Jesus said I keep saying Matthew 5:17 think not that I have come to destroy the law or the prophets but to fulfill them and then he goes on he says you change nothing so critically if somebody today wanted to be a true advocate of Jesus he'd be a Jew that's what Jesus was if he wanted to be like Jesus he'd be a Jew
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