Now who in the world could this person be? Those are pretty strong words indeed.
What sincere and dedicated Christian could attribute those words to the very one person to whom goes most of the credit for writing the New Testament. Yep, I’m talking about Paul, the apostle, or at least Paul goes to great pains to show that he was indeed the “most chief apostle”?
Paul begs the question I Corinthians 9:1, “Am I not an apostle“? In I Corinthians 15:9, Paul asks, “Don’t I deserve to be called an apostle“? Me thinks he asks too much, and why?
Is Paul the one to whom the Dead Sea Scrolls speak of as the LIAR? Isn’t Paul the one to whom James, John, and Peter accused of lying to them about what he had been preaching to the Gentiles: also accusing him of betraying the teachings of Moses and forsaking the Torah. Did not the Roman invasion, the murder of James, and the fall of Jerusalem enshrine Paul as the Father of Christianity? Otherwise, Paul would have been a footnote in history.
Sometimes history has to tweaked a bit- for obvious (and not so obvious) reasons.
Paul’s attempted murder of James (he only received two broken legs from being thrown down the temple steps by Paul) nearly cost him his own life
Don’t let the later redactions, the cow-towing to Rome, and the soft peddling of the disagreements between Paul and the First Christian Church of Jerusalem be so easily swept under the rug. Had it not also been because of Paul’s Roman citizenship, he would have been stoned to death by Jesus’ brother and the “three pillars of Jerusalem”!
That Paul took the teachings of Jesus in a new direction isn’t all bad, but let’s be honest about what the TRUTH is because without it (John 8:32) we’ll never be FREE!
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