This scene involves Paul questioning Peter’s actions. The trend of viewing Paul as a false apostle is predicted to gain significant traction in Japan. What is their basis for such a claim? In the Japanese translation of the Clementine Homilies, known as the pseudo-Clementine writings, Paul is depicted as a false apostle.
The reasons presented in the pseudo-Clementine writings include: Paul was not a direct disciple of Jesus during His lifetime but had only visionary experiences; even wicked people can have visions, and Jesus warned not to be deceived by appearances, even if they occur in the wilderness; Paul was troubled by evil spirits; and the necessity of adhering closely to Jewish law. These are some of the arguments laid out in the pseudo-Clementine text.
However, the warning about not being deceived by false testimonies concerning Christ’s return should be understood in its proper context. After Christ’s ascension, He occasionally appeared to apostles like Paul and John to strengthen their faith, which is a different situation. It’s easy to spot imposters, like when you see someone on Twitter claiming, “I saw Jesus, and He looked like a famous actor,” which is clearly fake. While false appearances might deceive greedy people, sincere and chosen vessels could still receive legitimate revelations. The apostles of that time likely understood this.
If we apply the phrase “do not believe if they say Christ is in the wilderness” in an overly rigid manner, like the Jehovah's Witnesses do, then we would have to reject John’s vision of Christ as Michael on the barren island of Patmos. It’s obvious that clinging to such a narrow interpretation of this phrase would be an absurd and inflexible approach that anyone can recognize as misguided.
The Flow of the Fake Clemens Document
However, please read it again, as the identity of the evil spirit that troubled Paul, including the above seeming contradiction of the visionary experience, has been solved by thinking the original language each time. I will omit the explanation for now. The translation that there was an evil spirit “in” Paul's body has been adopted by the KJV, but it is a mistranslation. Please go back and read the 144,000 labels for more information. As a reminder, the Greek word in translated “in flesh” is “ho,” an article that emphasizes a noun and has a wide range of nuances, generally meaning “it, them, that, etc.
This pseudo-Clement is a letter completed around the third century, and it is said to have been created or endorsed by the Ebionites, who were influenced by thoroughgoing ascetic Gnosticism. Characteristic of the Ebionites, according to Eirenaeus, was that they believed only in God the Creator and denied the divinity of Jesus. They also denied the virgin conception, and Wikipedia says that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary and that he became the Christ through law-observance.
And in the false Clement, before Paul's conversion, he says, “Children of Israel, those who are baptized into Christ are those who have been deceived by the wretched Simon Magus! We must defeat them!” He himself became so enraged by the apostle James that he pushed him headlong down the steps of the temple and broke his leg. It is true that the Book of Acts says that he persecuted Christians with the intention of killing them before their conversion, but it does not say whether he had a conflict with James or not. You can find a summary of the false Clement here (ctrl+f to bring up the search tab, then type in “saul” to read it in English).
It is also assumed that Matthaea, who was selected as one of the Twelve Disciples in place of Judas Iscariot, and Barnabas, who accompanied Paul, were the same person. According to popular tradition, however, Matthias was martyred in the Caspian Sea region, while Barnabas was stoned to death in Cyprus, thus clarifying the difference. In the Book of Acts, I cannot find any depiction of Barnabas and Matthaea as the same person, though it is possible that I have not done enough research. The story is considered to be a fiction created by the Gnostic factions of the Ebionites, who wanted to strongly support Judaism against the Marcionites, who supported only Paul's epistles but misinterpreted them. In the story, there is a scene in which Saul aka Paul is leading the persecution before his conversion, saying, “Defeat the Christians who were deceived by a wretched man like Simon Magus. The story of Paul and Simon Magus are projected as if they were two sides of the same coin, and the character correlations are so mixed up that the story of Paul's feud with Jacob is probably a creation. *In reality, Paul did not abolish basic moral standards, etc.
Also, Peter is set up as a vegetarian who only refrained from contact with uncircumcised sinners among the Gentiles, but Peter is also commanded by the Lord in a vision to interact with Gentiles in the Book of Acts, and Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners before his death, and ate whatever he was invited to eat. It is easy to imagine that Jesus did not continue to live a life of Jewish seclusion as the pseudo-Clementine writings suggest. Even without the Acts of the Apostles, Peter, not Paul, would have had to eat whatever was served to him when he was ministering to the Gentiles whose homes were not Jewish.
