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Showing content with the highest reputation on 02/02/2010 in all areas

  1. I think I get what you're trying to do here as far as getting people to think through something that may have simply been accepted blindly. I'm not going to offer a lengthy defense as to the authenticity of the Pauline Epistles because frankly, I'll doubt that I'll put forth anything you haven't heard yourself hundreds of times. A cursory study of church history will shed some definite light on these questions. Church history is fairly easy to study. I believe you will find there are others who give testimony as to the authenticity of Paul's writings. Not the least of which is the Apostle Peter who refers to Paul's writings as "scripture". The very fact that the early Christians valued Paul's writings enough to protect them is also testament as to how his writings were regarded. It was Luke who wrote Acts and gave testimony as to conduct of Paul and speaks loudly to his "personal credibility". How? By example to be sure, but it's clearly stated the Apostles respected him and offered him the "right hand of fellowship". Ya gotta drop all the rot in TWI about "The Rise and Expansion of the Christian Church" which IMO is an assassination on the characters of the other Apostles. You're correct about there being scholars out there who now believe that Ephesians was actually written in the 4th century. My only answer to that is that it's a "Johnny-come-lately" theory. This whole concept of "Man of God for Our Day and Time" is rubbish. Wierwille wanted to be considered that so he could fleece the flock and he claimed Paul was the MOG for his day and time. He wasn't. Paul postulated over and over again that Jesus Christ was the center of Christianity. I say all that to say that there is no evidence to suggest that Paul was the Wierwille of his day and time. He was held in high regard by the established church leadership and the church followers. The early Christian church was not a Way Tree. There were different areas like Asia, Galatia, and Rome, and Antioch and they pretty much stood on their own. They didn't get SNS tapes from Paul or from Jerusalem. If Paul had been a "loose cannon" and a womanizer he would have simply been rejected and run out of town on a rail.
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  2. If you are referring to the the order of the NT books, VP's claim that the 7 Church Epistles were always in a particular order was a complete fabrication. It was years, like a least a hundred years, before teachers started to put any of the writings together in what is called a "codex". If my understanding is correct, codices were the precursor to books. The letters, or epistles were separate writings as you know. I believe it was a man named Marcion that introduced the first codex, and I'm not sure which writings he included. I'm writing this from memory. Anyway, this flap that Wierwille taught that Romans was doctrinal, I and II Corinthians were reproof and Galatians was correction is simply false since the church in fact did not have the books in that order to begin with. I'm not at all sure what you mean when you say Paul's teachings deviated from the gospel records.
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