PAUL THE APOSTLE MAKES A PATHETIC ATTEMPT TO SELF-VALIDATE
Paul gave us more Christian doctrine than Jesus. The teaching on love is more to do with him than Jesus. He claimed to be an apostle or authorised speaker for Jesus but some doubted that. He is the only one who wrote about Jesus appearing to him himself. The rest were all written about by others.
In 1 Corinthians 9 he says that he saw Jesus the Lord and that if he is not an apostle to others he is to them for they are the good fruits of his ministry. He is saying then that the evidence that he was telling the truth about Jesus was in the converts God gave him. He believed that the Holy Spirit not him was the one that made people respond to his message. He then argued that his reluctance to live off his ministry proved his sincerity.
All false prophets have argued that the good fruits that followed them prove they are God’s men – and considering that Paul did not combat slavery and told married men to live as if they had no wives the good fruits would not have been very impressive. What about the bad fruits we are not told about? The good fruits of the Mormon Church are to be plainly seen but still they were founded by a false and untruthful though good-natured prophet.
Plus Paul shows he did not know that Jesus said that the man who hides his good works and is found out by accident is the real good man not the one that broadcasts his virtues. Paul is trying to centre his religion on his own merits which shows there was nothing else to base it on. There was nothing only visions and the testimony of the witnesses to these visions and the merits of the witnesses to go on.
The other apostles regarded Paul as a fake for he could have said they were real prophets and testified that he was a true prophet too. That would have been better than trying to come across as bleached Boy Scout.
He said that he loved the Corinthians and would never take anything from them and was happy to milk money out of other Churches and boasted that he gave the Corinthians the gospel without cost (2 Corinthians 11:5, 7-12). Not much to boast about after all! He said he boasted that he did not take money from the Corinthians to show up the rival apostles who charged. He was cheating.
He offered a fabrication as evidence for having seen the risen Jesus! And an obvious one at that! It is no wonder that we read in 2 Timothy 1:15 that everybody in Asia turned away from him and then we find that they turned away from him but not Jesus for the author of the Revelation wrote a nice letter blessing the Christians in Asia.
As with the rest of the apostles (Acts 5), it is plain that there was money to be made from the Jesus story. It was easier for them all to preach and live by it than to work as fishermen and tentmakers so they had a reason to lie about Jesus rising. Like all Christian leaders, when the apostles asked for money they were saying, “Give us money because Jesus rose from the dead so that the message will be known.” I have no hesitation in accusing them then of religious theft for there are millions of evidences that they have no right to centre in on the resurrection of Jesus. One would need immeasurable knowledge of the world and its other gods and miracles to be able to say that this one was the credible sign from God. The dishonesty is disturbing and even seeing Jesus risen cannot do one thing to alleviate it.
In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul lies through his teeth and proves that his evidence for the resurrection and his reporting of other people’s evidence cannot be trusted. First he says he will boast about a man who had many visions and revelations fourteen years before but he will not boast about himself. Then he indicates that he is the man that had these experiences so he totally contradicts himself. Then he boasts again that he will not boast and then he says that if he boasted about his visions it would not be folly for he would only be speaking the truth! In other words, he boasted. That is a boast. He was trying to unduly impress the naïve with his alleged humility to get them to trust him and his alleged revelations – this was the man who had the nerve to take money from them which makes him no better than a thief! He was a shady character. Paul boasted of his weaknesses one of which was being persecuted - that is an example of the very type of boasting he stated was morally wrong and which he condemned rival apostles for. He also claimed that the Lord had succeeded in preventing him being too proud about the revelations he got by sending him an angel of Satan to persecute him. Didn’t know that Satan and Jesus were such great pals! Satan would soon give up if he saw he was doing Paul and God a favour unless is Paul is hinting that the Lord Jesus and Paul and co were all into the black arts.
Worse Paul said that the Lord Jesus told him in a vision that the demonic angel was helping him which means that his visions of Jesus were not reliable for they gave false information. Then the weirdo crowns the whole farcical piece of writing by stating again that he boasts in his weaknesses for they make him so holy and close to God! If that boasting is not wrong then no boasting is wrong. He had little concern as well for children who were being sexually abused by Christian ministers when he stated that the law God gave Moses was still to be kept which stated that at least two independent witnesses are needed to establish a judicial fact (2 Corinthians 13:1). Of necessity, cases like that can’t have two witnesses who can testify legally and validly. Would you trust the vision stories of a man like that who taught crap? The apostles were no better for they were happy enough with his mission as a missionary. So all their visions were unreliable. Their visions then have nothing to do with helping us believe that Jesus rose for that is totally out of their element.
