9 Problems With Paul That Christian Apologists Can't Answer | The Jesus Way Podcast 063

There is a large and growing movement of both current and former Christians who have become convicted of the fact that Paul was a false apostle who contradicted the teachings of Yeshua. And I want to explain to you today and lay out for you why this message has caught such fire in the cultural zeitgeist. Because to most Christians, this idea is tantamount to blasphemy or apostasy. But to everyone else, it's just the honest, undeniable truth and plain reading of the text that the man whose name is penned under almost two-thirds of the books in the New Testament, Paul of Tarsus, is in fact a false prophet and a false apostle whom Jesus warned us about in Matthew 7.15. And that modern Christianity today bears virtually no resemblance at all to the teachings of Jesus. Because they've been replaced and ignored systematically in favor of the teachings of Paul, a man who never even met the living Jesus. So if you're a traditional Christian watching this, I'm sure you've got all kinds of rebuttals ready in the chamber. But I assure you that there is a clear answer to every single objection that you can possibly think of right now. This movement and message has been scoured over for decades by scholars and lay people like myself and Christians are finding it hard to combat intellectually. So in order to help you understand why so many followers of Jesus are rejecting Paul, I'm going to walk you through the top nine most important arguments against Paul. And all that I ask is that you hear me out and check the references for yourself. Because everything I'm about to show you comes directly from the textual data. So let's get into it. Point number one is that Paul contradicted Jesus on the law. Modern Christianity says that you can't be saved by works of the law, but you are saved by faith alone or saved by grace through faith alone. Because that's what Paul taught. But did you know that Jesus absolutely taught that keeping the commandments of God is essential to salvation? When the rich young ruler comes to Jesus and asks, good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Okay, this is the question, Savior, how do I get to heaven when I die? And you're going to notice that Jesus doesn't say, confess me as your Lord and Savior and believe in my death and resurrection. He looks at the man and says, keep the commandments. And then he names five of them. So it is impossible to overstate the significance of this. Here Jesus is asked plainly, how can I be saved? So this is the moment if there ever was one, right? For Jesus to respond with Paul's gospel. Confess my blood, believe in my resurrection, right? Come on, Jesus, why are you telling us we're saved by works of the law? Jesus, don't you know that Paul said you can't be saved by keeping the law? Ephesians chapter 2, Paul says that Jesus abolished the law of commandments, expressed in ordinances. That's the 10 commandments, by the way. And so, how's this for a contradiction? In Matthew 5, 17 through 19, Jesus literally says, think not that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. And in the very next verse, Jesus says, and until heaven and earth pass away, not one single jot or tidal shall fall from the law. And then just in case Jesus still hasn't made the point clear enough for Paul, he also says, in all three synoptic gospels, heaven and earth will pass away. But my words will never pass away. So how do we square that with the dispensationalists who defend Paul by saying, well, it's true that it looks like Jesus is flatly contradicting Paul here, but that's because Jesus was speaking under an old covenant. And when he died on the cross, that old law was abolished and done away with, and now we're under the new covenant of grace. The only problem with that is Jesus says, my words will never pass away. Checkmate, Paul. See, it's only Paul where Christians get any of these ideas from. Remove Paul and the entire framework of Christianity as we know it is deleted. So can you see why so many Christians find this to be problematic? And to this, most Christians would probably argue, well, yes, of course, Jesus didn't tell people to believe in his death and resurrection before he died because he hadn't died yet. Everything changed after Jesus resurrected and the law then passed away. But again, check out what Jesus says in Matthew 28, 19 through 20. After Jesus rises from the dead, he says, go and make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to obey all things I commanded you. No mention of confessing him as Lord and Savior. And again, this is the post-resurrection Jesus saying this. This is after the cross. And so Jesus is still telling his disciples to teach everything he commanded them. And then in Luke's account, we have a similar story where Jesus tells his disciples to go to all the nations and preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Not one whisper or mention of blood atonement or confession or theological creeds. And Jesus also said, whoever therefore breaks one of these least commandments and teaches others to do so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. Now Paul literally told his congregants to curse anyone who disagrees with his gospel. But Jesus said the law is summarized as love your neighbor as yourself. Last time I