Paul - Apostle or Apostate

 (quoted from Was Paul An Apostle Of Apostate http://Ebionite.com/Paul.htm

The Spiritual Enigma Of Paul: Why did the Apostle Peter and the other disciples of Jesus reject Paul?   Of the Ebionites it was noted by the early Church writer Irenaeus: "Those who are called Ebionites agree that the world was made by God... they use the Gospel of Matthew only, and repudiate the Apostle Paul, maintaining that he was an apostate from the Law."  But exactly what does this mean?  While it is true that the Ebionite Nazirene Disciples of Jesus condemned Paul, in order to even begin to understand why, one must first begin to understand the original spiritual essence of the teachings of Jesus and TheWay.   And in view of the fact that the modern Christian world knows virtually nothing about the original spiritual objective and purpose of the Gospel teachings which have been Restored at http://OriginalGospel.Ebionite.com , it remains impossible for the modern believer to even begin to understand why the disciples of Jesus condemned and rejected the man known as Paul.

To begin to understand why the Ebionites condemned Paul as an apostate to the Law of God, you must first understand that his Epistles were not only corrupted (see Orthodox Corruption Of The Scriptures), but numerous writings attributed to Paul were authored by anti-Original Gospel Gentiles who were members of the Greek Mystery religion Mithraism.   The Gospel teachings were Tranformative, and were created in order to be a Universal path of all religions when used as the Key of Knowledge ( http://KeyOfKnowledge.org ).   While the original Gospels were written by Essene/Ebionites in the Language of the Soul (see The Original Spiritual Language Of The Gospels http://OriginalGospel.Ebionite.com#OriginalLanguage ), when the Gospels are used as the Key of Knowledge and turned within the person's own mind (see The Application Of The Scriptures As The Key Of Knowledge http://KeyOfKnowledge.org#ApplicationOfTheKeyOfKnowledge ), the Gospels are just as relevant to the inner core of Mithraic-Initiates, as they are to Hinduism, Buddhist and all other religions.  Not because they represent an historical portrayal of the man Jesus -- but rather, because the Gospels when rightly understood, present a blueprint of the Mind that the seeker needs to understand to achieve Wholeness -- enabling the seeker to enter through the inner "narrow strait gate" and achieve entrance into the Inner Kingdom.  But what this also means is that the people, places and events portrayed in the scriptures is not historical -- but rather, allegorical events of the mind that are presented within the context of an historical facade in order to make them appear applicable to the common faith-based believers.  And what this means is that the person portrayed as Paul in the Book of Acts was not an actual historical person -- but rather, was representative of an allegorical symbol of transformation.  

The Epistles attributed to Paul are all different, because they are authored by different people -- all of whom were Mithraic Initiates who portayed themselves as Christian, which was a name used by Mithraic Initiates prior to the advent of Jesus.  Which means that the modern Christians is practicing Mithraism, and using a corrupted version of the Gospels to support their faith.  In the book Christ or Paul?, the Rev. V.A. Holmes-Gore wrote: "Let the reader contrast the true Christian standard with that of Paul and he will see the terrible betrayal of all that the Master taught. For the surest way to betray a great Teacher is to misrepresent his message. That is what Paul and his followers did, and because the Church has followed Paul in his error it has failed lamentably to redeem the world. ...The teachings given by the blessed Master Christ, which the disciples John and Peter and James, the brother of the Master, tried in vain to defend and preserve intact were as utterly opposed to the Pauline Gospel as the light is opposed to the darkness."    

George Bernard Shaw, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925; in his Androcles and the Lion, we read: "There is not one word of Pauline Christianity in the characteristic utterances of Jesus. There has really never been a more monstrous imposition perpetrated than the imposition of Paul's soul upon the soul of Jesus. It is now easy to understand how the Christianity of Jesus was suppressed by the police and the Church, while Paulinism overran the whole western civilized world, which was at that time the Roman Empire, and was adopted by it as its official faith."   Will Durant; in his Caesar and Christ, wrote: "Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ. Through these interpretations Paul could neglect the actual life and sayings of Jesus, which he had not directly known. Paul replaced conduct with creed as the test of virtue. It was a tragic change."  Martin Buber, the most respected Jewish philosopher of the last century, wrote in Two Types of Faith: "The Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount is completely opposed to Paul"

A most interesting and revealing statement was made by the theologian Soren Kierkegaard, writing in The Journals, echoes the above sentiments from an important perspective: "In the teachings of Christ, religion is completely present tense: Jesus is the prototype and our task is to imitate him, become a disciple. But then through Paul came a basic alteration. Paul draws attention away from imitating Christ and fixes attention on the death of Christ The Atoner. What Martin Luther. in his reformation, failed to realize is that even before Catholicism, Christianity had become degenerate at the hands of Paul. Paul made Christianity the religion of Paul, not of Christ.  Paul threw the Christianity of Christ away, completely turning it upside down. making it just the opposite of the original proclamation of Christ"