Furthermore, in his conversation with Clement, Peter supports the theory of the immortality of the soul. He says that God created the Bible in a small way to keep people from realizing it, or that he dares to test it by including false prophecies in the Bible. But in reality, false prophets can be mixed in with real life and activate Satan's power as poison wheat, but it is possible to detect it with spiritual insight and familiarity with the Bible to some extent. Nothing is tested by falsehoods being mixed in with the Bible, so the false Clement Peter is portrayed as someone who intuits things and infuses original thought into things.
The entire story is told in a dialogue style, and the atmosphere is completely different from that of other canonical epistles. However, considering the fact that it is a dialogic narrative that deviates greatly from the basic doctrines of the Bible, and the possibility that it was created by the Ebionites to oppose the Marcionites, who supported only the Pauline epistles and wanted to falsify them to create their own doctrine, we can speculate that it is quite false in the pseudo-Clementines.
Paul's relationship with Peter
Paul was also concerned about the trend of Judaism erosion in Galatians, and it seems that he needed to explain Peter's blunder to their faces as well. Pseudo-Clement says that he wrote these epistles out of jealousy toward the twelve apostles, but from Romans 7:23, Paul is even extremely self-deprecating, saying, “I am a wretched man, controlled by sin” (Romans 7:23). Paul's character of speaking publicly in a misleading manner, as if he had something to be guilty of, suggests that he is the type of person who passionately and clearly speaks out against others, including himself. The sin was probably the kind of sadness, anger, short temper, and pride that all human beings have due to imperfections, and the context can be read as describing the possibility of the sin transforming into the sin of imposing one's self righteousness if one tries to be righteous.
In fact, in 2 Corinthians 12:6, Paul puts himself in the position of being humiliated by prefacing his letter with the words, “Do not boast, but let me do so just now,” so we can assume that he is describing “sin” as the fleshly thoughts that every human being is 100% apt to have. Paul appears to be writing to each church in a constant state of excitement and passion in the revelation of Christ's redemption. Some people seem to find the tone of his long, excited letters distasteful.
The Bible itself records David's remorse and repentance for committing murderous adultery in the first place, as well as Jeremiah and Habakkuk's frustration, hatred, and other feelings toward the corrupt rulers and people. This would seem to indicate that even the negative emotions that humans have at this stage of their lives can sometimes be tolerated. Christians are commanded to love and even bless their enemies, but they do not have to do it perfectly.
And so, there is no need to fret over the wording and other various laws and the need to establish the perfect “righteousness” that God and Jesus demand and prescribe at this stage. This is the very misery that Paul was afflicted with and demonstrated by the law, but I think the Bible shows an openness to human negative emotions. Sometimes it is pride, dissatisfaction, or hatred, but if it is not overstepping the bounds of unjustified reasoning and has a valid point, it is understood.
In Galatians 2, in order to emphasize to the Galatian Christians, who are upset by the power of the circumcisionists, that even the great Apostle Peter has an equal relationship with them, he prefaces his statement in verse 6, “I have no problem if people think they are superior” to assert his authority as an apostle. In chapter 3, he laments, “What deceit have you fallen into? In order to break the deadlock, he must have felt the need to explain Peter's case publicly in a stronger tone.
So, to change the subject, in 2 Peter 3:15, Peter calls Paul a “beloved brother.” So he is not “my enemy” with whom there is an antagonistic relationship as the false Clement document says. But in the pseudo-Clementine document, Peter claims that God is testing us by deliberately inserting falsehoods into the Bible. This overly skeptical argument has surprisingly gained popularity overseas, and I believe it will eventually catch on in Japan.
Certainly there are many who emphasize only the Pauline epistles, and they are likely to pervert and perish because of their lack of understanding, but even if this is the Old Testament law, it does have its own harmful effects. And so sense on the part of the reader is required. This is why the Bible says in James 3 that “many should not become teachers.