checked no one goes around cursing themselves. And so even Paul admits that the law is love your neighbor as yourself in Galatians 514. Jesus taught us not to curse anyone, not to call our brother a fool, or we will be in danger of the fires of Gehenna. And his brother James said the same thing. Can blessing and cursing flow from the same stream? Paul even goes so far with his curse maxing that he mentions it twice in the same passage, in case you missed it the first time, and he adds an exclamation point on the second one by saying that even if an angel of the Lord descends from the throne room of heaven and preaches to you a different gospel than I preached, let that angel be accursed. I mean this is like problem-ception. We're stacking problems inside of problems at this point, because not only is Paul's admonition for cursing others hugely problematic when you square it up to the teachings of Jesus. But Paul continually calls it my gospel, my gospel, and he brags that he did not learn his gospel from the disciples of Jesus. Does that sound like a problem to anyone else? Well Paul doesn't seem to think so. He brags to the Galatians as he mocks the disciples of those so-called pillars. Whatever they were makes no difference to me. God is no respecter of persons. Are they a servant of Christ? So am I. I even more so. Reading these passages from Paul is like being slapped across the face with red flags over and over again. Which is why I like to say more Paul, more problems. The more you study Paul in depth, the more problems you find. And I've been doing it for over a decade now, and I'm still finding new problems with Paul. And I'm not even looking for them. I'm just reading Paul to understand him better, even at a master's degree level. And my professors are pointing out problems with Paul to me that I haven't even found yet. This is a widespread subject in biblical scholarship. This is not some fringe idea that's just now taking to the internet. Now, the typical Christian argument against this idea that Jesus taught a works-based gospel is usually something like, well see, you just want to feel like you can earn your salvation on your own merits. It's just your own pride that wants to be saved by good works. But I would respond by asking you, are we really expected to believe that the only reason someone would want to do a good work is so they can earn their salvation pridefully and feel puffed up about it? In other words, nobody wants to do good works simply to glorify their Father in heaven, as Jesus said. You can't keep the commandments of Jesus simply because you love Jesus. Now, apparently you only do good works because you're puffed up with pride and you just want to earn your salvation. It's a pretty weak counter-argument if you ask me. Because modern Christianity literally teaches that you can earn your salvation by confessing this nice scene creed and believing in these specific theological tenets, such as the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Confess these creeds, have this whimsical theological ascent in your mind, you've punched your ticket to paradise, my friend. Welcome to Christianity. Because we're saved by faith alone, right? Apart from works. That's what Paul said. But again, in Matthew 7.21, Jesus says, "Not everybody who calls me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does." That's good works, my friend. The will of my Father in heaven. Jesus explicitly taught us that we will be judged by our works, not by our beliefs, because works are the only way to know what someone actually believes. You can say you believe something all day long. How you actually live shows what you really believe. So we're not judged by our beliefs or by our prophecies or our signs and wonders. We are judged by how we treat others, which is the entire law of God in one commandment. Love God, love your neighbor as yourself. The entire book of Revelation for crying out loud is about Jesus judging humanity according to their works. It's truly crazy that so many Christians have missed this. Isn't it? Good works is the entire theme of Jesus' gospel, and yet we are somehow continually gaslit as if we're reading it into the texture making it up. Quite literally, every parable Jesus tells is at the core about some kind of good work or integrity or righteousness. Not a single one of Jesus' parables has anything to do with what somebody believed in their brain. So in all of Jesus' admonitions and parables, it's clear over and over again, thematically, that those who do good works are taken up to heaven, those who do evil are thrown out of heaven. And Jesus says this directly five times in the New Testament. Jesus directly states that he will judge everyone according to their works. And Jesus rebukes people for thinking they can just call him Lord and Savior and be justified before God. Secular scholars unanimously agree that Jesus taught a works-based gospel about keeping the commandments, keeping the Torah. But Christianity actually teaches that a works-based gospel is evil and will send you straight to hell because you're trying to earn your salvation, right? Our pastors in Sunday school, our teachers, our parents even have gravely misled us into believing the doctrines of men over the commandments of Jesus. Specifically, the doctrines of a man named Paul who never walked with Jesus during his ministry