It is ultra-important to pose the question: What exactly does it mean that the original teachings of Jesus that are in conflict with the theology set forth by Paul must be understood "...completely [in the] present tense"?   While Soren Kierkegaard was correct, because he lacked what must be portrayed as a living understanding of the original teachings that were suppressed by the later Church of Rome, he was not privy to the insight to understand the real Paul.   The bottom line is that because the foregoing theologians and scholars did not understand the original teachings and spiritual objectives of the core first-century teachings of Jesus and TheWay, it remains virtually impossible for them to understand the objections of Peter and the other disciples with respect to the theology of Paul.     

Or did they condemn the misunderstandings of the Law that many spiritually ignorant non-Jews assumed Paul to be promoting?  The problem is not so much with Paul -- but rather, the ignorance of both the Jews and the Christians with respect to why the Ebionites seemingly condemned Paul.   Moreover, to the detriment of all believers -- Jewish and Christian -- the grave misunderstanding of why the Ebionites seemingly rejected Paul has thoroughly undermined the Gospel message to this very day.    How can this be, you ask?   This fact is easily proven in the below.

To begin to understand why the Ebionites condemned Paul, you must first understand that his Epistles were not only corrupted (see Orthodox Corruption Of The Scriptures), but numerous writings attributed to Paul were authored by anti-Jewish Gentiles who were members of the Greek Mystery religions.   Yet, Paul was not wrong on a number of points -- but he espoused a very different religious path than the historical man Jesus and his disciples.  This fact is noted in the Encyclopedia Britannica where it writes: “In calling Paulinism 'Christocentric', one raises the question as to its relation to the Gospel proclaimed by Jesus... how far he unconsciously modified the Gospel by making Christ its subject matter rather than its revealer.... Paul... put all into so fresh a perspective as to change the relative emphasis on points central to the teaching of Jesus, and so alter its spirit. A school of writers, by no means unappreciative of Paul as they understand him, of whom W. Wrede may be taken as example, answer that Paul so changed Christianity as to become its 'second founder' - the real founder of ecclesiastical Christianity as distinct from the Christianity of Jesus.  They say, 'either Jesus or Paul' it cannot be both at once’”.  

If the modern Christian world has embraced a theology that is opposed to the original teachings of Jesus, then every person who claims to be a Christian must seriously pose the question: Is the dogma of the modern Church valid?   And what are the spiritual ramifications? 

In order to achieve their objective of the transformation of the Mind by bringing about Wholeness, scriptures are written with inconsistencies intentionally inserted into the literal text, in order to force the reader to stop, and contemplate the inner spiritual message.  In many instances, a conflicting account is purposely entered into the scriptures: Acts 9:7 reads: “And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man”.   Yet, in Acts 22:9 the narrative reads: “And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me”.   It means absolutely nothing for the modern reader to believe that Saul was converted on the road to Damascus -- there is no spiritual edification or uplifting when we relate this knowledge to an historical event at the beginning of our Common Era.   But what is conveyed spiritually is of great value to the disciple in search of the Inner Light -- and must bring about a change of mind in his quest to open the door to the Kingdom.   Thus the disciple begins to see his own transformation from the death of Stephen as spirit became clothed with flesh, to Saul the Jew who the Gospels portray as the "spawn of the devil" (see The Devil's Spawn http://DevilSpawn.Ebionite.com ) -- to Paul the little one (see Turn About And Become As a Child http://KeyOfKnowledge.org#TurnAbout ), whose blindness was healed by Ananias, the gift from God (see The Three Causes Of Human Blindness http://CausalFactor.Nazirene.org#TheThreeCausesOfHumanBlindness ).   And when it is understood that all of organic man are born blind -- and must themselves "turn about" and become a "little one" as the Gospel account of Jesus taught, then while quasi-historical account is meaningless to the modern Christian, the spiritual meaning is of great importance not only to Christians, but to all of mankind in search of higher spiritual truth. 

