Paul taught we can’t earn our salvation but by grace through faith (Eph 2:8-9), while Jesus taught we must be worthy to receive salvation (Luke 20:35-36) which is by keeping God’s commandments (Matt 19:16-19; Rev 22:14). Jesus never taught salvation by grace anywhere. The grace Jesus taught is conditional (Matt 22:1-14), reversible (Matt 18:21-35) and expiring (Luke 13:6-9) – given only to become righteous and holy before being cut off.
In this first chapter of the letter to Galatians by Paul, we will see how his teachings are heretic in nature, even going against Christ’s teachings.
Not an Apostle through Jesus Christ.
Gal 1:1-5 PAUL, an apostle (not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead), and all the brethren who are with me, To the churches of Galatia: Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
As we see here, Paul is self-appointing himself as an apostle. How do we know this?
Acts 1:21-22 “Therefore, of these men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John to that day when He was taken up from us, one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection.”
The qualifications of who can be an apostle are being outlined above. Paul does not qualify for it.
Rev 21:14 Now the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
We also see Christ did not accept Paul as an apostle since there were only 12 apostles as mentioned in Revelation. Hence, clearly, Paul is not an apostle.
Paul cursing Christ and His disciples
Gal 1:6-9 I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.
The gospel preached by Paul is the grace of God.
Acts 20:24 “But none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.
Matt 9:35 Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.
However, Jesus preached the gospel of the Kingdom of God. By writing this, Paul is cursing Jesus Christ and anyone who preaches the gospel Christ preached.
Fork-Tongued Paul
Gal 1:10 For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.
Only a snake has forked tongue – speaking one thing to one person and another to another person.
1Cor 10:32-33 Give no offense, either to the Jews or to the Greeks or to the church of God, just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved.
In the letter to Corinthians, he is writing that he pleased all men but here he isn’t trying to please men.
John 8:29 “And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him.”
As Jesus said, we must always do things that please God.
Revelation of a Strange Gospel
Gal 1:11-12 But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Paul is confessing here that the gospel he is preaching is not received by disciple or apostles of Christ, but a revelation. If this revelation is truly from Christ, then He wouldn’t contradict His own teachings. However, we had seen that Paul is rejecting the teachings of Jesus Christ. This shows Paul had not clue about what Jesus actually taught but deceived many.
Paul’s Jesus quotes greek god
Gal 1:13-15 For you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. And I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace
Let’s try to validate Paul’s claims.
Acts 9:7 And the men who journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice but seeing no one.
Acts 22:9 “And those who were with me indeed saw the light and were afraid, but they did not hear the voice of Him who spoke to me.
Acts 26:14 “And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’
- Did the men stand as in Acts 9:7 or all fell down as in Acts 26:14?
- Did the men heard anything as in Acts 9:7 or heard none as in Acts 22:9?
As we can see, Paul’s conversion testimony is contradicting each other. A matter is resolved by 2 or 3 witnesses (Matt 18:16). Here we have 3 different verses giving witness about a conversion showing that it never happened i.e., contradicting each other.
“It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” – Do you really think Jesus while speaking to Paul in Hebrew is quoting a Greek proverb spoken by Dionysus (an Olympian god) from ‘The Baccahae’ written by Euripides? I don’t think so.
Paul did not learn from Christ’s disciples
Gal 1:16-19 to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went to Arabia, and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother.
Paul did not go to the apostles of Jesus Christ to know more about Christ but instead went to Arabia. Also, the time spent by Paul with Peter was just 15 days. If Paul wanted to know more about the Lord, he must have spent with His disciples.
Did Paul preach the same faith which he tried to destroy?
Gal 1:20-24 (Now concerning the things which I write to you, indeed, before God, I do not lie.) Afterward I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. And I was unknown by face to the churches of Judea which were in Christ. But they were hearing only, “He who formerly persecuted us now preaches the faith which he once tried to destroy.” And they glorified God in me.
Is Paul preaching the same faith which he once tried to destroy? Absolutely not!
Rom 3:27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.
Matt 7:21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.
Jas 2:24 You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.
