[Music] And so, today we're going to be diving a lot more into the philosophical distinctions between the Gospels. This is really my favorite part of this whole presentation because, you know, last week we went through the historicity and the chronology of especially Paul's story and his life experience with first-century history, particularly with the Jerusalem Apostles. We went over all of that, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, so we've covered our bases quite a bit on the historicity of what we're discussing.
The reason that's important is so you can see a real context for why everything we're saying here is absolutely true: that there was this great splitting off between Jesus's apostles and the Apostle Paul, who became the foundation of what we now call the Christian religion. What's interesting to me is that Paul essentially invented a religion about himself, but it is a religion that pretends to be about Jesus. In actuality, at its core, it's all about Paul and all of Paul's visions, his revelations, and his future prophecies.
These tenets are followed to the letter in churches today. People, like myself, who are waking up at 23 years old after leaving the church and my full-time pastor job, are just beginning to reach this point where we ask: what does any of this have to do with Jesus? It's funny that you would have to say such a thing or ask such a question in a Christian context.
We touched on this last week, but at the core—and I want everybody to get this—at the core of Jewish law, the Law of Moses, right at the very heart of it, is the law of one. This is why this subject matters to me so much, because you guys know I'm a passionate student of the Law of One, as many of you are. The Law of One influences everything I teach and has profoundly influenced everything I practice today.
It is undeniably true that at the core of Jewish law, the Law of Moses, which Jesus and his disciples were espousing, is the law of one. This is really cool because it means that the Jewish people in ancient times actually got it correct initially with the Ten Commandments and the Law of Moses. They covered the most important law of all, which is to love God with all your heart and, therefore, love your neighbor as yourself.
It is the law of oneness: that we are all one in God; we are all children of God. Therefore, you cannot say you believe in God and hate God's children or attack or judge God's children. Judaism eventually, very quickly in fact, got pulled astray into the logistical laws and restrictions from the Torah, which really have nothing to do with the law of one.
This is why Jesus said, "I have not come to abolish the law, but to restore it, to fulfill it. ” Jesus emphasized over and over again that the entire law is summarized in one single law: the law of one—love God, love your neighbor. These are really the same commandment because God is every person.
What does God look like? You ask the person right in front of you. So, if God is everybody, we can't love God as just a mental idea.
Jesus didn't come to abolish the law, but to restore it by fulfilling it. A mental belief in God alone doesn't mean anything because it doesn't exist anywhere; your ideas about God and your belief in God don't exist without actions, without demonstrating it through your life. Why do you think God puts us in human bodies?
Why do you think souls come to incarnate? God wants to experience physical reality. It's because God wants to manifest in physical reality through you and me—through good works, loving actions, and actions that are worthy of righteousness and repentance.
This is the only way the idea of God is made manifest, and this should be clear to everybody. So, this is the law of one, which Jesus was trying to get the Jews back to. This was really the one wrinkle that Jesus introduced because in Jesus's day, the Jews were all great with his gospel.
Very few Jews had any problem with what Jesus was teaching because he wasn't teaching what Paul taught: "Confess me! I'm God! I'm the Lord!
You have to confess me or you're all going to burn in hell! " They would have for sure had a problem with that. If Jesus had been saying, "I'm God exclusively; confess me as Lord or you'll burn in hell," they would have stoned him on the spot.
The reason he didn't get stoned is that over and over again he said, "Follow the commandments of Moses. Follow the Torah. Follow the law.
" And that's Judaism; it's a religion about following the law of God. So, the one wrinkle Jesus added in was, "Hey, the law is good, yes, the law of Moses should be abided by, yes, but you all have gone astray. You've gotten lost and confused in this animal sacrifice nonsense, which all the prophets have condemned.
" Where God says, "I never wanted animal sacrifices; away from me with these abominations. I turn my nose away at the smell of your burnt offerings. I don't want these burnt sacrifices," says God in the Psalms, in Ezekiel, and in Jeremiah, and on and on.
All the prophets, Malachi, all of them condemned animal sacrifices. Jesus came to say, "Yes, the law is good, but you all aren't following it. You all think you can just be a sinner and then go murder a goat in the temple and have your sins.
. . " Forgiven like a sinful act that is murdering innocence can create righteousness.
