Paul Archives - Seeking The Way

Smoke. Ruins. Chains. To anyone standing in Jerusalem in 586 B.C., the conclusion seemed unavoidable: the plan of God had hit the rocks. To think that an unexpected arc of astonishing narrative was in the making—incredibly powerful and personally relevant when one connects the prophetic dots and sees the global picture—would have been out of the question.

The rise of the Godfearers — Connecting the prophetic dots and the rise of the Godfearers (Seeking The Way image)

Almost every great story has a moment when everything appears lost. For the people of God, it came twice — in 721 B.C., when Assyria scattered the ten tribes of Israel, and in 586 B.C., when Nebuchadnezzar “set fire to the temple of the Lord” (Jeremiah 52:13, NIV) and dragged Judah into captivity. The date: the 9th of Av — July 23 in 2026.

Both ancient Israel and Judah were defeated and their leaders taken into exile. (Seeking The Way image)

Some four centuries after the death and resurrection of the prophesied Messiah, a mashed-up syncretism of Greek Hellenistic religious tenets generally embraced a new popular name: Christianity. Over time and in large measure, substantially divergent practices took the place of what the early disciples believed and observed..

As noted in a prior post, the faith once delivered was challenged and challenged again until in many respects it bore little resemblance to the continuity of faith that the Messiah taught in the 30s CE. As the apostles themselves warned, the magnification over millennia of revealed biblical truth slowly eroded.

From the end of the first century and on, small groups of disciples held to the biblical truths they understood, including observing a seventh day Sabbath and other biblical tenets that reflected the life, teachings and example of Jesus Christ. But as the faith once delivered plunged into the world of Hellenism and the spiritual politics of men—especially following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE—things began to change.

The teachings of the Apostle Paul—a man who by his own accounts was born, lived, and died a Jew (read that again for emphasis)—were summarily mangled into a contrary position.

Why is this important? If one controls the language, one controls the narrative. Here’s a startling consideration: to truly understand what the Bible—and Paul—teaches, one must consider that the origins of the words “Christian,” “Christianity,” and the “church” from a historical perspective represent potential definitions that are—in the words of scholar Anders Runesson—“inadequate, anachronistic, and misleading.”

Is that true? What happened? And what do more contemporary scholars say today of this shift?

A Miraculous Prophetic Arc of God — and You

The Way–what did Paul actually teach?

A New Beginning – Seeking the Way