 So what do we know about Paul? First of all, we know this is indisputable that Paul never met Jesus. Paul never met Jesus. Paul writes by far more books in the Christian Bible than anyone else. Some people believe that he wrote 13 out of the 27 books in the Christian Bible. It may only be seven. There are six that are disputed, but no one wrote six. No one wrote 13. So the majority of anything that comes out of the Christian Bible is a product of Paul. But Paul never met Jesus. That we know for a certainty. Number two, Paul himself reports that he violently persecuted the followers of Jesus. That's what Paul tells about himself. That earlier in his life he would go around arresting them, throwing them into prison. He was there when Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was stoned to death and he was part of that. So Paul himself says, I violently persecuted the followers of Jesus to the death. That was what we know about Paul. Number three, Paul claims to have had a mystical encounter with Jesus. Where Jesus allegedly appeared to him and appointed him as a special apostle to the Gentiles. We know that when Jesus was alive, Jesus did not preach to Gentiles. Jesus said that his mission was exclusively to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Jesus told his followers, go not to the cities of the Samaritans or the cities of the Gentiles. I'm only sending you, Jesus says, to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Paul claims now that after Jesus died, he allegedly now said, well now we have a universal mission to reach everyone and Jesus made me the special emissary to the Gentiles. That's what Paul claims. So again, Paul never met Jesus. Paul tells us that he persecuted the followers of Jesus. Paul claims to have had a mystical vision where Jesus appeared to him and appointed him as a special apostle to the Gentiles and Paul claims that he has ongoing encounters with Jesus. That Jesus always speaks to him. That's Paul's story. However, we see from the Christian Bible itself and this is very clear. Not just from the Christian Bible, but later Christian sources from the second century that there was lots of skepticism, not from the outside world, not from the rabbinical community. There was lots of skepticism from the followers of Jesus, meaning from the Jesus movement, there was a lot of skepticism about Paul and even more than that, a lot of opposition to Paul. So when you read the Christian Bible, you'll see almost in every book there are people that are following Paul around and making trouble for him. They're questioning him. They're disputing him. They're questioning his legitimacy, his credibility. How do we really know that Jesus spoke to you? I mean, he's got people on his tail constantly challenging him, questioning him. He's got lots of opposition. Just a simple example. I mentioned a few moments ago that Paul claimed that Jesus appointed him as apostle to the Gentiles. Now, the first crisis you could say in the history of Christianity, the first time there was ever a big debate in the Christian movement, was in the 15th chapter of the Book of Acts and in this chapter what comes up for discussion is it's an obvious problem because Jesus never really taught them anything about non-Jews and now Paul's been running around the world converting non-Jews and getting them to believe in Jesus. So the big question became, what do we do with these Gentiles? What's supposed to happen to them? Are they supposed to convert to Judaism? Are they supposed to do something else? They don't know. What is supposed to happen with these non-Jews that Paul has been converting? So there was a group in Jerusalem, which was where the movement was based in Jerusalem, that was saying, look, if they want to join our group, they have to get circumcised if they're men, they have to observe all the commandments of the Torah, they have to convert to Judaism, that there was such a voice. And others said, no, they don't need to do that. Now, if Jesus appointed Paul as the apostle to the Gentiles, what should they have done at this meeting in the Book of Acts chapter 15? It's a no-brainer. They should have said, because here you have the leaders of the group, you have John and Peter and James, James is the brother of Jesus. What they should have said is, well, we don't know, but let's go ask Paul, right? If they believed that Jesus appeared to Paul and appointed him as the machar, there's the apostle to the Gentiles, if they believed that, they would have said, okay, this is your, this is your department, Paul, you should tell us, what do we do here? They didn't do that. They didn't give Paul any credibility. They decided among themselves, and the final decision was made by the brother of Jesus, James, who we know was actually the leader of the Jesus movement until about the year 62, for about 30 years. So we see from this interesting story that even though Paul is claiming to have had this experience where Jesus appeared to him and appointed him as the apostle to the Gentiles, the movement in Jerusalem didn't accept that. Okay, so what is their problem with Paul? Why didn't they accept him? What was their reluctance? What was their hesitancy? So one problem is, again, they probably say to themselves, who in the world is this Johnny come lately, who never met Jesus, and now he's just coming to us with these tales that Jesus appeared to him. How do we know? And that might have been part of the skepticism. A second problem is, they never heard from Jesus, meaning that Jesus appointed the apostles. You only became an apostle because Jesus said you're going to be an apostle official, right? They're going to be 12 of you, but they never heard Jesus appointing Paul anything. Number three, all they knew about Paul was that he was a big problem. All they knew about Paul was that for years he was persecuting us to the death. That's what they knew about him. So now all of a sudden he says, well, Jesus appeared to me and was supposed to just say, of