and later Catholic church fathers who adopted Paul's gospel. And that brings us to our second contradiction between Paul and Jesus on the topic of eating meat sacrificed to idols. This one should trouble anyone who considers themselves a follower of Jesus because in Acts chapter 15, James the brother of Jesus and the leader of the Jerusalem church, issues a decree to the Gentile converts in front of Paul. And one of the primary commands in that decree is to abstain from things sacrificed to idols. That's a direct commandment from the appointed leader of Jesus to Paul. Now, what does Paul do? Well, in 1 Corinthians chapter 8 through 10, Paul teaches that eating meat sacrificed to idols isn't wrong and it doesn't matter. He says the only people who have a problem with it are those who are weak in the faith. Looking at you, James. So according to Paul, James, the brother and appointed successor of Jesus, was weak in the faith. Paul dismisses the very commandment that James and the apostles issued to him in Acts chapter 15. He says, "You don't have to make those Gentiles get circumcised. They don't have to keep every single liturgical law in the Torah. But here is the one thing they must not do. Do not eat meat sacrificed to idols." And Paul writes later, "It doesn't matter. You can do it if you want, or you don't have to do it. It makes no difference." Now, Jesus, the risen glorified Christ, also specifically condemned eating meat sacrifice to idols. He calls it the doctrine of Bailem and he rebukes the churches that tolerate it in Revelation chapter 2. Yet Paul says that it's fine. And this is why many scholars look at the book of Revelation as a refutation of Paul's theology, because it contains zero Pauline theology within it and directly refutes most of the tenants of Pauline theology at one point or another. For example, Paul refers to his own gospel as "the deep things of God." And Jesus in that very same chapter in Revelation refers to these false teachings infiltrating the church as "the deep things of Satan." I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that one. And that brings us to point number three, Paul's false prophecy. In 1 Thessalonians 4, 15 through 17, Paul makes a clear undeniable prophecy, saying, "By the word of the Lord." So he's clearly speaking in the prophetic office here. And what does Paul prophesy? He says, "We who are alive." So that's present tense right now. We who now are alive, not some people, thousands and thousands of years in the future. We who are left until the coming of the Lord, okay? There's no mistaking what Paul means here. He says, "Will by no means proceed those who have fallen asleep." For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangels call, with a trumpet sound, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise. And then we who are alive, he says it again, "We who are left," he says at a second time, "will be caught up into the clouds together with him to meet the Lord in the air." So notice the word "we" that Paul uses. Paul is including himself and his readers in this prophecy. And this is all throughout his seven epistles. Paul believes that this is happening in his lifetime. And Paul affirms this again in 1 Corinthians 729 when he says, "The appointed time has grown very short." Okay, 2,000 years is not very short. Paul also said that the present form of this world is already passing away. In the present tense, so Paul wasn't even just predicting the future. He was saying to his readers that this event I'm describing where the old world passes away in this new spiritual world, this pneumatic world under platonic philosophy that Paul's describing. That world, it's already happening. It's already beginning and the old world is already passing away. The appointed time has grown very short. Paul was emphatic about this. Paul genuinely believed and taught his churches that Jesus was returning within their generation, and that they would physically witness it. Now, obviously this did not happen. Paul died, the Thessalonians died, and 2,000 years have passed, and no one has been caught up into the air, and no trumpets have sounded, and so on and so forth. And the problem with this is that it perfectly meets the criteria of a false prophet given in the Bible. In Deuteronomy 1822, it says, "When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is a thing the Lord has not spoken, and that prophet has spoken falsely." It's not looking good for Paul, is it? By the Bible's own standard, not mine. Paul flatly fails the test of being a true prophet. So I've issued a challenge to anyone who disagrees with me that Paul is a false prophet, which is to just show me one piece of historical evidence anywhere that anything Paul prophesied ever happened in any way. If you can do that, I will publicly repent, but if you can't do that, you might want to wrestle with the implications of following a false prophet, whom Jesus warned us explicitly about in Matthew chapter 7. And that brings us to point number 4. Paul's Damascus Road encounter with Jesus. One of the primary arguments for Paul's legitimacy is that he encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. And if Jesus appeared to him, then surely he's legitimate, right? But did you know that Jesus specifically warned us about this exact scenario? In Matthew 24, 23 through 27, Jesus said, "If anyone