The objective of the INNER CORE of all religions, is to tap into the Inner Light of the Logos (Mind of God) and fulfill the objective to be taught by God -- i.e., "It is written in the Prophets: 'They will all be taught by God.' Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me" (John 6:45 NIV).  What made the Gospel teachings applicable to all of mankind and all religions, was that Jesus taught the seeker/disciple how to actually enter the Inner Kingdom.  And this has been portrayed in the words of the author and visionary Philip K. Dick whose Soul had lived as a first century original follow of Jesus that:  "Christ ...taught his followers how to enter the kingdom while still alive, where other mystery religions only bring about amnesis: knowledge of it at the 'other time' in 'the other realm,' not here.  He causes it to come here, and is the living agency to the Sole Good God (i.e. the Logos)."   Where "amnesis" portrays the ability to tap into the inner source of knowledge, the disciples of Jesus were able to actually enter the Inner Kingdom.  Which made the Gospel teachings equally relevant to all religions world-wide.

Because the vast majority of Gentiles did not understand the proper use of the scriptures as the Key of Knowledge (see http://KeyOfKnowledge.org#ApplicationOfTheKeyOfKnowledge ), and they attempted to read the Gospels as if they were historical accounts, the Mithraic Initiates viewed themselves as parallel accounts of Paul and authored many epistles and writings under the name of Paul.    Those Mithraic Initiates who wrote under the pseudonym of Paul, had no interest in the historical man Jesus as seen in the statement -- i.e., “Therefore from now on we recognize no man according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according o the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer” (2 Cor 5:16).   This Spiritual Messiah/Christ, over the historical Messiah/Christ in the flesh, was what biblical scholar Rudolf Bultmann was speaking of when he concluded that the “…Christian faith is, and should be, comparatively uninterested in the historical Jesus and centered instead on the transcendent Christ” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1998 electronic edition).   But this higher spiritual meaning of the Gospel accounts could not be understood by the pagan Mithraic sun-worshipers who believed that Jesus was the latest incarnation of the Mithraic sun-god. 

It is easily proven that the whole of the New Testament underwent a wholesale corruption in order to make it support the pagan element of Mithraism (see http://BibleCorruption.com ).  One of these corruption factors was seen where the Mithraic Initiates who wrote under the pseudonym of Paul wrote that the person must have faith in Christ -- meaning the Inner Anointing of the Mind by the Logos/Son of God -- the pagan Christians who portrayed themselves as Orthodox, added the name Jesus -- i.e., "...theological disputes, specifically disputes over Christology, prompted Christian scribes to alter the words of scripture in order to make them more serviceable for the polemical task. Scribes modified their manuscripts to make them more patently ‘orthodox’ and less susceptible to ‘abuse’ by the opponents of orthodoxy" (see Prof. Bart D. Ehrman; The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture)

What we fail to realize today is that during this period, every single document was edited and revised to confirm the Mithraic doctrines of the Roman Church. The noted Church Historian Eusebius quotes the Church Father Dionysius (Hist. Eccl., Bk. 4. 23), who reports that his own epistles had been tampered with: "When my fellow Christians invited me to write letters to them I did so. These the devil's apostles have filled with tares, taking away some things and adding others. For them the woe is reserved. Small wonder then if some have dared to tamper even with the word of the Lord Himself, when they have conspired to mutilate my own humble efforts".  Eusebius writes of a number of sects of Christians of his day: "Therefore they have laid their hands boldly upon the Divine Scriptures, alleging that they have corrected them. That I am not speaking falsely of them in this matter, whoever wishes may learn. For if any one will collect their respective copies, and compare them one with another, he will find that they differ greatly. Those of Asclepiades, for example, do not agree with those of Theodotus. And many of these can be obtained, because their disciples have assiduously written the corrections, as they call them, that is the corruptions, of each of them. Again, those of Hermophilus do not agree with these, and those of Apollonides are not consistent with themselves. For you can compare those prepared by them at an earlier date with those which they corrupted later, and you will find them widely different. But how daring this offense is, it is not likely that they themselves are ignorant. For either they do not believe that the Divine Scriptures were spoken by the Holy Spirit, and thus are unbelievers, or else they think themselves wiser than the Holy Spirit, and in that case what else are they than demoniacs? For they cannot deny the commission of the crime, since the copies have been written by their own hands. For they did not receive such Scriptures from their instructors, nor can they produce any copies from which they were transcribed".

Biblical scholars basically told the people the truth, but the truth was and remains unacceptable to the multitude of Churches.  Quoting from Examination of Modern NT Text Criticism: "Where history records that true sacred text survived this assault and is preserved in the traditional text, Westcott and Hort counter that the whole church participated in a conspiracy to fabricate a blended (and therefore corrupted) text. Westcott and Hort must not have believed the traditional Christian church to be genuine, but a sham. This thesis is supported by the biographies of Westcott and Hort. When J. F. D. Maurice was accused of false doctrine, Westcott commented that Orthodox Christians are like a new Islam persecuting a revival of the true Christians."