course, of course he did. The other issue was that they were hearing reports about what Paul was actually teaching when Paul was running around the diaspora, ancient Greco-Roman places like Greece, and what they were hearing was that Paul was teaching people there's no longer a need to observe the Torah. Now, as followers of Jesus, Jesus never said that. Jesus consistently spoke about the importance of keeping the Torah. And they say to Paul, they challenged him. When Paul came back to Jerusalem, he came once in a while, he collected charity to bring it to the group in Jerusalem who were very poor. They confronted him and they said, Paul, what is this we're hearing about you that you're teaching even the Jews in the diaspora that they don't have to circumcise their children or observe the commandments? What's going on? So this bothered them about Paul. And the truth is that when we study Paul's writings, this seems to be what he speaks about. Paul says numerous times you are no longer under what he calls the curse of the Torah. Now, what's this curse of the Torah? When we read about the Torah, in the Torah, it only speaks about the Torah as being a blessing, as being about more precious and gold, sweeter than honey, the most delicious thing in the world. And it speaks about the commandments as being eternal forever. So wait a second. What we know from the Torah is that the commandments are eternal, and they're the most precious thing in the world. And we heard the same message from Jesus. And now we're hearing from you, Paul, that you're talking about, you're no longer under the curse of the law. What's going on? So it wasn't just rumors in Lushenhara, evil speech that they were hearing about Paul. They had his own teaching, and he teaches this consistently throughout his writings. Paul is teaching that the commandments are no longer obligatory. Now, many Christians will dispute this, and they'll say, no, Paul never taught anything against the observance of the Torah. And you'll find there are Christian scholars, especially people in the Jews for Jesus movement, who will say no such thing. Paul was pro-Torah. Well, so maybe we can discuss it. But I would say that we can get a vote out of Paul's followers, meaning you can parse Paul's words in different ways. I believe that Paul is clear about this issue. But for those who insist, no, Paul always insisted that the Torah has to be kept. So I would say, let's go look at the followers of Paul. Did they keep themselves Torah observant people? Do we see any of Paul's followers keeping the Torah? No, not at all. So it's clear that the followers of Paul didn't understand him as to be emphasizing the importance of Torah observance. And then we see in the second century, because the Christian Bible is basically written somewhere by the beginning of the second century. But in the second century, you have basically the continuation of the movement of Jewish people who believed that Jesus was the Messiah. They didn't believe he was God. They didn't believe he was born of a virgin. They simply believed that he was the Messiah. And they believed he would return soon to bring about the utopian messianic age. And they were certainly people that were Torah observant. We don't have their writings anymore because the church destroyed their writings as heretical. But what we do have are writings about these groups. They were called Ebonites. They were called Nazarenes. So we know about them from the church who wrote about them as heretics. And what we know about them is that they wrote about Paul. These Ebonites and Nazarenes wrote about Paul that Paul was a wicked person. They called Paul a heretic. Paul was an imposter. So we have the testimony of people who didn't trust Paul. And then interestingly, we see what did the followers of Paul? Paul was long dead by the second century. But how did the followers of Paul treat these Jewish followers of Jesus in the second century? Meaning that, again, we're not talking about groups outside of the Jesus movement. We're talking about the followers of Paul. And we're talking about the Jewish followers of Jesus, the ones that really are descendants of the original movement. We know that the Gentile church that emerged out of Paul persecuted the Ebonites and Nazarenes as I mentioned. They saw them as heretics. And they begin to consistently forbid any follower of Jesus from observing the Torah. They saw Torah observance as anathema. So I think the historical evidence points to the fact that Paul was no great Torah supporter. But Paul's greatest problem was establishing his credibility. Meaning, Paul is claiming that what he is writing is not just his own fantasies. Paul is claiming that he's writing revelations from God. Actually, all of the New Testament writers, they claim that they're receiving messages from God. But otherwise, why have any importance to it? The idea that Christians have is that their Bible is just like the Jewish Bible. And just like the Jewish Bible where prophets like Ezekiel and Zechariah and Isaiah who were prophets of God. And their words were preserved. So in the Christian mindset, Paul and Matthew and Luke and John, these are also people that are receiving the word of God. And we preserve their words in the Bible. So the question is for us tonight, what is the evidence that Paul is a prophet? How do we know that Paul heard from God? Even less than that. How do we even know that Paul heard from Jesus? Because again, it's not clear. I don't want to confuse the issue tonight, but it's not clear that Paul clearly taught that Jesus is God himself. Now that clearly became the belief in Christianity following Paul, meaning Paul's disciples clearly came to embrace the idea that Jesus is God, that Jesus created the world. It's not clear if Paul made that kind of direct identification. But it's clear that for Paul, Jesus is an elevated spiritual being, maybe angelic, maybe even existing before the world was created. It's not exactly clear. Paul does not spell