Wednesday, July 7, 2021

BLESSINGS IN UNFOLDING REVELATIONS

My Dear Precious Child,
    As usually happened, when Paul had left Galatia after evangelizing there,  the devil sent Judeo-Christians to Galatia to entice the people to incorporate the Law of the Jews along with their conversions based on faith.  Paul, having previously been a devout Pharisee, knew the dangers of putting the new wine of the new covenant into the old bottles of the old covenant, that the bottles break and the wine is wasted.  However, the Jews who had also accepted some of the teachings of Jesus Christ, wanted to dominate the new revelations of Paul's followers of the Gospel so they flooded into the communities after Paul left and poisoned the purity of the truths of the new covenant in the minds of Paul's converts.  They were jealous of the freedom which the Gentile believers enjoyed, those freedoms being because their relationship with Me was of faith and not of observing the Law.  It was a replay of the devil's temptations of Adam and his manipulation of Eve which polluted the minds of My children at the beginning, causing a separation between us. 
    The Christians who were still under Jewish Law could not stand for Paul's Gentile converts to be completely free from the curses that the devil brought into the lives of My children by using the Law, so they came in right behind Paul and began to lasso the new believers with the lie that they must become obedient to all of the Jewish laws in order to operate in faith.  They were in error, so Paul wrote his brilliant revelations to the Gentile believers to help deprogram them from the erroneous teachings of the Judeo-Christians.
    It was Paul's usual habit in his letter to praise the people in the cities that he had led to believe in Jesus Christ but Paul's letter to the believers in Galatians was more direct.  He immediately chided them for deserting Christ and going over to another gospel, as he called it.  Then he told them that there was only one Gospel and none other.   He wrote that there were some people who wanted to alter the true Gospel and he accused them of confusing the Galatian Christians.  He even wrote to them that if an angel from heaven should preach a gospel not in accordance with the one that he and his fellow disciples preached, then it would be a curse upon the person.  Paul wrote that he was not trying to please men but he was trying to please Me, and if he was trying to please men, then he would not be serving Christ.
    Paul assured the Galatians that the Gospel that he preached was not man-made, nor was he educated in it.  He professed that all of his knowledge came by revelation from Jesus Christ, Himself.  He reminded the Galatians about their having heard his testimony about his former mode of living where he persecuted Christians to the extreme and even tried to destroy the movement.  He reminded them also that he was well schooled and loyal to the Jewish Law and with zeal he lived out all of the traditions of his religious ancestors.   However, he also reminded them that I had set him aside since birth and that he was called by My favor of choosing to reveal Christ to him so that he might spread the Good News of the Gospel of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles.  Paul also reminded the Galatians that he had immediately, without seeking human guidance, separated himself from other believers and went alone to Arabia, being schooled by My Holy Spirit for three years, later returning to Damascus, but not conversing with the other apostles at all.  (Galatians 1: 15-17)  Not until three years later did he go to Jerusalem to meet with Cephas, the new name of Peter who had been called to minister to the Judeo-Christians in Jerusalem.  He told the Galatians in his letter that he stayed with Cephas (Peter) for 15 days and did not meet with any other apostles except Jesus' brother James.  Paul declared that all of those facts that he wrote were true.  He said he was such a stranger to the believers in Judea that they had no idea what he looked like, they only knew that he had formerly persecuted Christians and was currently preaching the faith that he was formerly trying to destroy, and those believers gave glory to Me on Paul's account.  (Galatians 1:18-24) 
     Then after 14 years, Paul went with Barnabas to Jerusalem prompted by a revelation.  He laid out for the scrutiny of the other apostles the teaching and preaching that he delivered to the Gentiles so that the leaders of the apostles would be apprised of what he was teaching.  He told the leaders that certain other ministers had wormed their way into the Gentile believers' meetings to spy on their freedom that they enjoyed in Christ Jesus and those men tried to make slaves of the Gentiles to the Jewish Law.  He told the leaders of the apostles that he and his fellow believers were not swayed in any way to yield to the efforts of those false prophets to lay aside their Good News of faith in Jesus Christ being the only way to have complete freedom from evil.  He wrote that not even the most important Judeo-Christians did not sway the Gentile believers and Paul added nothing to the Gospel, continuing to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified, for there is no other Gospel.
     Paul explained in the letter that he was called to minister to the uncircumcised and Peter was called to minister to the circumcised.  He wrote that when he conferred with the other apostles in Jerusalem that they had confirmed his ministry to the Gentiles and James, Peter and John extended to Paul and Barnabas the hand of brotherhood, signifying that Paul's ministers could go to the Gentiles and let them go to the Jews.  The only stipulation that they insisted upon was that they be mindful of the poor.  In his letter Paul told the believers in Galatia that Peter had definitely been wrong in his previous insistence that the Gentiles become circumcised and that Paul had stood up to Peter.  He told them that Peter had been eating with the Gentiles but when James and other apostles arrived, he drew back in order to avoid trouble with the circumcised.  Paul said that some Gentile believers were swept away with Peter's dissembling and even Barnabas was deceived until Paul told the Gentiles that the Judeo-Christian apostles were not being straightforward with truth of the Gospel to the Gentiles.  Paul had told Peter in the presence of other believers that if he was a Jew living like a Gentile rather than a Jew, why would he force Gentiles to adopt Jewish ways?
    He wrote to the Gentile believers the logic that if they were Jews by birth, not Gentile sinners originally, knowing that a man is not justified by observing the Jewish Law but instead by faith in Christ, because no person could ever observe all of the Law.  However, if  Paul were to build up the very thing that he had previously demolished, then he would be a transgressor of the Law.  He wrote that it was because of the Law that he died to the Law, choosing to live for Me.  He proclaimed with certainty that he had been crucified with Christ and that the human life that he currently lived was not even his own life, but it was a life of faith in the Son of God, who loved him and gave his life for him. (Galatians 2:15-21)  He declared in his letter that he would not treat My gracious gift as pointless and of no effect.  Then he summed it all up by writing that if justice was obtained by the Law, then Jesus Christ died for no purpose.
     Paul had vehemently defended his own conversion and calling by Me in the letter.  He also professed that I did not require the Gentile believers to become bound by Jewish Law but instead that faith in Jesus Christ was the only Good News with no added Laws that were the Laws of another race, the Jewish race.
     Paul rescued many Gentiles from being loaded with curses that came from their trying to obey the Jewish Law.  He warned them to stand fast in the liberty wherein Christ had made them free and he commanded that they not become in bondage to anyone or any laws, only continuing to be in unity with Jesus Christ and Me by the power of the Holy Spirit.  He saved them from bondage to another gospel other than the Good News of Jesus Christ.
    Your Father of Inclusion                      
           

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