Paul’s version of faith does not include any works. That’s not the faith Jesus or His disciples preached. Sadly, churches today use Paul’s letters to create strange faith-only doctrines which Jesus never preached.
This is such a great study, and I’m always looking for more points to make, not for the sake of debate but to use Jesus’s words to convince people of course. Debates tend to bring out the worst in people… I’ve had little success in debate, more success in just sharing Jesus’s words. You’ve given me a couple newer angles to work from, and I’m still trying to finish all of this study so this is kind of an early comment. We absolutely need to be as kind and as patient as possible about convincing people of righteousness, sin and judgement, rather than clever about it. Bottom line though, only Jesus’s sheep will hear his voice and receive his apostles.
The first obvious thing is that saul had 3 different conversion stories… with 3 different purposes attached to them, among many other lawless and dishonest actions.
Surely that’s the main red flag for most people, 3 stories that don’t match up. It surely would not hold up in court… but there’s a lot of anxiety that goes along with realizing who saul is (I don’t call him paul, the name seems to be based upon a lie, or he came in his own name, so I call him “saul”.) I think it’s good to keep that anxiety in mind – that people will have a lot of anxiety and will not be open to confrontation, when confronted too directly they exhibit harsh responses or stubbornness. So by helping we are actually hurting sometimes. They will have a hard time letting go. It took me about a week back when I decided to fearfully look into this maybe a year and a half ago.
It’s a traumatic experience when you spend your whole life living one way only to see a million reasons later on down the road to uproot it all. I came into this in Dec of 2019 after begging for God to be real, in later 2020 I was convinced that saul was the lawless one.
I could only imagine how hard it is to be open to correction for people who have been in churchianity since their childhood. It’s not easy but it is possible: All we must do is turn back to Jesus and keep his words, store them up, as many as possible. Go back to your first love, Paulians, fear not. I have trouble memorizing entire sentences Jesus had said, but I know what he generally said… and it is not what saul said.
Jesus came to clarify these three things: Righteousness, Sin and Judgement. Through him we know that righteousness is obedience to God’s command, to do his will, sin is contrary to this, and the authority of judgement has been granted to Jesus in full (he is the Word of God in flesh after all, what God says will happen %100).
Jesus told us that God desires to be worshipped in Spirit and in Truth, by the power of his Spirit, but the only way to receive the Spirit of Truth according to what he had said is to obey his commands, so John 4:24 links up to John 14:15-17
Jesus told us that in order to receive eternal life we must keep the commands, which ones? How much easier is it for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven? If you’ve read this part of the gospel of the Kingdom of heaven as much as I have, ding ding ding, you know it: Matthew 19:16-19 keep the commands.
Jesus never taught sinless perfection, a standard that seems to have been born out of the imaginative workings of saul’s mystery gospel, grace through faith/bema seat judgement false doctrine. Unlike the false idea of sinless perfection, Jesus said that if you wanted to be “perfect” you must: turn your back on the entire world (sell all of your belongings and give them to the poor then follow Jesus, paraphrasing) that is what perfection is from what I can tell according to Jesus, but saul’s false understanding of a lack of sinless perfection therefore Jesus had to live a sinless life on our behalf to become a curse for us on a cross even though he was innocent and God somehow curses an innocent man… therefore the bema seat judgement is a thing… yeah what utter nonsense, that is not what Jesus said, or John the apostle and the Great White Throne judgement where Jesus judges us, rather than some sort of fire that burns up our iniquity despite what we have made of ourselves.
Jesus said that his mother sister and brother are those who do the will of his Father in heaven, so by being obedient to God is to be apart of his family. This is true salvation! What good Father would destroy his own obedient children? You cannot reward a curse or punishment to obedience which is righteousness! Who is our father, is it Matthew 23:8-10 or is it 1 Cor 4:14-15? Is it the great white throne judgement or is it the bema seat judgement? Is it the sheep and the goats or is it confessing with your lips alone? What would I rather be, a brother with sisters and mothers and one Father, or a prisoner of Christ like saul? One was obedient to the law, the other called the law a burden because of their legalistic misunderstandings – bad teachings Jesus constantly had to correct among the teachers of the law and pharisees of his day.
