bluegreenearth wrote: ↑Wed Jun 23, 2021 3:17 pm
In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul asserts the following:
But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.
- Are there any other New Testament texts or extra-Biblical records that explicitly describe these imposter Apostles that Paul was warning about?
- If the role of a Christian Apostle during the time of Paul was an extremely risky and often deadly business as many apologists routinely suggest to me, then why would any non-Christian be so duplicitous as to identify as an Apostle of Christ?
- What were the financial incentives for impersonating a Christian Apostle and would they have been enough to justify the nearly constant threat of imprisonment, torture, and execution that many apologists argue was the expected fate of many early Christians?
- Was the privilege of being perceived as an Apostle by an extremely small minority of Christians worth experiencing an apparently continuous amount of persecution from nearly everyone else?
- If not for money or fame, what other possible and reasonable motivations would a 1st century non-Christian have to impersonate an Apostle of Christ?
- Could a 1st century Roman citizen who was falsely claiming to be a Christian Apostle be reasonably compared with a 21st century Iranian citizen falsely claiming to be an LGBTQ+ advocate?
- Was there a demonstrably reliable method any average early Christian could employ to objectively distinguish between a genuine Apostle and an imposter Apostle for them to have confidently ruled-out the possibility that Paul was an imposter Apostle?
The other text about false apostles which comes to mind is Revelation 2:2, whereas there were false apostles in the city were Paul preached (Ephesus). Actually I know of no other so called apostles who preached in that city. Like ISIS followers, people blow themselves up to kill others because of a demented spirit. Paul's friend, Satan, walked with Paul in the form of a thorn in the side. As for the money side of the equation, Paul, like present day preachers, collect money for the widows in Jerusalem, and keep their cut. I just got a letter requesting money for Jewish widows. I checked out the charity, and it seemed they had a low % going to the poor. As for "Christianity", the "Christian" church is the product of Paul's false gospel of grace. Paul's downfall was using his relationship with Herod to get into bed with Nero, but when Herod fell out of favor with Nero, Paul was quickly garroted and buried outside of Rome. Paul's amigo Peter, whose teachings clashed with Paul in Rome, also became a victim of the clash between him and Paul, which caused strive in Rome, eventually bringing about his own death, as prophesized in Isaiah 22, as the holder of the keys of David. Not to say that Peter claimed to speak for God/prophesize, but his words (visions of clean and unclean) (Zechariah 13), kind of put him in that category of speaking for God when the Roman church (daughter of Babylon) but his speech into their canon. Peter was ultimately cast into a "vast country" (Rome) and deposed (Isaiah 22:18-19). Peter was not described as a "false prophet" per se, but was given the description of "worthless shepherd" (Zechariah 14). Those two, the two horns of the beast (Revelation 13), would be considered foundational stones (foundation of sand)(Mt 7) of the "Christian" church. They would represent the "lawless" (Paul), and the "stumbling blocks" (Peter) (Mt 13:41), which would be gathered out at the end of the age.