tells you, okay, anyone or any man tells you, that includes Paul." Look, I met the Messiah. There he is. Here he is. Do not believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand so that if they say to you, look, he is in the wilderness. Do not go out. If they say, look, he is in the inner rooms. Do not believe it. For as lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. So Jesus is clearly saying here that he won't appear to any individual person alone before he returns. But when Jesus returns, everyone will see him at once, like lightning flashing from the east to the west. So think about Paul's conversion story now. Where did Paul claim to see Jesus? In the wilderness, on the road to Damascus. And where else does Paul claim to see Jesus in the book of Acts? In multiple different inner rooms, once in the temple, once in prison. And in Acts, Paul also claims that he saw Jesus standing at his bedside, speaking to him, exactly what Yeshua warned us not to believe. And so what did Jesus say about signs and wonders then? He said that false prophets will use them to deceive even the elect. And what does Paul use to validate his apostleship in 2 Corinthians 12-12? He says, "The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with great signs and wonders and mighty works." Now this is one of the passages that Christians quote the most often to me to defend Paul's apostleship. You say, "Well, Paul did great signs and wonders in Jesus' name. How can he possibly be a false prophet?" Oh, the irony, huh? Jesus literally predicted that this would happen verbatim, and deceive even the elect. To which Christians will say, "You think God would let me be deceived by Paul?" And it's like, "Yeah, Jesus literally said the elect would be deceived by a false prophet." What else are we missing at this point? I mean, Jesus even says in John 5-31, "If I testify of myself, my testimony is not true." So even Jesus can't testify of himself for crying out loud. So how much less should we believe Paul's claims? As any court of law knows, no man can be both the witness and the claimant to their own claim. You need a second witness, and Paul doesn't have one. Nobody in the entire New Testament was witness to any of Paul's private visions, and no one else in the New Testament even calls Paul an apostle, except Paul himself. Now this brings us to point number 5 where Paul admits to "lying" to spread his gospel. In 1 Corinthians 9, 19-23, Paul writes in his own words, "To the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law. To those without the law I became as one without law. To the week I became weak. I have become all things to all men that I might by all means save some." Now I remember reading this passage in church and thinking to myself, "Gosh, that feels a little dishonest, doesn't it?" But we all sort of chalked it up to Paul just being flexible and adaptable to his environment so we can preach the gospel anywhere. But that's not what Paul is saying. Paul is admitting that he pretends to be under the law when he's not actually under the law. He pretends to be a law-observant Jew that he can gain the trust of the law-observant Jews. It's called deception and manipulation, my friends. And he says to those who were weak, that he pretended to be weak. Now this is an interesting one because Paul calls those who eat only vegetables weak in the faith. And so who do we know for a fact ate only vegetables? James the brother of Jesus. And of course the twelve disciples as per Eusebius said the disciples abstained from flesh. Okay, so Paul is calling James and the disciples of Jesus weak. And he says, "When I'm around, I might pretend to be weak too." Which probably means Paul pretended to not eat meat when he was around the disciples. So Paul is openly telling you that he lied to the apostles when he shared his gospel with them. The only law-observant Jews who followed Jesus in the first century were the apostles and disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem. And Paul says he pretended to be under the law even though he wasn't. Now why would Paul think it's okay to not be under the law that Jesus commanded us to follow when even his own disciples and brothers were? In other words, Paul told them what they wanted to hear in order to get their stamp of approval. And he still didn't get it. We don't know how long it took the apostles to sniff out Paul's deceptions. But we do know that they eventually did, which brings me to my next point. Contradiction number six is that the apostles of Jesus did not affirm Paul. The common Christian idea that the apostles affirmed Paul simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny when you read the text. Paul simply says in Galatians that when he met up with the disciples in Jerusalem for only the second time, they met him and greeted him with the right hand of fellowship. This means that they shook hands with him and welcomed him in lovingly. Nothing more. Shaking someone's hand and having fellowship with them doesn't mean you agree or affirm everything they believe about Jesus or everything they teach other people. The apostles might have had no clue what Paul was actually teaching when they met him in Jerusalem. But the book of Acts says it plainly in chapter 9 verse 26 that when Paul came to Jerusalem, he tried repeatedly to associate with the disciples and