We must become friends with Jesus, to be Jesus’s friend requires obedience, and that’s to what Jesus commands, and he commands us to do his father’s will. And it is crucial to be Jesus’s friend John 15:12-17 the greatest love one can exhibit is to give their life for their friends, and he calls us his friends if we do as he commands. This is the closest thing you’ll ever find to Jesus’s crucifixion saving people, but he did not say grace through faith, or just trust in him at a santa-claus level of belief, he said we must do as he commands! Over and over and over again he says to follow the commands and instructions, do the will of God almighty by being obedient.
And belief! Speaking of the satan claus: people want to take belief and make it their own, they’ll tell you John 5:24 and then quote saul after saul after saul after saul, so that saul can piggy back off of Jesus’s John 5:24, and yet they choose not to read John 14:12 to know what Jesus calls belief! When we truly believe, it is only natural… it’s not for boasting. When a tree is made good it produces good fruit. God metaphorically compares our existence to that of a tree, and we are like them, standing up from the ground, are our arms are the branches and our hands release the fruit carried by our arms. All saul did was project his own ego onto his teachings, which is why there is barely any synchronicity between his gospel and Jesus’s. The truth is that if we only had saul’s books to read, we would not know what Jesus had said! Other than “take and eat this bread” the last supper, a story he probably recieved from Peter after only spending 15 days with him like you state here in this study, after 3 years apart from them!
Saul embarassingly yet unknowingly projects who he was within, and what he had stored up in his heart which proceeded from his mouth, and he treated others as if they should follow the same set standard he deems legitimate – that anyone… EVEN ANGELS outside of his gospel should be accursed, what a piece of trash this herodian saul is. No wonder he didn’t listen when the Holy Spirit prevented him from going into Asia, and that he went anyways into Asia Minor, in his own heart he probably cursed the holy spirit because it went against his gospel! Serves him right that he was rejected of all of Asia! Some would say that’s an admission of guilt, what he admitted to Timothy about being utterly rejected.
Lastly 7 letters to the 7 churches of Asia, Saul wrote his letters but so did Jesus. Who’s letters are more significant? Jesus’s of course. Through apostle John we know that Jesus judged them all, concerning their WORKS, not just their faith. Only one church had it all together if I remember correctly: the church of Philadelphia, they kept Jesus’s word. I guess that’s where I’ll leave this comment. This subject is so vast and can fill page after page of discussions and debate… but of course I know now it’s not about debate. Sometimes we think we’re helping but we’re actually making things worse.
In closing I think it is wise to listen to wisdom, and foolish not to.
Jesus says his sheep will hear his voice, only his sheep will John 10:27… from his voice comes the Word of God. what Jesus had taught as well as his body had come from the mouth of God and returned to God after accomplishing that which God intended Isaiah 55:10-11.
Jesus said man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. This is why Jesus said he is the bread of life, to eat of his flesh – The Word became flesh after all: he is saying to eat the Word of God, and God says during Jesus’s transfiguration “This is my son who I have chosen, listen to him!”.
THE Son of God told his church, which was established upon Peter/Cephas the Rock (so listen to what he says to Peter, just like we are to listen to what he says to the 7 churches) to feed his sheep and take care of his lambs(those who hear the word) he told his church to build upon the rock, not upon sand. He said to build upon his teaching, not the teachings of many. He said to be wise, not foolish. We are all brothers and sisters, none of us are cast down or exalted, every valley is made high, and every hill made low and the path is made clear if we do as God commands. Those who exalt themselves are humbled and those who are humbled are exalted.
The whole bible is about obedience to our Father who is a good Father and so loving. The whole world is in his hands in a way and yet the whole world is so filthy, surely the Ancient of Days is truly merciful and patient with us. All praise and glory to the most high God Almighty, H3068 Yehoua. And worthy is the Lamb to sit on the great white throne to judge us out of the books for what deeds we have done, who was slain to receive power, riches, wisdom, strength and honor. Who’s this saul guy again? lol. Shalom Lord God bless all of our brothers and sisters in God’s family.