Paul the Apostle A Deceiver? Invented Christianity? Say it isn't So! Nonsense!

It stunned me when I first saw it while researching a paper decades ago. If you like history you will be enthralled.

 

I think that observation is worthy of a new thread!!!! Why has Christianity stopped preaching the Gospel?

Maybe that is why these Paul-haters try and discredit him - apostle Paul explained the Gospel message he was given by Jesus too well in his letters?

 

When I was a young man, Thomas Jefferson was considered a great man, a founding father of this free and independent nation. We have no national church, no relic of the dark ages, where know it alls used compulsion to foster faith in the inventions of men.

Jefferson, today, seems to have become a punching bag for liberals.

Both Calvin and Jefferson tried to untangle truth from the corruptions of churchmen, and both were sucessful in some areas, and not so much in other areas. We should build on their greatness, and relegate the rest to the trash heap of history.

 

The fact that people are doubting Paul's apostleship is nothing new.
Remember that.

He defended his apostleship on many occasions in his letters. Just think about how many times he defended it in-person!

So Paul would not be surprised at all to know that in 2011, some people doubt his apostleship which was given to him by the Lord Jesus Christ and was confirmed by the other apostles.

The key here is that the other apostles accepted him as an apostle. What I mean to say is that anyone can say that Jesus appeared to them.... but it takes an apostle to know an apostle, let alone Eleven!

Therefore there should be no doubt. That is unless he was really busy and got around to corrupting Dr. Luke's "The Acts of the Apostles."

When you think about it, Paul's detractors (1st Century and Modern-Day) are the ones who sound like they have a screw loose. So if they want to cut Paul out of the New Testament, then they have to take out all the great doctrines he wrote down, too.

 

This is simple fact - a well known fact. I am not attacking him, just pointing out his view of this topic.

Should we ignore the heresies of 'great men?'

That kind of revisionism is destructive.

 

And I am not attacking Calvin when I point out he was a heretic and deceived. Why not reveal what is really going on and post what Jefferson said about Calvin?

Calvin's attack on Paul is far worse because his false doctrines mislead far more people.

Here is Thomas Jefferson's view of Calvin:

DEAR SIR, -- The wishes expressed, in your last favor, that I may continue in life and health until I become a Calvinist, at least in his exclamation of `mon Dieu! jusque à quand'! would make me immortal. I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did. The being described in his 5. points is not the God whom you and I acknolege and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a daemon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin.

The only revisionism going on in this area is that Thomas Jefferson is being removed from history textbooks and John Calvin put in his place. LOL

 

Good point - of course Jefferson hated Calvin, he also hated Paul.

His exact words were that Paul was 'the first corrupter of the great doctrines of Jesus.'

Jefferson was opposed to basically every Bible teaching. When he developed his own 'Jefferson Bible' he simply snipped out any references to miracles or the deity of Christ and harmonised what remained of the gospels.

 

A good point would have content, not disparagement!

Do not all the advocates of a faith plus works religion "hate" Paul? Why single out one of the greatest Americans. Oh I know, because he saw through the deception of Calvin.

 

No, because Jefferson had no use for Bible Christianity. I don't care about his feelings about Calvin in the slightest.

Have you checked out 'Jefferson's Bible'?

 

I haven't watched the video, but suspect this is just a modern adaptation of what Jefferson believed.

Nothing really new under the sun.

 

Would say "most" persons problem with Calvin would be that they would do to him much as they did to the Apstle Paul" distort/misunderstand his teachings to their own destruction!"

 

The problem most people have with Calvin is his distortion of truth.

If you want to present the "crux" of Jefferson's rejection of Calvinism, why not quote Jefferson?

Did Jefferson reject unconditional election? Yes

As for quoting a heretic, Paul was no heretic, Calvin was.

Was Jefferson oppossed to "every" christian doctrine? No.

Did he accept the trinity? No
Did he accept the divinity of Jesus? No
Did he accept the miracles of Jesus, such as rising from the dead? No

So it would be accurate to say he rejected the fundamental Christian doctrines.

But what about unconditional election. He rejected that crock and happened to be on the side of truth.

Now lets turn to the heretic Calvin.

He accepted unconditional election.

He accepted irresistible grace.

He accepted total spiritual inability.

And he may or may not of finally come down on the side of limited atonement.

So Calvin rejected the gospel proper and turned God into a monster, hindering the ministry of Christ. Jefferson's views were off the mark, to say the least, but his position was he could hold them, and government power should not make them illegal.