How the Moorings of the Gospel Were Secured

God’s promise to Abraham was given 430 years before Moses

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I have taken some time to reflect on the unity for which Jesus prayed in relation to the story of Peter & Cornelius and the tension that continued in the early church over extending the Gospel to Gentiles (non-Jews). The tension that persisted at the heart of the early Church threatened to unmoor the Gospel from its footing.

In previous articles, I reflected on the deeply ingrained nature of the belief that the Jews were God’s people. They were entrusted with the Law of Moses, and they had protected the Law God gave them for well over a 1000 years, painstakingly preserving it, passing it down from generation to generation.

They were instructed by God Himself to drive out all the inhabitants in the land God promised them, to avoid intermarrying and being corrupted by the influence of “Gentiles” to worship their gods. Thus, Hebrew descendants of Abraham avoided association with others – Gentiles – like the plague.

So intent on sticking to the script were Jews in the First Century that they didn’t recognize God when He shed his deity and came to them in the form of a man, as Jesus from Nazareth. Thus, He came to His own people, and they didn’t recognize Him!

When the Word through whom the universe was created, the Word who “was with God” and “was God”, became flesh (John 1:1-3, 14), “his own people did not receive him.” (John 1:12) “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.” (John 1:11) On the other hand:

“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

John 1:12-13

“His own” were the Jews. The “all who did receive him, who believed in his name”, were Gentiles (and Jews) who believed in what Jesus said and trusted in him. They became children of God, not because they were born into it, nor because they or anyone else desired it, but because God Himself desired them to be His children. (John 1:13)

But these things were far from clear to the early Church. Even Peter, who lived with Jesus and knew him intimately, had difficulty with the idea that the Gospel should be extended to Gentiles.

In the previous articles linked above, I summarized how God gave Peter a vision that occurred three times in a row for emphasis, including by an audible voice and the voice of the Holy Spirit, directing him to go with men who appeared just then at the door to summon him. Peter’s experience was orchestrated with an angel that visited Cornelius, a Roman Centurion, who was directed to send those men to “a man named Simon who is called Peter”. (Acts 10:5)

Peter yielded to God’s obvious orchestration of these events, and he went with the man who summoned him. When he found himself at a Roman Centurion’s home, Peter recognized God was at work. Then God poured out His Holy Spirit on the Centurion and his household to emphasize to Peter his intention to extend the Gospel to the Gentiles.

But the tradition of shunning the Gentiles would not die easy. Despite the obviously divine orchestration of events to drive home God’s intentions to Peter, Paul had to confront Peter publicly in Antioch over the issue when Jews from Jerusalem came to visit because Peter had disassociated himself from the Antiochian Gentiles. (See Galatians 2-3)

Paul encountered the same issue in Galatia where people were insisting that the Jews continue to follow the Mosaic law. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul described his confrontation with Peter. More importantly, Paul explained why the Mosaic Law no longer applied to the people of God – who now included not just the Jews, but everyone!

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Tension Leads to Accord: Peter, James & Paul

The big issue that threatened to divide the early Church

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Paul wrote to the Galatians to address a grievous error in their thinking. They were holding on to a belief that followers of Christ, even Gentiles, must continue to follow Jewish law. Though Jesus prayed for unity among his followers (John 17:20-23), it was a rocky start for his fledgling following. They didn’t last 10 years without division!

To emphasize the gravity of the situation, Paul recalled to the Galatians a time when he opposed Cephas (Peter the Apostle, himself) “to his face” over the Jew and Gentile. (Gal. 2:11)

Consider this: Peter lived with Jesus for 3 years. He was one of the closest people to Jesus during his life. He was there when Jesus died, and he was one of the first people to see Jesus when he returned, risen from the dead.

Paul was never around back then. He despised Jesus and his followers! He held the cloaks of the people who stoned Stephen to death, and he was hellbent on quashing the “rebellion” of the Jesus followers to the traditions of Judaism…

Then, Jesus dramatically revealed himself to Paul. Paul changed completely and became the boldest of proclaimers of the Gospel. Still, what gall to confront Peter of all people! Right?

First for a little back story. In my last post, I described Peter’s vision of animals on a great sheet and the encounter with the Roman Centurion that convinced him Gentiles can be saved from their sins, the same as Jews. It was no small revelation. It took quite the orchestration of visions, angels, voices and a powerful outpouring of the Holy Spirit to convince Peter to accept the fact that God wanted to share the Gospel with Gentiles.

Peter experienced his own change, though not as dramatic. He went from being concerned that he should be not associating with Gentiles to baptizing the Centurion and his entire household and welcoming them into the family of believers!

I also wrote about this story in relation to the theme of the unity of believers: Reflection on the Unity for which Jesus Prayed: Peter & Cornelius. The great shift from the following law to faith, was a change to beat all changes.

It took a nothing short of a divine appointment of Peter, the Apostle on which Jesus said he would establish the Church, orchestrated by God with all the bells and whistles to provide clear direction. We might think that this encounter settled the score for Peter, once for all, right?

Not so.

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A Story Demonstrating How God Works to Reveal Himself to People

The evidence for God is more often a string of improbable circumstances happening in the context of a message that is delivered with intimate, personal meaning.

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As I have been reading through the New Testament, on my way through the Bible chronologically from start to finish, I have come to the Book of Acts. I wrote most recently about the prominence and importance of testimonial evidence for Christ. I continue to be struck by the key importance of this eyewitness testimony and the highly relational way in which God reveals Himself to people in Acts – and continues to reveal Himself to people today .

Jesus, of course, attracted people who gathered to him, joined him and followed him. Literally, they lived with him, ate with him, traveled with him, and followed him where he went. Thus, they became witnesses to everything he said and did.

