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Notice, verse ]: "Certain rnen which r.:ame down from Judaea taught
the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of
Moses, ye cannot be saved.� Who were these men? Not apostles, or they
would have been named.
Right here MARK WELL THIS POINT: GOD PUT HIS TRUTH INTO HIS CHURCH
THROUGH CHRIST AND 'l'HROUGH THE APOSTLES! These men were not apostles.
What they taught was NOT FROM JESUS!
The Apostle Paul KNEW WELL that God gave His Church its teachings
only though Christ and the Apostles. Immediately Paul withstood these
unauthorized "teachers".
Verse 2: "When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension
and disputation with them, they (probably the local members, not fully
realizing that Paul, being Apostle to the Gentiles, had authority to
settle it) determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them
should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question."
These men from Judaea·were undoubtedly Jewish Christians who had
not received authentic teaching through Apostles--nor did they recognize
Paul's authority as an Apostle, or they would not have entered into
such disputation with him.
Undoubtedly, being Jewish converts, without full Apostolic teaching,
they looked on the Church as merely an extension of Judaism. Incidentally,
the Judaism of that time WAS NOT Mosaic teaching. But after the days of
Ezra and Nehemiah, the only organized Jewish religion was among the de
scendents of the contingent of Jews sent back to Jerusalem from Persian
captivity (see Ezra 1:1-3) 70 years after the destruction of Solomon's
temple, to build the second temple--to which Jesus later came. After
Ezra and Nehemiah, the rabbis gradually made a considerable change in the
Old Covenant religion given Israel by Moses.
Their Israelite ancestors had always wanted to be more like the
world around them. In I Samuel 8 you will read of how they wanted a king,
and government more like the other nations of the world. Now the
WORLD, except for Israel, which was especially called by God, was CUT
OFF from God. God, in effect, had said to Adam, "You have rejected me
and my Government. Therefore, I SENTENCE you to 6,000 years of being
cut off from me. GO, form your own religions, your own governments,
your own society and civilization." That applied to all except those
God specially called. God called Abraham, Moses, Abraham's decendants
the Israelites--but even the Israelites wanted to be like the worldly
nations CUT OFF from God. Remember, all those centuries and millenniums,
the Chinese, Japanese, people of India, Southeast Asia, Africa, the
Roman Empire, knew little or nothing about GOD. They all had their
own religions, and most were derived, with some changes, from that
established by Semiramis, the mother-wife of Nimrod (Gen. 10).
Now these pachn rsli�i0ns--0f E0ypt, Greece, BabylGn, Ro�e, had
knc.wn r,othi.1g o= �;.,c:: 's i-:;BAC:E-···unmerit.i=:::"!, underse.rved PARDO�, fo:cgi.veness
of past sins on r�pe�tance. I�Htea�, their religions had �dopted a
system of sel.E-in:li.:::t.,-,,-: ?\��1ishm!:'.;1·t-, ,:;:-de;;.l. or torture, to justify past
sins.