yet they were all afraid of him as they did not believe that he was a disciple. Now this is a huge attestation because scholars know that the book of Acts is a kind of hero novel for Paul to paint Paul in a good light and clean up all the great schism that happened with Paul in the first century. And so they have to use some historical truths which were circulating among the second century that Paul was rejected by the 12th. And so they're trying to say, "Look, yeah, Paul, initially they were afraid of Paul." But eventually they saw that Paul was the real deal man. And this is kind of the narrative you get in Acts. This is why scholars call the version of Paul in Acts "hero Paul" because he differs so dramatically from the Paul of Paul's own letters. So there are countless proofs of Paul's rejection by the 12, most of which are in Paul's own writings actually. But let's look at Galatians 2 verse 6 where Paul says of James, Peter and John, the so-called pillars, those who used to be important, whatever they were, makes no difference to me. I mean, holy cow, imagine if you time travel back to the first century and met the disciples and came back and reported back to me this quotation from Paul. Oh, those so-called pillars, whatever they were, makes no difference. This is a strikingly dismissive and disrespectful way to refer to the men who walked and talked and suffered and learned with Jesus in the flesh. And his own brothers for crying out loud. So if Paul had truly been affirmed by these men as an equal, why does he speak about them with such contempt? He's essentially saying, "There status doesn't impress me?" That's not the language of somebody who was received and embraced, is it? That's the language of someone who resents the authority that the apostles hold over him. But it gets worse than that. As in Galatians 2, Paul describes a confrontation with Peter and Antioch, where he calls Peter a hypocrite to his face in public. Hmm, sounds like some strange behavior for an apostle, don't you think? In Matthew 1815, Jesus commands us that if we have any grievance with our brother to go to him in private first and then take another brother with him if he doesn't agree with you, not to publicly humiliate him by calling him a hypocrite in front of all the congregation. I mean, this is a direct violation of Jesus' teachings, which Paul wouldn't know anything about because he never met Jesus. But the point is that if Paul and the Jerusalem apostles were truly in agreement as apologists continue to affirm, right, why would Paul need to publicly humiliate Peter? And more importantly, Paul never even tells us Peter's response or how he defended himself. He never says, "And then Peter agreed with me and said, 'You're right, brother, I was in the wrong.'" The narrative just stops. And many scholars such as Dr. Taber, Dr. Dunn, Airman, Bauer all interpret this silence as a clear indication that Paul lost this argument. He records the confrontation because it makes him look bold to the Galatians who clearly don't like the Jerusalem apostles. And this is the most damning part of this entire passage for Paul. That Paul himself admits that Peter, and all the 12 apostles of Jesus, and even Barnabas, his own traveling companion, Paul says they all sided against him and went astray with their hypocrisy with Peter. And yet every time I've ever brought this passage up to a Christian to show them some of Paul's faults, without one exception, every single Christian has responded to me. Peter got it wrong, and Paul was just correcting him. Paul was in the right. Now, this is why I sometimes jokingly call it Paul derangement syndrome because it's this totally irrational, illogical, defending of Paul for essentially no reason other than religious conditioning and bias. If all the disciples, and Peter, who was the right-hand man of Jesus, sided against Paul, how were we going to possibly come to the conclusion that Paul was in the right? Peter walked with Jesus, he was the right-hand man of the Messiah himself when he was alive. How easy would it be to just say, "I think Paul got this one wrong." And yet, I've never heard one Christian or a Apologist say this. They always run to Paul's defense, and happily tossed the disciples of Jesus aside, saying all they were just wrong, and Paul was right. Now, Paul also admits in 2 Corinthians that he couldn't get letters of recommendation from Jerusalem in that people within the church were saying that he isn't a real apostle. Now, the problem with this is that we don't have any record of anyone else's apostleship ever being questioned, other than Paul. So you'd be the judge. Does this really sound like a man who was affirmed and accepted by the original disciples? And that brings us to point number 7. Paul's demonic possession of all the red flags and Paul's writings, of which there's a lot, my friends. This one easily takes the cake. Because in 2 Corinthians 12, 7, Paul says plainly, "Because of the surpassingly great revelations, therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord that's Jesus, to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness." So in the Greek, this is Angelo's satanya. An angel of Satan, or messenger of Satan, was sent to torment him. So Paul has a messenger of Satan in his flesh. I don't know how much more directly someone could state that they are possessed by