Jehovah's Witnesses and the anti-Paulists on the Internet
Russell, a member of the 13th class of the Illuminati, started a Bible study group that became the origin of the Jehovah's Witnesses, and was later taken over by Rutherford, who created the Tower of Mormon and the anti-Pauline group, the JWs. Paul preached a faithful justification that sought righteousness in Christ rather than self-righteousness by works in defense of religious regulations. On the other hand, Jehovah's Witnesses, similar to Ebionites, deny redemptive grace and continue to emphasize their own God, Jehovah, rather than Jesus, making them anti-Pauline. (I personally have nothing against Russell, and perhaps Rutherford is worse than him. Russell may still have made a lot of mistakes, but no one lives perfectly in life, so I don't blame him.)
If someone preaches that Paul is a false apostle and that one must die to all of the Jewish law, including circumcision, to be saved from God, that is their belief and no one else needs to say anything about it. However, if they push for it and argue from the Bible, we are forced to respond from multiple angles, citing external sources against external sources and from the Bible as a whole, and if we get too fixated on the number 13 as a numerical secret favored by the ruling class, we will fall into the enemy's trap set to corrupt the truth and lose our good judgment. However, if you insist that Paul's 13th apostle is a false apostle, you are free to do so, and I don't expect you to want to engage aggressively or go to hell.
Gospel of holy twelve
The letter seems to have such an intriguing title, but as it turns out, it also contains some strange teachings. However, some of them seem to contain the life of Jesus that has been passed down by word of mouth. For example, Jesus' treatment of the adulterous woman in John 8 is not found in the Sinai Codex, but it would not be a lie if an aspect of Jesus that was passed down orally were added.
The Gospel of the Holy Twelve Disciples includes, for example, philanthropic ideas such as the abolition of animal sacrifices by Jesus and the importance of animal sacrifices, vegetarianism, and the importance of all people and animals to God. However, the letter also contains pagan teachings, such as that if sinners do not repent of their evil deeds, they will be reincarnated on earth for eternity to experience the purification of their souls. The Old Testament teaches that when one dies, one enters the sleep of death, and that the righteous and various extenuating circumstances of sinners are resurrected to blessing and second chance, respectively, while the wicked are resurrected to judgment. Even the Book of Enoch and the Outer Scriptures, Second Ezra, basically say that they “sleep” when they die.
So, even if you want to endorse this letter, you must use your insight to see that the “reincarnation” passages were added by the Gnostics, and if other aspects of Jesus' life and sayings do not conflict with the Bible, you must consider the possibility that you can accept them as facts handed down by oral tradition, etc. The reader is required to be resourceful and receptive.
Unfortunately, given the fact that even the Gospel of Matthew has additions, it is possible that the letters in which the teachings of the Twelve Disciples were written down have been recklessly falsified and removed from the canon. Therefore, each of us needs to read it for ourselves and use our intellectual sense to see how far it is consistent with the biblical canon, and patiently seek progress in our understanding in prayer.
Summary (First Church Father Eirenaeus)
There are many external sources, and it is difficult to research them. Considering the fact that the world is overloaded with information and speculation, and that even the theory of the truth has become a tool of Satan, it is necessary to have a sense to recognize the Satan's trap of misleading people with the number 13, which is used by devil worshippers to ruin their image, draw suspicion toward Paul, the 13th apostle, and make them believe that the contents of the false Clement of the Bible are true.
Without good sense, they are unable to conduct multifaceted research and make decisions based on a single sentence alone. This is a common characteristic of brainwashed Jehovah's Witnesses whose thinking process has stopped and who try to apply the Bible in a uniform manner, completely ignoring the context of each letter and the author's intention. When their thinking process stops, they become annoying gurus with extreme claims that Paul is the party time because he abolished the law, or conversely, that Paul is the anti-Christ because he abolished the law.
Eirenaeus, the first Church Father, a direct disciple of the Apostle John, in his refutation of the Marcionite heresy, stated that “Paul preached that the prophecies of the Old and New Testaments were fulfilled through Christ.” Since the direct disciples of the Twelve Apostles defend Paul, it is impossible to conclude that he was a false apostle or that there was a falling out. The trinity, the immortality of the spirit, and other apostate elements have entered the system, but the foundational Christian roots have not been lost for about 2,000 years.
It is true that the Twelve Disciples' letters are scarce at this stage, and I expect that is more likely that those letters will be revealed in the future, but it is even more likely that the Millennial Reign will arrive first and will be revealed then. People will be in the midst of information overload and will fall over each other in doubt. I will continue to share my thoughts and faith with those I trust at my own pace. You can also refer to this page.
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