PAUL SAYS AUTHORITY NOT VISIONS OR EVIDENCE COUNTS
Paul the main founder of Christianity and its promoter and first writer, was no use as a witness for Jesus. He was an apostle who supposedly knew the risen Jesus well and was getting teachings from him.
Why? Because his extreme arrogance and bias was evident
when he declared in Galatians that even if he himself changed his
gospel, gospel means good news, and even if an angel from Heaven
came with any different doctrine that both should be held to be
accursed and unworthy of being listened to. Galatians 1:8, 9: “But
even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel
contrary to and different from that which we preached to you, let
him be accursed (anathema, devoted to destruction, doomed to eternal
punishment). As we said before, so I now say again, If anyone is
preaching to you a gospel different from or contrary to that which
you received from us, let him be accursed” Amplified Bible. In other
words, nobody’s visions were any good unless they supported what he
was saying. Christians say he was being hypothetical but people
would have seen visions of angels contradicting Paul for he
complained about rivals having visions so that is out. He was saying
that even if God sent an angel to contradict Paul, God should be
ignored. This is clear evidence of insanity and dishonesty. The fact
that Paul admitted that his gospel is full of mystery, seeming
contradictions, makes the whole thing worse for it puts a curse on
anybody who has visions in aid of a more coherent looking gospel. He
condemns rival gospels, remember these are gospels, they offer a
message of hope and comfort so Paul was condemning all religious
consolation and comfort that didn’t fit his vision of what a gospel
should be. If a gospel failed to offer hope it would get no
followers.
Paul wrote that some were going over from his gospel to a different
and even an opposed gospel (Galatians 1:6) but there can’t be any
other gospel (1:7) and they are distorting the gospel of Christ
(1:7). So what many of them were doing was just disagreeing with
parts of the gospel. He says his gospel is the gospel of Christ.
This letter opposes any attempt to undermine the idea that salvation
is by faith alone without good works. This is what it means
primarily by the gospel of Christ. But the gospel Jesus never taught
that doctrine so he is another Jesus from that of the early Church.
Paul is dogmatic on this point, deny that Jesus has done it all and
say he has done most of it or nearly all of it so you need to do
some good works to be saved and what you have is not a gospel. Then
any alteration means a gospel is not good news though it says it is,
it leads to eternal damnation. This epistle proves that Protestants
who believe Paul’s gospel cannot consort with the Roman Catholic
Church which adds good works and sacraments to faith as a condition
of salvation. Get it wrong on justification you end up unsaved and
damned which is why he tolerates no dissent at all.
He said anybody who teaches anything different from his gospel is to
be condemned, he did not say those who were doing the misleading
which would leave room for having pity instead of wrath towards the
preacher who was misled but not willingly misleading people. The
Vatican II Catholicism which teaches this distinction then is
heretical and is the basis for it is dropping the appellation
heretics for modern Protestants. Paul’s bigotry is a sign of being
on unsure ground, he acted sure but he wasn’t but whatever was going
to happen he was going to focus on acquiring power for himself and
rank as the best apostle of Jesus. He was going to scare people into
agreeing with his gospel because there was no evidence to help.
There was no real Jesus who did real miracles and all he had was an
apparition that claimed to be of a man who died on a cross for sins
and rose again.
Paul and his preachers had been saying that even an angel altering
the gospel should be accursed for a long time for he says “We” and
they must have been saying the same thing themselves when he was so
sure they were with him on this one. That means he knew what people
would think of it, he knew how nasty and arrogant and bigoted it
sounded for he would have been told often enough. Paul and his
evangelists were evil men who practiced a form of religion but
inwardly denied its power the thing they accused their rivals of
doing. Paul said the Galatians were told it before so his Church
made a point of declaring that even God himself should be ignored if
he taught anything that didn’t fit the gospel. He was saying that no
matter what evidence you got that the gospel was wrong you should
ignore it. He says later on that this gospel is the one taught by
the Jerusalem apostles as well. So they all agreed then that
evidence didn’t matter, but agreeing with their interpretation did.
Is this the kind of cooking pot you would see a true gospel story of
Jesus’ life incubating in? Could the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John be anything other than clever lies when a Church like that
wrote them? Could any of the witnesses of the risen Jesus really be
relied on when evidence meant nothing to them but believing a
message just because they wanted to believe it did? The early Church
was a hotbed of authoritarianism by the apostles and fanaticism in
the converts. The gospel Jesus however says that man was not made
for the Sabbath and that leaders should really be slaves and what
has the Jesus of Paul’s Church in common with this one? One of them
is a fabrication if not both.
