PART #03 of “A PROGRESSIVE REVELATION”
“Rejecting The Apostleship Of Paul Is The Costliest Mistake One Can Make, For Our Eternal Destiny Hinges Only On What He has To Say”.
By rejecting the apostle Paul we directly reject the LORD JESUS CHRIST.
When we reject the messenger, means we reject the message and we reject the Person Who sends the message.
That is how serious it is! For our message of personal salvation comes only through this apostle.
Rejecting Paul is rejecting the Spirit of Grace.
All the fundamental and higher doctrines of Grace and the things that accompany our salvation are revealed only to Paul.
So he is the one we really should be giving heed to.
And though this does offend some people, here is how the apostle Paul puts it:
FOR, “If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual……” says Paul boldly in [1 Corinthians 14:37].
“…..Let him acknowledge that the things that I write to you are the ‘COMMANDMENTS’ of the Lord”.
By rejecting Paul the apostle, we reject the message, the commandments and the very Person of Jesus Christ.
The apostleship of Paul was by Heaven’s Commandment! We see this clearly stated [1 Timothy 1:1].
“PAUL, AN apostle of Jesus Christ by the ‘COMMANDMENT’ of God our Saviour, and the Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope”.
May this “Heaven declared Truth” sink in and stay unshakably settled in our spirits once and for all.
Commandments And Instructions
The commandments and instructions for the “Body Of Christ” are not with Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James or Peter. And they are not in the Old Testament.
They are exclusively with the Paul “the apostle of the Gentiles” [Romans 11:13].
It is Paul alone who is our only “designated by Heaven” apostle for this ‘Age of Grace’ that we live in [Acts 9:15].
Hand-picked by the LORD Himself, how can we be rejecting Paul?
Does this mean that we have nothing to do with the Old Testament and the other writers of the New Testament?
Not at all!
For Paul himself, by revelation, says this in [Romans 15:4]:
“For whatsoever things were written aforetime……”, that is everything written in the Old Testament and the four Gospels.
“…..Were written for our learning”, says Paul. Learning is the purpose.
We learn primarily about God’s progressive unfolding plan of redemption for the entire human race that God lost through Adam’s fall.
It wasn’t just Adam and his wife Eve that God lost. He lost the entire human race right down to this very day and hour.
Adam sold out to the devil, and God had to take immediate steps to set His plan of redemption in motion.
GOD had to buy back His Own prize creation or He would lose them forever!
It was this plan of redemption that we addressed in [CRUMB 0091].
That how God in stages, over a period of time, four thousand years, would progressively reveal more of His plan.
The Frailties Of Men
God, through the frailties of men in every generation, would intricately weave his plan of redemption to total fruition.
We learn how that through the shortfalls and weaknesses of men He comes through strong on their behalf.
And God being no respecter of persons comes through strong when needed, even on our behalf today. That is His nature.
Through all these accounts of God dealing with man we learn about His forbearance, His long-suffering nature and patience.
We learn how unfathomable and past finding out His ways are and the trustworthiness of His faithfulness and the integrity of His Word.
Absolutely, all of Scripture is for our learning, and here is the reason why, as Paul finishes his statement:
“…..That we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope”.
This can remind us of someone like Joseph, whom his own brothers sold out.
But with God involved, what others meant for evil, God turns it out for good.
What a wonderful order of patience, comfort and hope we have here!
Hope is a wonderful thing for it keeps us pressing on. And this is not a worldly hope, which can let us down any moment.
Look how the apostle Paul lays it across so wonderfully in [Romans 5:5]:
“And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is ‘GIVEN’ unto us”.
The hope that God gives us through the cross will “NEVER” fail us, for it is a “Living Hope”.
Church Insulated From Prophecy
The Church has always been insulated from prophecy, for there is no prophecy concerning the Church, the Body of Christ, in all of Scripture.
The ‘Body of Christ’ was a mystery hidden the mind of God, kept secret since the world began [Colossians 1:26].
This mystery was revealed ‘ONLY’ to Paul the apostle.
Prophecy was only for the nation of Israel.
The Mystery was for the Body of Christ.
The two don’t mix!
Just as you can’t mix Law with Grace, you can’t mix prophecy with the mystery.
And yet till today, we have these so-called prophets claiming to have heard from God, with their prophetic utterances. The masses follow them.
What a scam and a sham!
Havoc And Confusion
It is in these areas of Law, Grace, prophecy and mystery where Satan the adversary has created havoc and confusion.
And he has done this by throwing them all into one blender, resulting in blenderized Scriptures being fed to the hearers.
No wonder there is so much of spiritual indigestion within Christendom!
The devil has hidden the truth of “rightly dividing the word of truth” as only Paul, by revelation speaks of in [2 Timothy 2:15].