a demon. But to make it even more clear, the phrase "angel/messenger of Satan" only occurs once in the whole Bible, which is this passage. And if you just pull up Bible Hub, which is a Christian Bible program, it says that the definition of this phrase means a demon, not a headache or Parkinson's disease or whatever else as Christians claim. An angel of Satan is a demon, period, full stop. And then he says that he begs Jesus three times to remove the demon from him and Jesus refuses. Think about that for a moment. The Jesus of the Gospels cast out every demon he encountered. Jesus never once refused to deliver someone from a demon to make them humble. But Paul's private Jesus gives him a demon and then refuses to cast it out, yikes. Notice how Paul's private Jesus also appeals to grace once again. again, which is a word Jesus doesn't use at all in his gospels, but all the sudden Paul's private Jesus is using grace all the time. Don't worry bro about that Damon in your flesh, I'll give you some grace. You can overcome it. Interesting right? Because Jesus said that Satan cannot drive out Satan. So if Paul's Jesus is refusing to cast out Satan, what does that tell us about the Jesus that Paul is in private communication with? Not to make it even worse, Paul also says in Romans 7 that sin dwells within him, and that he does evil against his own will. He says, "The good that I want to do, I do not do. But the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing." Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds like demonic possession to me. If you've ever heard someone describe what it's like to be possessed by a demon, this is precisely how they describe it. They can't stop sinning, the urge to sin just burns hot within them at all times. Even though they want to do righteousness, they can't do it. Something within them just compels them to do evil. That's what demonic possession is, and that's exactly what Paul says in Romans 7. So this is a little problematic, wouldn't you say? This is the guy who invented this whole message saying this. This is the guy who says, "If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord. Even in your heart God raised him from the dead, you're saved by grace through faith. Your sins are wiped away. The blood of Jesus covers you and you're going to heaven when you die." That's essentially the Pauline message, right? And so if the guy who invented this idea can't even stop sinning and doing evil, what hope does a 21st century Christian have of being free of sin? I don't know about you, but I'd rather just follow Jesus, thank you very much. And that brings us to our 8th point about those who first were followers of Jesus, rejecting Paul as a false apostle. One of the most common arguments Christians make is that if Paul were really a false apostle, surely the early church would have recognized it, right? But the truth is, they absolutely did recognize it. And this is widely attested in our earliest, patristic sources. The earliest Jewish followers of Jesus, the Nazarens, the Ebiotites, and other Essene, Hebrew communities that actually knew Jesus and his original disciples, all unilaterally rejected Paul. And this is recorded by the father of church history himself, Saint Eusebius. When he writes about these early Jewish Christian groups, he says plainly that the Jews rejected Paul's authority and his letters. In book 3, chapter 27, verse 4 of his book, Church History, Eusebius writes, "These men thought it was necessary to reject all epistles of the Apostle Paul, whom they called an apostate from the law." Now, Paul is accused of apostasy by James and the disciples in Acts 21, and so we know that this is a valid historical reference here. Many other church fathers also attested to this. So the question is, who did accept Paul? Well, the answer is only the churches that Paul founded himself, and even some of those ended up rejecting him too. Paul stood a heresy trial with the Ephesians and said that all the churches in Asia outright rejected him. The people who were historically closest to Jesus, the ones who actually spoke his languages, practiced his customs, kept the Torah alongside him, and understood his gospel from within its Jewish context. They all saw through Paul immediately. And that brings us to our final point, number 9. The blood atonement model was invented by Paul and not Jesus. And this one strikes at the heart of what Christianity claims to be about. The idea that Jesus died as a blood sacrifice to atone for the sins of humanity. This is the central doctrine of the Christian faith. Without it, the entire theological system collapses. And yet when you trace this idea back to its origin, you will not find it anywhere in the mouth of Jesus. You will only find it in the pen of Paul. The textual evidence is irrefutable. The earliest written account we have of the last supper is not in any of the four gospels. It's actually in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, written around 52 to 54 AD. Paul says that Jesus broke the bread and says, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." And then he says of the cup, "This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me." Now pay close attention to what's not here. There is no mention of the forgiveness of sins. There's no substitutionary language here. There is no idea that blood is being