As I continue reading in Acts, I have come today to the story of Peter, the apostle, and Cornelius, the Roman Centurion who lived in Caesarea. I wrote about this story not long ago, in Reflection on the Unity for which Jesus Prayed: Peter & Cornelius, but today I see a different twist that runs with the theme of eyewitnesses and God revealing Himself to people.

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The Case for Jesus Christ Rests on the Evidence of Eyewitnesses

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As a lawyer, I am keenly aware of the central importance of eyewitnesses to getting at the truth of any matter. There is no better proof in the law than eyewitness testimony. The rules of law allow hearsay testimony (the testimony of what someone else said) only in extreme and limited circumstances because eyewitness testimony is considered inherently much more reliable.

Eyewitness testimony is light years more reliable than secondhand testimony, but even eyewitness testimony needs to be carefully considered along with the credibility of the eyewitnesses. People aren’t always good at observing details accurately. People sometimes fill in the gaps in understanding of what happened with details that are assumed, but which aren’t accurate. People do this consciously and unconsciously.

Eyewitnesses can also be influenced by subconscious biases and influences. Sometimes eyewitnesses even lie about what they have seen.

Because eyewitness testimony isn’t foolproof, we always compare eye witness testimony with other evidence, including other eye witness testimony. Judges and juries weigh the credibility of the witnesses, and they look for evidence that corroborates or contradicts the eyewitness testimony. At the end, weigh the totality of the evidence to reach a verdict.

Still, most cases are built on eyewitness testimony. A case can be built on the testimony of a single, good eyewitness, but multiple eyewitnesses are always better. The more eyewitnesses that agree with each other on key facts, and the more evidence that corroborates that testimony, the stronger a case is.

The narrative accounts contained in the Bible that we call the Gospels keys in on eye witness testimony. The the biblical writings are expressly self-conscious of the eyewitness sources of the accounts. Following is a summary of the eyewitness testimony that runs throughout the New Testament.

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Postscript to the Sons of Issachar Who Understood the Times

We receive the Holy Spirit, not so that we will know the times, but so that we can be effective as His witnesses!

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I wrote a piece on the Sons of Issachar recently. They are referenced in 1 Chronicles 12:32. The Sons of Issachar were 200 “chiefs” of the descendants of Issachar, one of the sons of Jacob. These men joined David with a multitude from the other tribes of Israel when David was hiding in the wilderness from the murderous rage of King Saul.

Saul was Israel’s first king. He was the king the people demanded. He was the king God gave them, despite the fact that His people were rejecting God as their king in the process of demanding a human king, like the other nations.

Saul got caught up in his own power and position. Saul began to lose touch with reality as he stopped obeying God and became paranoid of losing a grip on the power God gave him. He became jealous of David. and suspected David was out to get him. Though David could not have been more loyal, King Saul sought to kill David to eliminate his perceived threat.

Indeed, God was about to reject Saul as king because Saul ceased to listen to and follow God’s instruction given through the prophet, Samuel. God had chosen David to succeed Saul, because David was a man after God’s own heart.

David, for his part, loved and honored Saul because God had made him king. David had multiple opportunities to kill Saul, but he refused to do it, leaving Saul’s fate (and his own fate) completely in God’s hands.

Still, men from every tribe of Israel began to gather where David was hiding, including men from Saul’s own tribe (Benjamin). The Benjamites were some of the first men to join David. The 200 chiefs of the Sons of Issachar joined David later. Scripture says of them, specifically, that they were men “who understood the times and knew what Israel should do.”

That phrase has been invoked by people who style themselves modern prophets who support the presidency of Donald Trump. They claim, of course, that they are men who understand the times. They claim to know what Christian in the United States should do, particularly in regard to support Donald Trump.

I don’t dismiss what they say out of hand. God has spoken at various times through people considered to be prophets. One of the hallmarks of “the last days” is prophecy, visions, and dreams. Peter announced the last days were starting when he stood up on the Day of Pentecost and quoted the prophet, Joel:

And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
    and your young men shall see visions,
    and your old men shall dream dreams;
even on my male servants and female servants
    in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.

Acts 2:17-18 (quoting Joel 2:28-32)

Some people believe that these displays of God’s power and authority were only for a dispensation in time long enough for the Holy Spirit to lead the disciples into truth and preserve it in what we now call the New Testament. I don’t see evidence of that in the New Testament itself. I think we should expect God to work through people today through prophecy, visions, and dreams, and I believe He does.

We, in the west, are not very open to God working in that way. We have staked out our position on the embankment of reason, logic, and “sound doctrine”. We are quite uncomfortable with the “messiness” of experiential phenomena like prophecy, visions, and dreams.

Yet, outside our western sanctuaries and cloistered halls of learning, these phenomena are regular experiences of Christian life. People who have done short-term or long-term missions often encounter these phenomena in places where people are not presumptively skeptical of what God can do.

Visions and dreams are ubiquitous in the stories of recent Muslims coming to faith in Christ. I once spoke with a Muslim woman who described for me a vision of Jesus coming to her in the midst of a near death experience she lived through. She described a subsequent “waking vision” of Jesus gaining her attention in the nick of time to save her son from being hit by a bus. She became a believer in Jesus because of these visions, though no one preached a word to her.

Her supernatural visions, though, didn’t lead her to a place of sound understanding of God and His word. They caused her to believe in God and Jesus, but she gravitated toward extremes in biblical understanding. This is just an anecdote, but I think there is a lesson to take away from it.

It would be a mistake to dismiss out of hand the prophecies, visions, and dreams that people claim to have today, but we also need to be careful. Paul admonished the Thessalonians, “Do not despise prophecies…!” (1 Thess. 5:20) But he added an important qualifier:

“…. test everything; hold fast what is good.”

1 Thess. 5:21

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