In the year 1947 an archeological discovery was made that should have totally altered the course of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic religious history. In this respect, ”History”, writes Edward Gibbon, ”is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind” (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire).  When the Hand of the Lord gave the gift of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the church, religious people now possessed the ability to transcend almost two thousand years of what Gibbon rightfully called ”the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind”. This gift -- directly from God -- placed the source of all western religions in the hand of the church where they could view the sacred writings apart from the defilement of man-made doctrine.  In the words of Prof. Elaine Pagles: “It is the winners who write history - their way. No wonder, then, that the viewpoint of the successful majority has dominated all traditional accounts of the origin of Christianity… It suggests that these religious debates - questions of the nature of God, or of Christ - simultaneously bear social and political implications that are crucial to the development of Christianity as an institutional religion. In simplest terms, ideas which bear implications contrary to that development come to be labeled as heresy; ideas which implicitly support it become orthodox” (see Pagles, The Gnostic Gospels).  A very important part of understanding what we believe, in relation to the truth, is to be able to go beyond the many doctrines that became infused into what came to be called the Christian religion during the almost two thousand years that God’s revelation was in the hands of mankind. In other words, we must decide whether the truth is found only in the words that Jesus spoke, or do we also consider the many doctrines and clarifications that man added along the way to also be the truth?

What does the modern believer actually know about the original teachings of Jesus and TheWay?   In an interview with Brian Brian McLaren by Christianity Today, he is quoted as stating: "One of the problems is that the average Christian in the average church who listens to the average Christian broadcasting has such an oversimplified understanding of both the Bible and of church history - it would be deeply disturbing for them to really learn about church history" (see Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right) -- to which statement we must pose the question: Does it matter?   If the very people who Jesus personally taught believed what can only be portrayed as being radically different from the beliefs that the Church adopted when they entered into a covenant with fourth century Pagan Rome -- whereby Church dogma became subject to the dictates of the emperor who at the time was not even a baptized Christian -- then the question is whether the modern believer is even prepared to understand the spiritual substance of the original teachings associated with Jesus and TheWay?   Especially if it can be proven that many of the most important core principles and teachings embraced by those who Jesus personally taught, are rejected by the modern Church as heresy today.   

When biblical scholars such as A. Powell Davies attempted to warn the Christian world that discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls had confirmed what they (the scholars) had all along suspected --  (1) that there were serious differences between the dogma derived from the Epistles attributed to Paul, and that of the original teachings of Jesus and TheWay; and (2) that the Roman Church created the divinity of the man Jesus -- i.e., “Biblical scholars were not disturbed by what they found in the Dead Sea Scrolls because they had known all along that the origin of Christianity was not what was commonly supposed to have been” (quoted by Millar Burrows in More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls) -- modern Christians were not in the least bit prepared to understand the historical facts.  Worse yet, from a modern believer's perspective, is the statement by Edmund Wilson, an expert who worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls, when he further raised the question as to what difference it makes if “Jesus... had been trained in the discipline and imbued with the thought of a certain Jewish sect, and that he had learned from it the role that he afterwards lived...” (The Scrolls From The Dead Sea).  To the uninformed and unknowing believer, it made all the difference in the world!  If the historical man Jesus emerged out of the mystical sect of the Essenes -- and his original disciples who talked and walked with him daily, believed that Jesus was a holy man who lived a consecrated life, fulfilling the Law within himself so completely, that he became At-One with the Logos/Son of God at his baptism as stated by all Church Authorities prior to the fourth century Nicene Council held by the Roman Emperor Constantine (see At-Onement With The Logos/Son Of God http://BrotherOfJesus.org#AtOnement ), then the Adam Clark Bible Commentary is correct when it states that "...the whole Christian system is vain and baseless"!!!    When Prof. John Allegro was quoted as saying that what has been revealed in the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls is a great amount of overwhelming evidence that “...may upset a great many basic teachings of the Christian Church.   This in turn would greatly upset many Christian Theologians and believers.   The heart of the matter is, in fact, the source and originality of Christian doctrine” (August 1966 issue of Harpers Magazine); what he was in fact stating is that, everything that we now know about Christian beginnings demonstrate that the Essene/Ebionites were not the heretics as they were falsely portrayed by the later Gentile church, but were in fact the body of genuine believers that held fast to the authentic teachings of Yeshua/Jesus and the New Covenant (see The Ebionite Heresy http://DevilSpawn.Ebionite.com#TheEbioniteHeresy ). 

Continued at Was Paul An Apostle Of Apostate http://Ebionite.com/Paul.htm