One does not found a religion to persecute the adepts. Paul founded Christianity in Antioch about 30 years after Jesus had been gone. He never persecuted a single Christian. Pick up your NT and prove it to me. Read Acts 11:26.
Gabriel of 12:
Ben please read carefully. you will see Saul now Paul was a persecuter of Christians who converted to “The Way”.
Acts. 9:11
The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight and ask at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul. He is there praying,
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and (in a vision) he has seen a man named Ananias come in and lay (his) hands on him, that he may regain his sight.”
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**But Ananias replied, “Lord, I have heard from many sources about this man, what evil things he has done to your holy ones 4 in Jerusalem.
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And here he has authority from the chief priests to imprison all who call upon your name.” **
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But the Lord said to him, “Go, for this man is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before Gentiles, kings, and Israelites,
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and I will show him what he will have to suffer for my name.” **
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So Ananias went and entered the house; laying his hands on him, he said, “Saul, my brother, the Lord has sent me, Jesus who appeared to you on the way by which you came, that you may regain your sight and be filled with the holy Spirit.”
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Immediately things like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight. He got up and was baptized,
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and when he had eaten, he recovered his strength. 5 He stayed some days with the disciples in Damascus,
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and he began at once to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God. 6
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All who heard him were astounded and said, “Is not this the man who in Jerusalem ravaged those who call upon this name, and came here expressly to take them back in chains to the chief priests?” **
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**But Saul grew all the stronger and confounded (the) Jews who lived in Damascus, proving that this is the Messiah. **
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After a long time had passed, the Jews conspired to kill him,
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but their plot became known to Saul. Now they were keeping watch on the gates day and night so as to kill him,
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but his disciples took him one night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket.
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**When he arrived in Jerusalem 7 he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. **
Ben:
No. He contradicted Jesus himself who declared that he had not come to abolish the Law. (Mat. 5:17) To contradict him, Paul declared that he indeed abolished the Law in his flesh on the cross. (Ephes. 2:15) To contradict is to be against or anti. If you believe that Jesus was Christ, it won’t be too hard to figure what Paul was.
Gabriel of 12:
Ok Ben; there is no contradiction of these two scriptures of Jesus and Paul. Pleas stop repeating this; Jesus speaks from Mathew that he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill the Law.
Paul in Ephesians is teaching that Jesus by his death and resurrection has abolished the Legal claims of the law that kept the dividing wall between Gentiles and Jews, this Jesus abolished such laws with its legal claims that kept seperating Jews and Gentiles. This Jesus brought Peace not a division that the law brought between Jews and Gentiles, this is the abolishment.
Ben:
Give me a quotation in your own NT of when Paul decided to leave the Jews alone and went to the Gentiles. If to love the Gentiles was a “true” teaching of Jesus, why would he advise his disciples not to take his gospel to the Gentiles? (Mat. 10:6)
Gabriel of 12:
Sure read all of Acts of the Apostles chapt. 9
Jesus when he first commissioned the disciples he was fulfilling a prophecy that the kingdom of God must be preached to Jerusalem first then the Gentiles. Here is Jesus again when he resurrected from the dead he commanded his disciples after he recieved all the power in heaven and on earth,now to got out: Mathew 28;18
11 Then Jesus approached and said to them, **“All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
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Go, therefore, 12 and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit,
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teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. 13 And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” **
Ben:
No one can love another as him or herself. That’s a cop-out of Pauline rhetoric. Besides, there is no such a thing as a commandment to love. Though under the word love, but the commandment is to respect. We can be commanded to respect but not to love. Love is an emotion, a feeling. One cannot be commanded to feel. Even with reference to God, the word love means knowledge. The more we know about God the more love grows.
Gabriel of 12:
Here is Jesus teaching on love of enemies. Remember God is Love! where you get these fuzzy feelings to describe God sounds like the SDA’s are influencing your religion. Because True Christianity does not deal with Fuzzy loving feelings as a truth as you describe. Here is Jesus;
**Mathew 6:43
27 "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
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But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, **45
that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
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For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors 28 do the same?
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And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? 29
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So be perfect, 30 just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