This, you've got it all backwards. God wants you to repent from your sins, turn your whole heart towards Him, and live in loving obedience to His Commandments, the number one Commandment of which is "Love your neighbor as yourself. " Jesus said, "If you do this one thing, if you do this one thing: love your neighbor as yourself, you have fulfilled the entire Torah.
" That was Jesus's wrinkle; that was the only new addition Jesus really added to the Jewish faith, which is why almost all the Jews, unilaterally, except for the Herodians, of course, were on Jesus's side. So the Jews got it right initially. The law of one is at the core of the Jewish law, but they went astray with Leviticus and on and on with animal sacrifices.
Jesus came to bring them back to where they began, right? And that is, well, let me back up. Jesus actually was doing a phenomenal job of what He came to do.
Jesus was having great success and had sort of mounted this incredible movement in the first century of the Jesus movement called followers of the way or the Nazarene movement of Judaism. Jesus was on the way to reforming Judaism in a huge way until, that is, a man by the name of Paul came along and got involved and completely usurped everything Jesus was trying to teach and essentially invented a religion about Himself. And so, again, that's why I've created this presentation and I'm bringing this message to the world, because it's probably one of the most important messages the world could ever receive.
I really believe that. In the second half of this presentation today, I'm going to be doing a lot of critiquing of the core tenets of Christianity or Christian theology, because I believe that it's high time that these doctrines need to be exposed for the spiritual fallacies that they are. These doctrines, the core tenets of Christian fundamentalism, do not lead people to godliness, happier living, righteous living, or spiritual fulfillment.
I was born and raised in this world; I only knew Christians my entire life, and I can tell you, I'd never met one Christian in my entire life who was genuinely spiritually free. Why? Because the Christian doctrine binds you to sin consciousness.
You have to accept, again, as this is one of the core tenets of the faith, the vast majority of pastors will rebuke you if you try to say this without including the most important tidbit: "I am a sinner; I am inherently depraved; I have a sin nature; I cannot be righteous of my own accord. " That's the prerequisite to confessing Jesus. You have to be not able to be righteous because then you're in big trouble, right?
Now you need, "Who's going to get me out of this mess? " Oh, don't worry! We've got your salvation for you.
It's in confessing this doctrine we came up with: "Jesus Christ died for my sins; I believe He raised from the dead on the third day and rose again. " Now you're saved. Good!
Congratulations! What are we talking about? What does this have anything to do with Jesus or His teachings?
So these doctrines keep people stuck in sin consciousness: "You're totally depraved; you can't be righteous," which we totally debunked last week. Right? All throughout the Bible, especially the Old Testament, it says the law of God is not too hard for you.
The law of God is beautiful; the law of God is wonderful, and God has put it on your heart, written it on your heart, that you may observe it. And God calls hundreds of people righteous in the Old and New Testaments. Jesus called many people righteous.
So this idea that you can't be righteous and you're totally depraved is a false belief, I believe, invented and created by the negative polarity 2,000 years ago to infiltrate Jesus's gospel, which, of course, the negative polarity could never allow to proliferate on planet Earth. So they had to corrupt it somehow. And so, you know, when I grew up in Christianity, I remember vividly the sort of awful feeling that comes with believing this idea about yourself: that you're totally depraved by nature.
It is a total self-devaluation, right? To say, "I am inherently a sinner," you know, it's like I remember living with this attitude as a teenage kid wanting to stop thinking lustful thoughts or whatever it was, like totally innocent stuff, and I'm just condemning myself in my mind all day because I'm like, "Why can't I follow Jesus's Commandments? " Ah, I guess it's true; I guess what Paul said is true: I'm just evil to the core.
And so it creates this attitude in people of like, "Well, there isn't much point in trying to live righteously. I shouldn't try to follow the law of God because I can't. Paul says it's impossible, so I guess I'll just always be bound to my sin nature, and that's why I need to confess Christ.
" So, oh well, I can't become like Christ; the best I can hope for is to have Him forgive my sins by accepting His blood sacrifice. It's a pretty awful way to go through life, don't you think? So, I personally believe that the main tenets of Christianity—this idea that you have to verbally confess and mentally believe in a dogma or God burns you in hell—I believe this is the single most negatively influenced belief in human history that has done more damage to our world than any other single belief has.