shed to pay a debt or satisfy divine wrath of some sort. Paul frames it as a memorial service, as a act of remembrance. That's it. Remember, Paul prefaces this passage by bragging that he did not receive his last supper statement from the disciples of Jesus, but that this statement, I just read, was given to him in a private vision from Jesus. So keep that in mind, because now we're going to watch what happens as this tradition gets picked up and modified by the gospel writers. Each one begins to add a little bit more theology onto Paul's original made up story. The gospel of Mark, which is written about 10 to 15 years after Paul's letters, at least, reads, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many." So Mark adds the phrase, "Poured out for many." So this is a new addition to Paul's writings, which Paul did not say. But even Mark doesn't say what Matthew says, "For the forgiveness of sins." This phrase comes from Matthew 2628, which reads, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." So there it is. Matthew is the first and only gospel writer to add the phrase, "For the forgiveness of sins to this last supper narrative." Neither of Matthew's sources, Mark or Paul, said this statement, "Luke doesn't say it, and John doesn't say it, only Matthew." And so if you understand how the gospels were composed, and with these later writers kind of coming along and building on and editing their sources, you can see this doctrine being constructed in real time, layer by layer. Luke's account is even more interesting because many of the earliest and most reliable manuscripts of Luke don't even include the cup saying at all. The longer version of Luke 22 that most modern Bible's print is widely regarded by textual scholars as a later addition that was not part of Luke's original text. So wherever we go to look for these blood passages in Jesus, we find known and universally agreed upon interpolations. These are not historically reliable statements, and the Jesus seminar has pointed this out for decades now. And outside of this one interpolated passage, the entire gospel of Luke contains no blood language whatsoever. And so we watched the last supper tradition evolve from a simple memorial meal that Paul invented to a covenant of blood poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins in Matthew. Everywhere else Jesus preaches about salvation. It is always about good works and keeping the commandments, loving your neighbor as yourself. So this sudden blood atonement passage out of nowhere at the last minute passes the criterion of dissimilarity. It doesn't make any contextual sense in Jesus' gospel narrative that at the last second he introduces this new variable. Hey guys, I know I was talking about loving your neighbor and keeping the commandments, but just know it's all about the blood I'm pouring out for you. How does that make any sense? And then to make it even more clear, in the first century Nazarene liturgy text called the Diddike, which means the teaching of the twelve, the last supper is pictured as eating the bread in remembrance of how Jesus multiplied the loaves and fed everyone. And the blood was to commemorate the fact that Jesus was of the vine of David, so it was to commemorate that Yeshua truly was the Davidic Messiah to his original Nazarene followers. So this blood atonement doctrine was clearly not invented by Jesus. It was gradually constructed by different writers over the course of several decades, each one layering on more sacrificial theology onto the original passage. But the single most dramatic public act of Jesus' ministry was his cleansing of the temple. He walked into the center of the Jewish sacrificial system, flipped over the tables of the money changers, and drove out the animals from their cages, and shut the whole operation down. And as he did it, he quoted the two proto-essene prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, saying, "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations." That's Isaiah. But you have made it into a den of robbers, Jeremiah 7/11. But the word for robbers and the Hebrew of Jeremiah is "pudits," which means murderers or shredders or violent ones. And so this is the Hebrew word that the historical Jesus would have definitely used in the temple. You would only speak Hebrew in the temple, especially if you're quoting a scripture as Jesus does here. And Jesus is unquestionably condemning the sacrificial system. So what the historical Jesus really said and how the Jewish people listening to him in the temple would have heard it was, "You have turned my father's house into a den of murder or violence." This is not a man who believed in the sacrificial system, clearly. This was a man who wanted to dismantle it in front of everyone, and was willing to give his life as a ransom for this cause. And twice in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus quotes the most anti-sacrifice passage in the whole Bible, Hosea 6-6, which says, "Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice." The knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings. The clear context of Hosea 6-6 is about animal sacrifice. There is no missing it. And Yeshua literally tells them, "Go back and look, you missed something." God doesn't want this sacrifice. God wants mercy, repentance, and a humble and contrite heart. This is a direct