I’m beginning to think so.
it's not impossible but I doubt it.
Just apply the same action to any leader.
Let's say, for example, that you're the founder and CEO of a new corporation that prints bibles. But this isn't just any corporation because you aren't just any CEO. You're the smartest and wisest leader any corporation have ever had or ever could have. Everything you say, do or even think is exactly the right thing - perfect. You set about hand picking a team and then spend the next three years training them on everything there is to know about printing and distributing bibles to the whole world. Then, for one reason or another, you decide that you've got business that needs taken care of elsewhere and you leave the running of your organization to this inner-circle team. But you don't leave them to it by themselves, you send your bother, your identical twin brother, who knows everything you know and is every bit as smart and wise as you are to guide them in their decisions. With him in place, it's like you're not even gone.
So, they start off doing the bible making/distribution thing great! I mean sales couldn't hardly be any better. Thousands are being sold in a single day.
In response to this terrific track record, you decide to bench the entire inner circle team, telling them to settle down and focus on things closer to home because you've decided to send this other guy who, just last year, was trying to have them all killed and stomp out the bible making business altogether. This freshly murderous new convert is now your new number one and he's going to go, without any training whatsoever, and take over world operations.
It's absurd on its face. Something changed or Paul is a fraud.
True. Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Jew and Gentile alike are sinners.
So then why'd you say it? You answer that next...
The reason I say a different audience is because of previous MAD conversations about Gal. 2:7. Paul and the 12 would preach the gospel to anyone. I believe the 12 had a lot of work in and around Jerusalem. Paul was not accepted there so he was the perfect man to take it on the road.
So what you are doing is living with a contradiction because of a problem text that exists within your paradigm.
You say there is a different audience because of what the bible flatly states in Gal. 2 but compartmentalize that just enough to not see that, in your theological paradigm, there is no 2nd audience for Paul to go to. All the world is all the world. Jerusalem is not all the world. Jesus didn't send the Twelve to Jerusalem, He sent them to all the world. And yet they didn't go to all the world, they, in fact, didn't end up going anywhere. They ministered to their converts in Jerusalem.
WHY DID THEY DO THAT?
Here are just a few of the problems I see MAD create.
Daniel and Jesus are false prophets.
No they aren't. Good grief man! Seriously?
Do you really think that we'd hold to doctrines that turned Daniel and Jesus Christ Himself into false prophets?
I'm almost certain I know what you're driving at here and I'm leaving it alone. I'm not going to be dragged off into the weeds again. Suffice it to say that it isn't at all true and that I'd wager that your understanding of "false prophet" is wrong anyway, even from within your own paradigm.
Did you say this because I warned you not to say such things?
Poisoning the well is irrational. When you do it on purpose, its also a lie.
Where is the earthly kingdom in Jesus's teaching Israel and saying it’s at hand?
This wasn't worded well. There's more than one thing you could be asking.
God didn't give Israel their Kingdom because they (corporately speaking) hated the King. (see Jeremiah 18 and Romans 9)
I do try to question everything but when people tell me a passage doesn’t mean what it says, I’m going to be skeptical.
Of course, but the point is that paradigms are tricky things to deal with because they will alter BOTH what a passage says and means.
Great analogy. It does seem like a different language. Based on your answers, your not really getting my point either.
My struggle isn't see your point. I see your paradigm very clearly. Not because I'm super smart or anything but just simply because I used to live within your paradigm. I used to see everything you see. I fully understand why you see it and why it so difficult to see past.
That is exactly what I do. I would suggest you are looking at the trees and not the forest.
15 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.
9 What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin,
:rotfl:
That surely had to be a joke!
If it wasn't, you're much further away than I thought. You just made a claim and then quoted a passage that proves the claim false. You can't see it but its true.
Help me to see it your way but based on what Paul says to the Corinthians, they were separating themselves based on who converted them, I follow Paul, I follow Peter.
Why would they have done such a thing?
You've said those Peter converted were in Christ but different than those converted by Paul.
Quite so. "In Christ" being a synonym for having put their faith in Christ, yes.
Wouldn't that justify their separating themselves?
No, of course it wouldn't!
Is Christ divided? (Sarcasm)
Pauls converts were in the body in Christ but Peters were just in Christ and not in the body?
Precisely. Those converted in the previous dispensation (by Peter) were not in the Body of Christ. They remained members of the Kingdom of Israel.
When you say two separate groups, I assume you mean in Christ at one time?
I mean that there is no way to become a member of the Kingdom of Israel today. It makes no difference what your ethnicity is. If you put your faith in Christ today, you are a member of the Body of Christ - period. There is no other option.
Resting in Him,
Clete
