What Are Your Thoughts On The Apostle Paul? (page 5)

OUTLAW

The Apostle Paul,should have been Taller..

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I agree with that Isaac. However, if somebody is an extortioner, or sleeping with a married person, it totally makes sense. However, I don't really understand judging a fornicator like that. The law was written for our benefit, not us for the benefit of the law to begin with. So, if we are no longer under the Mosiac law, why should we be worried is a person is fornicating? Isn't that up to them if they want to fornicate if they are not hurting anybody?

Also, at what point would you say to not eat with a greedy person?

Couldn't he have just left it up to people to use there own mind and conscience of when not to eat with somebody instead of telling us? I mean, if people are doing something like extortion, why would we want to have dinner with them anyways? Why does he have to tell us that? Why not show how Jesus treated people who were sinning and let them use there own conscience?

Why couldn't he have shown people from the scripture how we are to love one another and what that man was doing to his fathers wife was both not loving or honoring his father. Therefore, we should no longer accept a person of that sort as a brother due to the outragious harm that he caused until he has repented?

He just seems to have created a lot of divisions and a lot of leeway for people to be harsh with one another...

snowbird

Facetiousness aside, I believe Paul's actions showed that the Risen Master picked the right man for the job!

In Acts 13:9 where his name was changed from Saul to Paul, it was done so subtly that if you don't look carefully, you would miss it. This was when Paul took on the sorcerer, Elymas or Bar-Jesus, who tried to subvert Paul's message to the proconsul, Sergius Paulus.

Acts 13: 9-12 But Saul (or Paul), full of the Holy Spirit and looking him straight in the eye, said, "You bag of wind, you parody of a devil—why, you stay up nights inventing schemes to cheat people out of God. But now you've come up against God himself, and your game is up. You're about to go blind—no sunlight for you for a good long stretch." He was plunged immediately into a shadowy mist and stumbled around, begging people to take his hand and show him the way.

When the governor saw what happened, he became a believer, full of enthusiasm over what they were saying about the Master. MSG

Little man or not, he was a force with which to be reckoned!

Sylvia

cognac

WT is in many cases taking the side of those who were against Paul (the very teachings Paul is repeating in his trying to refute).

Do you have an example of that? PS. I read your pm and replied!

snowbird - Thanks for sharing!

JWoods

To be honest (to the question on 'do I think John wrote Revalation?') -

I don't know or care who actually wrote it. I just question how it ever got into the otherwise conservative NT canon process in the first place.

To some, there are examples of the apocrapha that are not nearly as weird or as non-understandable.

As for Paul, there are many respected authors of today that I can barely tolerate when reading them. Nobel Prize winner George Smoot (cosmic background radiation measurements) would be near the top of that list - same issues as Paul:

Self absorbed, self important, petulant, usually angry...you get the picture.

PSacramento

RE: Revelation and who asked if John wrote it,

John of Patmos is NOT viewed as the same John that wrote the Gospel or the epistles by most scholars, actually, only GOJ and 1John are viewed as being the same writer and even the end of GOJ is viewed as being extend by another writer.

But in regards to Revelation, the grammer used, the play on words and even the termes used ( Lamb for example) are not consisten with GOJ or 1John.

Some argue that is because John is writing what he is being told to write by Jesus, but that wouldn't account for the different uses of terms and even then, John's unique literary style would still "shine through".

Besides, in the GOJ and the Epistles, John is never identified as John so it does lead one to think that John of Patmos identified himself that way to make sure he was not confused with John the Elder ( Epistles) or the Beloved Disciple ( GOJ).

isaacaustin

Cognac... Cor 11

13

8 Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head unveiled?

14

Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears his hair long it is a disgrace to him,

15

whereas if a woman has long hair it is her glory, because long hair has been given (her) for a covering?

16

But if anyone is inclined to be argumentative, we do not have such a custom, nor do the churches of God.

Paul states that we nor the churches of God have such customers. The relgious leaders had made such restrictions. Paul is refuting these teachings from his opposers. The WT is taking the side of Paul's opposers in misunderstanding this verse and insisting woman must pray with a covered head.

PSacramento

Isaac is quote correct, the WT doesn't see that passage the way Paul writes it, they view it they OT way, as a pharisee would, that a woman shoudl cover her head.

Of course the NWT does translate that passage different. ( I can't cut n paste, if someone will do the honours).

JWoods

PSacremento: yes, I have heard those points as well. Probably the debate goes on forever on who (and when they) wrote the remaining NT canonical books. Curious that for such an important religion, so little remains of really early written records.

Ed Dunlap was actually an enthusiast (but not necessarily an insistent one) for the notion that Mark may well have been the first gospel. Society still says Matthew, IIRC?

My thing with Revelation is that it just seems to be such an odd duck in the otherwise straight-laced NT. Sort of a hemp-fueled Hellenistic numerology dream compared to everything else.

In that sense, if it were just found today in a bottle on the beach (and was not part of the canon of 440AD), a level-headed JW would almost certainly denounce it as demonology. So it is ironic that they derive their arguably most famous and difficult doctrine (the 144,000) exclusively from this source.

What Are Your Thoughts On The Apostle Paul?

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