It’s no wonder that the world scoffs at Christianity.
And the sole reason has been the rejecting and sidelining of Paul’s apostleship.
More preeminence has been given to James, Peter and John over Paul, in this Age of Grace.
Today in America alone there are over a thousand denominations and very few want to agree with each other.
The devil has indeed blinded the minds of even those within Christendom, lest the truth of Paul’s revelations should shine on them
This has been the cost of rejecting Paul the apostle, or at the least sidelining the authority of his apostleship.
In the two thousand of Christendom, Paul has never really been given his rightful place of authority.
Rejecting Paul or sidelining him has been the norm.
Making Too Much Of Paul?
“You make too much Paul” is something we hear more than just on a few occasions.
Well, can you make too much of Christ? For Scripture ‘specifically’ tells us to follow Paul even as he follows Christ in [1 Corinthians 11:1].
It does not tell us to follow James, Peter or John,
Much as we can learn and draw from them, we must understand that they have no doctrinal instructions for the “Body of Christ”.
For they were the apostles to the Jews and their epistles were addressed to their Jewish audience.
Look at how the apostle Paul shows this to us in [Galatians 2:9]:
The Good Old Gentlemen’s Agreement
The Good Old School “Gentlemen’s Agreement” is something that we don’t see these days.
Intrinsic value was placed on men’s word once given, much more than a legal document of today.
And sadly this current millennial generation knows nothing about these old ways.
Paul along with Barnabas had stuck to their guns, and never gave even ‘one inch’ with regard to their ministry to the Gentiles.
The future of Christianity hung in the balance at this all important meeting.
The eternal destinies of men for at least the next two thousand years was at stake.
And so Paul says:
“And when James, Cephas (Peter), and John, who seemed to be pillars…..”
They weren’t any more, for the Jewish Kingdom programme was fading away and the new Grace programme was gradually taking preeminence.
Paul says, when they “perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship…..;”
What was happening here at this moment?
They had conceded, recognized and approved the ministry of Paul to the Gentiles.
They approved, stamping ‘their authority’ on the authority of Paul’s apostleship.
And how did this approval take place?
Well, the great and reliable old-fashioned way.
They shook hands on it! It was an unbreakable agreement.
“All right Paul, you and Barnabas go on back to your Gentile field and we will stay here among the Jews.”
“…..That we should go unto the heathen (the Gentiles), and they (James, Peter and John) unto the circumcision (the Jews).
So it naturally follows that the epistles of James, Peter and John can only be to the Jews and not to the Paul’s Gentile convert believers.
And that holds good even now.
Back To Paul Or On To Despair
Francis Landey Patton, a theologian and the twelfth president of Princeton University, put it like this:
“The only hope of Christianity is in the rehabilitation of Pauline theology”, he so rightly stated.
“It’s back, back, back to an incarnate Christ, or else it is on, on, on to atheism and despair”.
How true this is as we see even the very fabric of Christendom breaking down in these days of perplexity.
As this Age of Grace winds down to a close, nothing could be more important than getting on the same wagon as Paul.
There is a whole world of people out there who need to hear the true Gospel and many of them are in Churches!
“Jesus Christ died for our sins, was buried and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures” [1 Corinthians 15:1-4].
We have a “BLOOD STAINED GOSPEL”.
The Blood is the object of our faith.
Whenever we look at the Blood of Christ Jesus, we have peace with God.
For the Blood of Christ Jesus satisfies God causing our adversary the devil to tremble.
And when the angels look at the Blood, they rejoice!
“For without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins”, says the Scripture in [Hebrews 9:22].
This is the only Gospel that releases the “Power of God” to save those who believe plus ‘nothing’.
Spoken To Us By His Son
GOD, “Hath in these last days (since His first advent) spoken unto us by his Son”, says Paul in [Hebrews 1:2].
“Whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom (the Son) also he made the worlds;”
Now when God speaks to us through the Son, it shows us that the Apostle Paul received ‘ALL’ of his revelations directly from the Ascended Lord.
Now when reading Paul’s epistles, we realize that God is speaking to us through God the Son.
And so it is JESUS CHRIST Who is inspiring this Apostle to write what we are to understand and believe for salvation.
The same Jesus Christ was the One Who gave Paul all the mystery revelations for the higher doctrines of Grace, which accompany our salvation.
“They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them”, Jesus says in [Luke 16:29].
Today HE would say, “You have my apostle Paul, hear him!”
In [Luke 16:31], Jesus said, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead”.
Today HE would say, “If you hear not my apostle Paul, neither will you be persuaded by anything else”.
“For the just shall live by faith” [Romans 1:17], is a ‘Grace Age’ commandment.
“Rejecting Paul is rejecting Christ Jesus”
We will continue this in Part #04 following shortly.