And yes, that's a strong statement, and some people may disagree with that statement, but I can make. . .
A very strong case, cas, for this. I promise you, what I'm actually going to show you today is why I believe that the mainstream Christian doctrine of cheap grace or easy believism is a demonically influenced belief system that has been used for 2,000 years to deceive the masses of humanity from truly knowing that God lives within them and having a connection to God within yourself. Christians will tell you that's absolute heresy to say that God’s in you, and yet that's all Jesus said: that I'm in everybody.
God's in everyone. You can't say—you can't call me Lord—and not love your neighbor. So, Christianity today actually keeps people trapped in sin consciousness in that way, right?
Devaluating yourself, believing that God made you inherently sinful. So, how do we arrive at the place where we think that a verbal confession is worth something to God? It's an interesting question, right?
Where did we get this idea that a verbal confession is what God’s looking for? Because there is no trace of a first-century Christian movement, Jewish Christian movement, that believed Jesus was crucified to atone for the sins of the world and that you have to confess him as Lord with your mouth, believe he was resurrected. There is no trace in history of that belief being adopted anywhere until the middle to late 2nd century.
Paul was writing in the early 1st century, 40s and 50s A. D. , about all these things.
It didn't exist anywhere on the planet other than Paul's mind at that time, and it takes about a hundred years for it to start being adopted by people on a broader scale. So, there was no Jewish Christian sect that taught what Paul taught. Every time Paul says, "Oh, you guys are going astray to another gospel," it's like, "You mean the only gospel—the only one that's being preached?
" The Jesus movement when Paul is writing is brand new on the scene. You know, Jesus was supposedly crucified in like 33 A. D.
Paul's writing in 40 A. D. , 42 A.
D. So, what do you mean, what other gospel are you talking about, Paul? There's no second Jesus movement; there’s just the Jewish Jesus movement of the Jerusalem apostles.
Interesting, right? These are the things that Christians don't really pick up when they read the Epistles of Paul, because you've got to do your research and study these things, or you won't be able to read between the lines like this. So, to wrap this up before we get into the presentation: You guys know that my life passion and purpose is to help this planet evolve as much as I can before my time here is up, at least.
I really believe in my heart that this is one of the most, if not the most, powerful ways that I can be of service to this planet's evolution, because Christians are, by and large, just such amazing people with hearts for God like I've never seen, who really want to follow God and do what's right, but they're being deceived by a false doctrine. So, to me, Christianity as it is today is a spiritual dead end or a spiritual booby trap, if you want to think of it that way, because it keeps people stuck at a certain level of growth. It caps you with disempowerment: "Hey, you can't progress, you can't increase in the Kingdom of Heaven, you can't grow, you can't evolve spiritually because you're totally depraved and you have a sin nature.
" So, you have to just confess Jesus—that's all you can do—and then go to church every Sunday, give your tithes, you know, be a good Christian. That's the best you can shoot for in this life. I mean, this is a huge travesty, you guys, to teach people this kind of stuff, because a human lifetime is the most precious thing you can possibly waste.
This is one of the reasons—we touched on this last week, right? —but one of the reasons that only young people, by and large, come out of this doctrine is because it's really hard for somebody who's 50, 60, or 70 years old to be like, "Oh my gosh, all this Paul stuff is nonsense, and I've been believing it, teaching it, and practicing it for 50 years, 60 years. " That's a tough pill to swallow.
I get it; it’s a tough pill to swallow. But those who really want to follow the voice of the Master, it doesn't matter when they wake up to that voice. If they're 90 years old on their deathbed, they can say, "Oh, forgive me, I went astray; I want to follow the true way.
" And that's why Jesus's followers called themselves the followers of the way. So, my last caveat is, although I'm going to be sort of heavily critiquing Christian theology today, I am in no way intending this to condemn or to mock Christians or the Christian faith in general. I want to make that very clear.
Christianity is my heritage; it's in my DNA. Again, I love Christians; I love the Christian faith. That's why I'm attempting to rescue it from its wayward journey away from the teachings of Jesus and bring it back—back to the source.
