The Message Of Paul
Written by Elinor Montgomery – em*********@****co.ca
July 9, 2003
Paul is our time-honored apostle extraordinary. He had no authority from man to preach, only that which the Lord Jesus Christ Himself gave to him. He wore no clerical robes, had no seminary degree, had no pulpit, had no congregation, had no place to call his own, and had no bed. Yet, the whole world listens to his words to this day. When secularism and religious practices have left the church in need of revitalization, it is to the words of Paul we can look to see the error of our ways.
It is strange, but true; if he were here today, his message would have to deal with the same problems he faced in his day. He had to deal with the long established religion of the Jewish people. Today, he would have to deal with the long established religion of the Christian Church. He renamed the true Jew as the believer. Today, he would rename the believer as the true Jew. We have entrenched ourselves for centuries in the name Christian, for so long and so much so, that, like the religion of Judaism, the religion of Christianity has become our stumbling block. We have accepted what Rome chose for Jesus’ church, and have rejected what Jesus Himself chose, and laid as the foundation for His church.
Jesus hated the religion of the Pharisees of His day. If we were transported back in time and had been part of the scene in Jesus’ day, we as good “Christians” today, would probably have been good Jews, then. We would have recognized the papal authority of the day. We would have seen their clean flowing garments that separated them from the laity and placed them within their place of honor in the synagogues. They would have carried out the same age-old, God-ordained rituals that their people had carried out for over 1,500 years. For, after all, they knew the law, and they were the chosen authority of God in the camp. They marched very proudly and self-righteously through the market place. They frowned on the heathens that did not understand what it meant to be God’s people, or just how important they were. They were the highest authority in Israel for the Jew, being next to God Himself. They had a lot to lose by having their positions come crashing down in the light of the teachings of Jesus.
For the average Jew, he had a lot to contend with in being confronted with something that challenged all he had believed and had been taught for over two thousand years, with regard to the Torah and his relationship to God. After all, had the Hebrews not seen the miracles that God had worked for them, as He delivered their people out of the slavery and captivity of Egypt? At this point, it is interesting to note the miracle of God, in parting the Red Sea, had lost all its importance within the short span of three days, as the children of Israel were seen to be grumbling and ready to turn back. Moses, their leader, became the enemy, so very easily and so very quickly, at the first signs of adversity. Yet, in Jesus’ day, the religious leaders held the miracles of God up as their own authority, and the right for only the Jew to be the recipient of God’s favor and grace, as His chosen people. They had become separated from the nations around them, but in a way God had never intended for them. They were now separated in the pride of their own religion, which made only them the children of the one true God. They were no better or worse than the nations around them. Pride had taken over their calling, and Judaism had become their god. Religion had become the opiate of the people.
Paul, with his teaching, burst in on this scene, in the same way Jesus, the Teacher, had before him. He found himself not only up against the Gentile world, but he was up against the Jewish rabbis, and his Jewish brothers. Even the apostles were unwilling to give up circumcision in the flesh, or the refusal to eat the foods that the Greeks ate, deemed to be unclean by them. No, they thought, if Paul were to be one of them and if he were to go out to deliver the gospel to all the world, it would have to be within their traditions and religious practices, which they had embraced for centuries. They could not imagine a God who would change His own plan. Yet, these same apostles had lived in the very presence of God on earth, and they were still torn between religious practices as a means to salvation as opposed to the truth of the gospel, standing alone in Jesus. They had not eclipsed in their minds the nature of the crossover blessing of Israel, which was fulfilled by Jesus on the cross, at the crossover point where it took place.
But, there was a difference with Paul. In his dramatic conversion, and with his enormous calling, the Lord had shown him the darkness that the reptilian scales of religion bring in our lives. Jesus forced Paul, in the natural, to experience his condition in the spiritual, and with such an experience, he began his ministry having the revelation of truth regarding religion in our lives. Not only was he required to fulfill the call to preach the gospel of truth, but also he had to lay bare the sin of religion before Jews and Gentiles, and even before the apostles themselves. He had the rare and singular calling to take the early apostolic church out of religion and make sure that it was resting on the chief cornerstone of truth.
If he were here today addressing the institutions called Christian churches, what do you think he would be called to do? Would he step up into the pulpits of various denominations to tell the people they had got it right? Would he say you have done a splendid job of getting it all together? Would he put on priestly robes and ask for a book of liturgy so that he could blend in with the others in their prayers they say by rote? Would there be a place for him in the conferences that emphasize a penny given to support their ministries will bring great financial rewards in the lives of the donors? I think the first thing he would do, would be to go outside the buildings, wherever such ministries were housed, and be violently sick. He would be traumatized to see just how captive his apostolic church had become to the Roman system, known as Christianity. He had not evangelized Rome for the purpose of turning his teachings into another religion, as void of the truth as was Judaism. He had not fought the good fight to lead his beloved church into the tatters of denominationalism, each fragmented unit having its own religious doctrines and systems that come from an enemy of systems and religions. I could well believe that his first question would be, “What has happened to the voice you were called to be, to go into the nations and before rulers with the gospel of truth?” What are you doing cloistered in silence behind your walls of religion, when there is a world out there going to hell in a handbag? You and your attachment to religion make you accomplices to the evil deeds of Satan. You are as the harlot Eve, resting in the lie, riding the beast to the bottom of the sea.”
Would Paul not likely shout at the church, today, with words such as these? “Come out of her, God’s people, come out! You have no place in bed with this giant religious body called Christianity. You are in danger and on the very edge of the cliff as Christianity quickly moves into ecumenicalism.” The walls of separation, dividing all religious bodies, are coming down to bring forth one powerful body that will be known as United Religion. It is not the apostolic church that will give up Jesus for the sake of unity; it is the system of Christianity that will fade away, as it becomes part of the bigger religion. And this is within God’s plan, for He is getting ready to vent His wrath on the religious and on liberalism that began in the garden. He and His true bride, the true Jew, the true church, are making this the last covenant call before judgment and the rapture. Beware of those who are trying to unite Christianity into a religious oneness, by ignoring the truth of the Word, regarding religion!
You need to try to imagine Paul in your presence, and heed the messages he gave to the world. For at this hour, mankind is as the rebellious child about to be brought before the Father for severe disciplining and punishment. He has put up with our nonsense for the seven millennia it has taken to teach us and allow us His grace, so that we might understand it in obedience and in faith to Him and to His government. This was what God required of His covenant people. He sent Moses, the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles, to show us the Way, being that path of truth, which is separate and apart from the broad road of religion. He made it clear when He closed off the Way back to Him, on the east side of the garden, and guarded it by the cherubim. Yet, He opened it up through Israel and His covenant with her that was still guarded by the same cherubim. Then, He sent His Son to open it up for the entire world to receive the salvation of Israel. Finally, His Son sent His apostles, His church, in which there was a special opening made by Satan, himself, when he bodily entered Judas. It took a man like Paul to fill that opening, a man who understood the difference between religion and truth, leaving no opening for Satan in his life by embracing none of the lies of religion. He embraced only the truth of his beloved Lord and Saviour, for His blinding light had removed all darkness in Paul’s life.
This is the message of Paul. “Religion will take you out of the true church and down. I call you out of religion and back into the church and onto the foundation that the Lord Jesus called my brethren and me to lay down for you. Come! Come out of her, my little children, for the Lord God is getting ready to expose the great harlot of Babylon, and to send her down to the bottomless pit to await her judgment. Do not be part of her. Do not ride the beast to the bottom of the sea.”