it out. But even if we dismiss the idea that Paul is claiming that God spoke to him, he certainly says straight out that Jesus speaks to him. And the question is, how would anyone know? How would anyone know? At the end of the day, all we have are his assertions. That's all we have. Now in the Christian scriptures, and this is very fascinating, Paul struggles with this question of his credibility. You see it, it's black on white, that Paul is clearly on the defensive. Paul is clearly struggling with this question of his authenticity. And he has four different approaches other than just insisting and asserting. One thing Paul does, which I think is self-defeating, is Paul says numerous times, I am telling the truth, I am not lying. Now anyone who's familiar with the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish Bible, you would smile because you never see any of the true prophets of God, as Shakespeare would say, he thinks he does protest too much. Once someone has to keep on telling you, I'm telling the truth, I'm not lying, that would get my antenna up. And so Paul is constantly having to protest too much and say, I'm telling the truth, I'm not lying. I think that's a bit of a red flag. Number two, Paul basically tries to say, I'm telling the truth, and how can you know this? Because look at how much I've suffered and look how much I've been persecuted. Paul plays the pity card and by appealing to the fact that he suffered for his beliefs and he was persecuted for his beliefs, for Paul that proves who he is. For Paul that substantiates his claim that he speaks in the name of Jesus and or God. Now I would say that's not a very strong proof. You know people are sometimes persecuted for reasons other than the fact that they are prophets of God. Maybe Paul was just hard to get along with or obnoxious or difficult. And he seems to be that way by the way in the Christian Bible. He seems to wherever he goes, people don't like him. So maybe it was personal, but whatever it is, the fact that you were persecuted does not prove that what you believe is true. Number three, Paul threatens people. Meaning that when Paul is writing to the church in Corinth, he says, I'm going to deal with you harshly. He threatens people. That also to me is not a strong proof for anything. And another thing he does is to try to wow people by claiming that he has had dramatic supernatural experiences. He says in the book of Corinthians that he went up to the seventh heaven that he somehow was flying around in the spiritual realms. He tells these big tales. I believe in order to wow people, to impress people. But again, what's the proof that these things happened? It's again, just his assertion. So I did a little bit of poking around on the internet and I was curious, why do Christians today believe that Paul really should be taking at his word? What is the reasoning behind the unquestioned acceptance of Paul? And interestingly, I really couldn't find too much. All I found after hours of searching was one article by a Christian evangelist named Dom Stewart. And Dom Stewart wrote an article called, Five Reasons to Accept Paul's Writings. This is exactly what I'm interested in. Five reasons to accept Paul's writings. Let's see what his five reasons are. Number one, Paul believed his message to be divine. Paul believed that his message was divine. Well, every false prophet in history believed that their message was true. The fact that someone believes that their message is divine doesn't prove that God spoke to them. All it proves is that people are able to believe things even if they're not true. So the fact that, you know, I would say how convenient that, you know, that's why we should believe Paul because Paul believed it himself. I'm not impressed. Number two, Paul spoke about what he refers to as my gospel. Again, Dom Stewart I'm sure wrote this with a straight face. So this is another reason out of the five why we should accept Paul's writings because Paul refers to my gospel and I would say so what? Why does that prove that Paul is really receiving his messages from Jesus? Number three, Don Stewart says Paul received direct revelation from Jesus. Now, how do we know that? So Don Stewart gives a footnote for his point here. He refers to 1st Corinthians chapter 9 verse 1 where Paul says that I am an apostle and I saw Jesus. So what's the proof that Paul received communication from Jesus? Again, Don Stewart is saying because Paul claims he did. So basically all we're left with after Don Stewart's brilliant article is we should accept Paul at his word. He claims it and therefore it's so fact that it must be true. Number four, this is again Stewart's article. Why we should accept Paul's writing is number four. You know, after I read this, I was wondering maybe he's not serious. Maybe this article is a joke article. And then I realized, no, he's deadly serious. He is struggling to come up with reasons why anyone should accept Paul's writings. And Nebuch, this is the best he could do. So reason number four, he says, Paul says, if you disobey my gospel, you'll be disciplined. So the fact that Paul threatened people, that must be proof that Paul is the real deal. And number five, his writings were considered scripture during his lifetime. So the fact he claims, I don't believe this is true, by the way, because the Christian Bible was not canonized until centuries later. So I don't know why Don Stewart assumes that Paul's writings were considered scripture in his lifetime. But even if they were, so what? All it means is that there were some people in the time of Paul who bought into his claims. But why should we buy into those claims? Meaning that what is the proof that Paul really heard from God or even that he heard from Jesus? I would say that Paul has zero foundation, zero credibility. And I think that's exactly why, even among fellow followers of Jesus, Paul was always on the defensive. People questioned him. They were skeptical about him. And I believe for good reason.