So, what I'm attempting to do by speaking about this is really no different than what Jesus was attempting to do in restoring Judaism back to its core. I have not come to destroy Christianity or to abolish it, but to fulfill it, and we fulfill it by just reading the red letters of Jesus. Yeah, let’s just see what Jesus said about salvation today and throw away everything else—all the outside influences, all the other hands in the pot.
We can return to the core by returning to the teachings of the Great Master Yeshua the Nazarene. You guys ready to dive in? So, I want to show you—I want to play a quick video clip for you.
Um, here we go. Because some of you guys, many of you, already know how serious this is, and you know I’m not exaggerating. But for those of you who think I might be exaggerating on just how pervasive Paulinity is, I’m going to play a clip for you from a very famous Christian minister—kind of an older generation minister—but, um, oh gosh, his name is Pastor Jim.
Uh, darn it, I forgot his last name. He’s well-known, trust me. This is Pastor Jim from, I think this is like the '90s—not Jim Bakker; Kelly close, though.
And, uh, I’m going to play some clips for you so you can see this is the way that this—this is how church has devolved into this kind of cult of Paul, where you’re just—you’re going to go to church thinking you’re going to hear about the message of Jesus, and then you show up and you just hear about Paul’s teachings. It is not only all pervasive, but it’s gotten to such a degree that you almost never hear Jesus barely quoted in church. And that’s what we should be hearing.
If you go to a church, you should hear almost nothing but Jesus quoted, right? And you hear almost only Paul. So, this is going to give you a little idea of just how serious this problem has become in Christianity.
Listen to the words that this gentleman is about to say. The title of my message this morning is "Only Paul's Gospel Can Save Today. " Uh, this past week, I’m having trouble with my eyes again, so I have to throw something on them.
Big deal! Think about this: Without Paul, we have no reason for Israel’s blindness today. There’s no explanation to it outside of God revealing to Paul the Body of Christ, the mystery program.
Secondly, and I wrote these down late last night, so I hope they make sense, we have no mention of the Body of Christ without Paul. When you get saved, you become a part of the Body of Christ, and we’re one in Christ. Then also, we’d have no Christ in us.
You know, in Israel, He came upon people, but He left. But there was not—I want to see if you guys caught that—he said without Paul, we would have no Christ in us. Interesting statement, don’t you think?
That permanent indwelling, like we have through the message of Paul. Then also, we’d have no Rapture, no heavenly position to go to, no one generation that will not die. And if—okay, so I got to comment on this part because he breezes over this really quick.
Because as we—I think we touched on this last week—Paul had all of these failed prophecies about the end times and these very fantastical descriptions of, "In my lifetime, within the next few years, Jesus is coming back on the clouds, trumpets will sound, we’ll be caught up in the air. " And the Pauline disciples, after Paul, really tried to neuter him on that subject and kind of not mention all of his failed prophecies about the Rapture. So, it’s interesting that this pastor just said, "Without Paul, we would have no Rapture.
" And you’re like, "Wait, you mean that this event that Paul was apparently discussing was always going to happen? Paul was just told about it in secret by Jesus? " So, without—it—if Paul didn’t talk about it, the Rapture wouldn’t happen?
Or do you mean the doctrine of the Rapture wouldn’t exist without Paul? Interesting little Freudian slip there. Let’s keep going.
We’re alive, then we’ll have to go into the tribulation without Paul. Amen? Maybe now we’re picking up why people hate him so much.
We have no explanation, no understanding of the cross’s full accomplishment without the Apostle Paul. He’s the one who told what it really accomplished. And then, without Paul, we couldn’t prove salvation by grace through faith alone in the gospel alone.
It’d be very difficult. We couldn’t prove justification—whoa! Y’all catch that one?
Let’s just go back a second here. And then, without Paul, we couldn’t prove salvation by grace through faith alone in the gospel alone. Oh, big hammer drop on that one!
Without Paul, we could not prove salvation by grace alone in the gospels! Wait a minute! That sounds like a problem to me!
Does that sound like a problem to anyone else? If it’s true, as he says—and I very much appreciate his honesty here, because you’ll almost never hear a Christian pastor confess this truth—that without Paul, we couldn’t prove anything Paul teaches from the gospels. I mean, that’s an explosive admission that, you know, most people here that are so conditioned with Paulinity don’t really recognize what a shocking statement that is.