Whatever the truth is, the Church and Paul put the focus on
apostolic authority, not on evidence and not on visions. In other
words, they wanted people to believe in Jesus NOT because they saw
him but because they said he rose and had the authority from him to
say it. This is totally irrational, manipulative and dishonest.
Their game was to climb the ladder and be above other people.
Authority not revelation is the real focus with revelation just
being a decoy and a bait to get this authority respected. To believe
in their visions is simply blasphemy.
“Now to Him Who is able to strengthen you in the faith which is in
accordance with my Gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ
according to the revelation (the unveiling) of the mystery of the
plan of redemption which was kept in silence and secret for long
ages, But is now disclosed and through the prophetic Scriptures is
made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal
God, [to win them] to obedience to the faith” (Romans 16:25,26).
Amplified Bible.
Notice that Paul wants them to strengthen their faith by going to
the Old Testament prophecies. This then was considered the best way
to see the evidence not listening to accounts of apparitions of
Jesus or looking for miracles he did or even pondering Jesus’
teaching. This is irreconcilable with the gospel portrait of a Jesus
who wants to be known by himself. It is irreconcilable with the idea
of a Jesus who lived recently and who was known as a man. It also
shows that if it could be proved that the prophecies didn’t say
those things then the apostles thought it right to say they were
deluded in their apparitions. It is important to know as well that
it was hard for the people he was writing to, for them to research
the scriptures. Checking out Jesus through investigators would have
been tons easier. When an experienced teacher like Paul still
directs them to do what is so hard when there should be easier ways
if Jesus really did what the gospels said he did it is clear that it
was the only way.
Also he speaks of the mystery of redemption as a secret. Something
you don’t tell is not necessarily a secret. A secret is what you
work at keeping hidden. Paul means it was kept hidden. Also Jesus
didn’t redeem till he was crucified and raised. So you may say the
redemption wasn’t finished until he rose again. It’s not much of a
redemption from sin and death that just wipes the slate clean which
is why Paul wrote that Jesus rose again for us to make us holy just
as he died for us to make us clean (Romans 6:8;7:4;5:10). God kept
the secret until the redemption for when people were saved and had
their sins taken away they had light from God. Paul speaks of this
light in several places. Not only does it incline believers who are
truly converted to do good but to see it and understand God and
God’s scriptures for the Holy Spirit dwells in them. The secret then
was not revealed during the life of Christ but at his resurrection
appearances. Some converted then and got the Holy Spirit and began
to see Jesus in the Old Testament and see what must have happened to
him.
Paul said that the mystery of how Christ redeemed us was never known
before but was revealed by divine command through the prophecies of
scripture in Paul’s time. The Christians always claimed that Jesus
and how he saved us by his cross and resurrection were predicted by
the Old Testament writings. They say that Paul doesn’t say that
Jesus and the plan were revealed only through the prophecies. But it
is possible he meant that all the same. Paul said that it was his
gospel that was revealed through these writings and predictions
ending the silence and the secrecy of the plan. So the plan was not
revealed by apparitions of Jesus or by Jesus himself for that would
mean they showed what the plan was not the scriptures. Remember the
plan was showed by the scriptures. What Jesus did was prove and
reveal what the scriptures meant so that the plan became plainly
seen from the scriptures.
The alleged resurrection apparitions may have helped people see the
plan in scripture but what is important is what scripture says. This
seems to be telling us that the foundation of the religion was what
the religion thought it read in scripture not apparitions or a
Jesus. If Jesus was known as a man Paul would not have written this
way. If Jesus was known only as an apparition that needed to be
checked out by scripture that would be different. But the picture we
get from all this is that the existence of Jesus and his death and
resurrection were worked out from scripture FIRST and then the
apparitions took place not as evidence but as confirmation or a
complement to scripture.
The purpose of the visions was to draw attention not to themselves
but to the scriptures. They had the same role as private revelations
have in Roman Catholicism. For example, if Jesus appears today he is
not giving new revelation but simply helping the Church focus on
revelation already given.
There is no historical evidence for Jesus. There were only attempts
to fabricate such evidence when the Church became established.