The reason the question has no effect on me is because I really can’t see an answer coming from any place besides speculation.
Any place that you want to go, you mean.
I've been all but beating you over the head with the answer for months now.
My answer would be the same reason he chose Moses. Right man for the job.
What? No, no, no!
I'm not asking you about what Saul's qualifications (or lack thereof) were!
Is it possible that the point of the question escapes you?
Who was Moses replacing? Who was already in place with a full three years of first person training from the incarnate God Himself that Moses was stepping along side of? Who was it that had been super-naturally indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God Himself in direct fulfillment of prophecy that Moses was stepping all over with a message that he had to and explain to them?
There is zero - zero parallel between Moses and Paul that has anything to do with why I am asking the question.
If Paul had simply been "the right man for the job" you might think that since God had separated him from his mother's womb for this ministry that Jesus might have brought him along side and made him an apostle like he did the others.
The fact is, frankly, that I do not believe that you didn't get the point of the question. This was your attempt at avoiding it by trying to turn it into something else.
Besides that, I fail to see how it proves he was given a different gospel. I see he was given a different audience but not a different gospel.
That doesn't help you either.
If someone where to ask you outside the context of this discussion who the audience of the Twelve Apostles are in the New Testament, you'd instantly say that believers are. You wouldn't hesitate for one second to give that answer and you wouldn't qualify it by making any distinction between Jewish believers vs. gentile believers. Your mind would instantly go to the great commission an the phrase "all the world". But now, you're stuck because you just got through telling me that they had a different audience than Paul's and so that is no longer an option because the whole world is Paul's audience, both Jew and Greek alike. So who's left to be the "different audience" of the Twelve?
I see the same thing and that is exactly why I strive to challenge what I understand to be truth. I don’t want to blindly follow what I was taught from youth. That’s why I have joined in the discussion on this site. If mad is truth, I want to know it but as you have figured out, I have since come to the conclusion mad is not truth. It creates too many problems that can't be answered.
No it doesn't but this statement made something click for me. It goes back to our original discussion, which I suggest you go back a read through because I just realized that we haven't pushed passed your paradigm yet - not even close. The fact that you can claim the Mid-Acts Dispensationalism creates problems at all is proof of it.
The error that you are making is critiquing one paradigm from within another. It is a subtle form of
question begging. In other words, the problems you see being created are only problems if your paradigm is true. In fact, one probably has to hold to your paradigm to even see the problems you speak of.
If you are genuinely searching for the objective truth, which I believe you when you say you are, then you must must must guard your mind against making this error. That, of course, is way easier to say than it is to do because your paradigm itself is what will prevent you from detecting when doing it. All you can do (that I can think of) is to become very much more methodical. Question the premise of every question. You have to always be asking yourself whether whatever objection you're thinking of would exist outside your paradigm.
A clue, that even I have been missing up to now, is when someone can't seem to understand where in the world your questions are coming from or why you keep asking the same question again and again in spite of one's best effort at giving a direct answer. Discussing paradigm level issues is very much like having a discussion where there is a language barrier or even a culture barrier where lots of concepts have very different implications in a hundred different directions.
At this point I stick around mostly to challenge those who are willing but I still and always will continuing to challenge what I believe. I gotsta know.
No argument from me on that point.
It is difficult if not impossible. That’s why I wanted to start at the beginning and keep it simple before moving on.
What you've picked to focus on is not the beginning. It's beginning of the dispensation perhaps but that's much nearer the end of the story than it is the beginning. It is, in fact, a detail. What you need to do is to forget the details for now and focus on getting a view of the big picture. Then the details become easy.
:doh: WHY OH WHY DIDN'T I SEE THIS EARLIER! :doh:
I really must be slipping!
Look, you very simply have to get your hands on Bob Enyart's, The Plot. The working title of that book (if I remember the story correctly) was "The Big Picture". The whole purpose of that book is to give a wide angle overview of the plot line of the whole bible. A fair chunk of it has been presented here in conceptual form but in the book, Bob takes the time to establish each point biblically. A task that is well outside the scope of this forum. Bob does not start by focusing on some particular detail of doctrine. Most theology books are written to tell you what the author thinks about a certain doctrine or set of doctrines. That isn't the point of this book. It does go into detail about several doctrines but not until after it had laid the foundation of showing you the big picture context of the bible overall (i.e. "The Plot" - of the bible.) The danger now is that this very discussion has inoculated you against the whole idea but, be that as it may, you need to see the arguments for yourself. You need to read that book.
There's only one "all the world" (Mark 16:15).
Resting in Him,
Cletes