But without Paul, we couldn’t prove all the stuff we preach here on Sundays in the gospels! H! Interesting.
Let’s keep going. It’d be very difficult. We couldn’t prove justification apart from the law.
Oh! Oh! Another bomb drop!
Without Paul, we could not prove justification apart from the law! Which, again, as we talked about last week, this is what Jesus and his disciples were teaching: justification is only attained by following the law of God. We couldn’t prove full, total forgiveness of all of our sins through the finished work of Christ on the cross and the empty tomb.
We couldn’t prove without Paul that Jesus’s crucifixion forgave all of our sins. Again, these are like mind-blowing statements to hear a pastor say. When I found this video, my jaw dropped when I heard him confess this because I’m like… This is the stuff Christians do not like to confess, and I've tried to confront Christians on this point.
They'll say, "Oh no, of course you can prove you know salvation by grace in the Gospels," and I'm like, "Where, man? What verse? " Uh, Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life.
" Okay, where in that statement does it confess me as Lord and Savior? "Believe I was resurrected. " These words do not appear in the Gospels, brother, and that should be a big problem to Christians.
We'd have no Heavenly position now, nor would we have one in the future without Paul. We would have no Heavenly position now or in the future. Praise Paul!
Brother Paul has saved us—the true savior—Paul. Without the Apostle Paul, without Paul, we'd have no hope. You know, without Paul, we would have no hope.
I praise Lord Paul, my hope and my salvation. Like, this is crazy stuff. Okay, I'm gonna fast forward a bit to 2:11-15.
Just two more little tidbits here I want you to see. He says this: "I marvel that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel. " Not something totally different, but something that had been polluted—things that they had added to the gospel of grace.
Okay, so remember how I set this up a second ago and said there was no Gospel of Grace Christian sect in the first century? It doesn't exist. No historians ever quote from the first century that these teachings existed anywhere.
So what is he talking about? People are adding to my gospel of grace? There's only one alternative: it's the actual Gospel of Jesus's disciples.
So I’m sure he doesn't understand that he’s saying this, but you’re saying that the disciples of Jesus added to Paul’s gospel erroneously. I mean, that's just a nonsensical idea. Jesus's disciples were his gospel; they were the first recipients and eyewitnesses of his teachings.
Paul added to their gospel, not the other way around. And then last clip here: "Other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. " Now look at the condemnation on people who do this sort of thing.
And by the way, regardless of who they are—whether they're in our seminaries, our pulpits, our Sunday School classes, or in home Bible studies—if they are polluting the gospel of grace, note what their end is going to be: they're going to be accursed, anathema. D with a little applause for those who are accursed? Yes, accursed them!
Condemned, wasted, destroyed. And so that they would not miss the point, he repeats it in verse 9: "As we said before, so say I now again: If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that which you have received by Paul, let him be accursed. " Interesting stuff, huh?
So if anyone preaches another gospel—like maybe what if James the Just preaches another gospel? Let him be accursed, says Paul. What if an angel descends from heaven and says you've got it all wrong?
Let me tell you Jesus's real gospel. Paul says let that angel be accursed. This is some extreme narcissism we're dealing with—just to be objectively blunt.
Like, this level of narcissism that somebody would come into somebody else's movement and say, "I know what's really up; all you guys who followed Jesus in person, you all missed it. It's all about grace and confession, and if anyone else preaches something different, curse them. " And it's interesting, right?
When he says that, there's this applause from the audience. This is another one of the major distortions in Christianity—this kind of celebration of the condemnation of our enemies and those who don't believe what we believe. "Yes, brother!
Let them be accursed, destroyed, condemned! " Right? He goes on and on about all the things that are going to happen to them, and it's like, shouldn't that make us all somber and sad?
"Oh God, please let them not be accursed. Please let them find the way back to truth. " But if we're right and they're wrong, if we're in and they're out, if we're holy and they're heretics, then let them be accursed.
You know, it's this extremely dualistic view of religion, and it doesn't lead to the fruit of the Gospel, right? So let's jump into the presentation now and pick up where we left off last week. It's going to be good.