repudiation of the entire sacrificial apparatus that Paul's theology revolves around. But perhaps the most explosive piece of evidence comes from one of the earliest sources we have of Jesus's sayings, called the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, which is the original Gospel account that the Nazarens used. And over a dozen church fathers, literally the who's who all agreed that the first Gospel account ever written was written by the disciple Matthew himself in the Hebrew dialect for the sake of the Jewish Christians. So what this means is that Matthew was, as we know, a tax collector, which means he must have been scribally literate enough to have written tax records. But he was likely fully scribally trained, and so he is the most likely disciple of the 12 to have written a Gospel account. And we have 48 surviving quotes from this account. And one of them, Jesus says the following words, "I came to abolish the sacrifices. And until you cease from sacrificing, the wrath of God will not cease from you." And Eusebius, again the father of church history, records explicitly that Jesus did not ordain sacrifices, but considered them to be mean and lowly, and in no way worthy of the immortal nature of God. So even the church's own greatest historian acknowledged that Jesus stood against the sacrificial system, as a theological principle. So let's put this together. Jesus cleansed the temple to disrupt the sacrificial system and ended. Twice quoted Hosea 66, and the early Jewish followers of Jesus preserved a saying where Jesus explicitly commanded them to abolish the sacrifices. And the earliest accounts of the last supper contain no language about forgiveness of sins or substitutionary atonement. That language was added later by different authors. But the entire premise of Paul's Gospel revolves around this idea that Jesus was God's last pagan ritual blood sacrifice to be slaughtered on the cross to atone for your sins. I don't think anyone listening would disagree that Paul's entire Gospel framework depends on the blood atonement model. And yet, as we've just seen, the blood atonement model was clearly not the Gospel of Jesus. It is the Gospel of Paul, or my Gospel, as Paul called it, which was adopted by later Roman Catholic church fathers and then retroactively injected back into the Gospels by later Greek editors and theologians. This is not a fringe conspiracy. This is what mainstream textual scholars are demonstrating. And so the question that every Christian has to wrestle with on this topic is if Jesus came to abolish sacrifice. Why would he want to be God's blood sacrifice? If God truly desires mercy and not sacrifice, as the Bible says, why would God demand the most violent sacrifice in human history to the holiest man in human history in order to forgive you of sins? Why did Jesus forgive sins long before he was crucified? And if the earliest sources don't contain this doctrine, who put it there and why? I think the answers to these questions are more obvious than most Christians are comfortable admitting. And that's okay. I was uncomfortable about this topic for quite a long time myself. But where does this leave us is the question. I think it leaves us with a simple choice. You can continue to follow the theology of a man who never walked with Jesus, who admits to lying and misrepresenting himself, who made a false prophecy in the name of the Lord, who was given a demon that he couldn't get rid of, and who was rejected by the original followers of Jesus. Or you can just go back to the source, back to the red letters, back to the actual teachings of the man you call Lord and Savior. Second John 1.9 says it plainly, "Whoever does not remain in the teaching of the Messiah does not have God. He who remains in the teaching of the Messiah has both the Father and the Son." The teaching of the Messiah. Not the teaching of Paul, not the teaching of the church fathers, or the Nicene Creed, the teaching of Yeshua, the Nazarene. Whether Jesus is the second person of the Trinity or not, whether he pre-exist or not, whether he's literally God in the flesh or not, none of these things are addressed by Jesus himself, none of these things are given as a criteria for salvation. The teachings of Yeshua, the Nazarene, are what we must stake our salvation on, because Jesus truly showed us the perfect way to God. He came to be the model and the example, and the way-shower, as he was called. And that's why his followers were called "Followers of the Way." They were following the way Jesus set before them, not whimsical, theological ideas and beliefs about him. So I'm not asking you to take my word for any of this. I'm just giving you some suggestions and things to think about. What I would suggest you do is read the Gospels carefully, without imposing the lens of Pauline theology all over them, and ask yourself one simple question. Can I extract any Pauline theology from the Gospel of Luke or Matthew? If I only had this Gospel, do I get the Christianity I practice today from this Gospel? If the answer is yes, then you have nothing to worry about, obviously. But if the answer is no, then the question becomes, what are you going to do about this? And I would suggest that you just go back to the original words of the Master, that you follow the Jesus way, because Jesus's words alone are sufficient for salvation.