Once more we shall continue to address the second of Clayton Douglas’ Paul-bashing articles, SAUL OF TARSUS AND HIS DOCTRINE OF LAWLESSNESS, which he published in the January, 2004 edition of his Free American Newsmagazine. Here we shall finish with this series of Douglas’ Paul-bashing articles, and our response to it.
<Section #80> Clayton Douglas states: “Speaking of pesky and deceiving, let us return once more to Paul’s statement which opens up this investigative article:
“‘But granting that myself did not burden you I was crafty, you say, and got the better of you by deceit.’ (Saul of Tarsus 2 Corinthians 12:16)
“Does Christianity accept ‘taking in by deceit’ as a means of ‘ministering,’ and propagandizing? Does Genesis 3:1 not refer to the Serpent as ‘more crafty more subtle than any beast of the field?’ Paul himself boasts proudly about sharing this trait with the Serpent. Like the Serpent, Paul - too - is ‘subtle’ and ‘crafty’ - not trying to deceive you with something appearing as a lie. To convince you he mixes a small portion of truth with a predominance of pagan lies. The Torah, the ‘Law,’ which Paul mocked and considered a ‘yoke’ and ‘bondage,’ says: ‘Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another.’ Leviticus 19:11”
In reply to section <#80>: We have seen in section <#54> of this response, on p. 112, that 2 Cor. 12:16 was not only poorly translated, but that Douglas takes it out of context, and Douglas also is aware that the translation has been challenged and refused to address that in his article. Here Douglas repackages the same argument he used there, which was proven to be false. Paul certainly was not “subtle” and “crafty”, and just the opposite has been proven. Clayton Douglas alone is “subtle” and “crafty” here! And all of his accusations are unfounded! Notice also, that like a ‘good’ jew, he continually insists on referring to the Pentateuch as the “Torah”. In the next section of his article he refers to the “Tanakh”, the jewish name for the writings of the prophets, Psalms, and other books of the Old Testament. Christian writers scarcely use the word “Tanakh”, and many Christians probably don’t even know what it means. Such evidence of jewish influence is found throughout all of Douglas’ articles.
<Section #81A> Clayton Douglas states: “But when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and laid them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat, and fastened on his hand. When the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said one to another, ‘No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he has escaped from the sea, yet Justice has not allowed to live.’ However Paul shook off the creature into the fire, and wasn’t harmed. But they expected that he would have swollen or fallen down dead suddenly, but when they watched for a long time and saw nothing bad happen to him, they changed their minds, and said that he was a god.’ Acts 28:3-6
“Here we are told that the natives, though receiving Paul well at first realize that it was an aberration of nature for a snake to attack someone who is in fact laying sticks on a fire. Snakes themselves are repelled by fire and it would be quite abnormal for a viper to attack a man without any provocation who is so near to the fire that he is in fact laying sticks in it. When the natives saw this they realized that Paul’s ship wreck was not merely coincidence, he had in fact been subject to the wrath of God, the same as Prophet Jonah was said to have been in the Tanakh for his reluctance. Just the same as in that case the stormy sea was a sign of God’s anger.
“Here Paul’s Antichrist cult does not allow us any such interpretation. Nonetheless this was the first and natural understanding of the natives of Malta. Paul’s devotee Luke tells us in the book of Acts that when Paul did not die from the bite of this abnormal viper, they said - that is, they uttered, not merely thought to themselves - that he was ‘a god.’ Nowhere in this passage does the devotee Luke tell us that the apostate Paul said one word to the contrary. Doesn’t that seem a little strange for an allegedly ‘god-fearing’ man to not deny a claim that he is a god?
“Moreover, in the city of Lystra, Paul causes a riot by supposedly healing a man. During the riot the people shout in their native dialect that Paul and Barnabas are gods come to earth. Again, there is no denial of these claims recorded in Acts.
“The fact that Paul did not dispute their claims that he was a ‘god’ is not at all an insignificant matter. When Apollonius of Tyana was supposedly tried before the Emperor Domitian at the end of the first century, one of the charges against him was that he had supposedly allowed himself to be worshipped as a god - more or less the same charges falsely applied to Jesus Christ - despite the fact that he never claimed godhood, nor did anyone else attribute it to him.”
In reply to section <#81A>: Firstly, just because Luke didn’t record any denial of Paul’s in Acts 28, when the people of Malta had imagined him to be a god, doesn’t mean that such a denial wasn’t made, or that Paul accepted their supposition. Yet Douglas is plainly lying about the incident at Lystra, where the people imagined Paul and Barnabas to be gods (Acts 14:11-12). That upset Paul and Barnabas so that they tore their own clothing (14:14), the ancient way of exhibiting one’s humility, and ran among the people denying it, admitting to be mere men (14:15). Clayton Douglas shows himself to be the Spouter of Lies.
We needn’t go to Apollonius of Tyana and his trial to see the gravity of the accusations here, where one should fail to deny his elevation by the people to status as a god. There is a clear example right in the Bible, recorded by Luke at Acts chapter 12, where it is said that Herod Agrippa I was struck dead for not denying the claims of the people that he was a god. The historian Josephus, at Antiq. 19.8.2 (19.343), attributes this Herod’s death to that very same cause. So both Luke and Paul were surely aware of the punishments for such impiety, lack of humility, and acceptance of the foolishness of the common people.
The people of Malta, called Melita in ancient times, were no uncivilized savages. The Greeks considered them barbarians only because they spoke a different language. Diodorus Siculus, in his Library of History at 5.12.2-3, says of Malta that it “... lies about eight hundred stades from Syracuse, and it possesses many harbors which offer exceptional advantages, and its inhabitants are blest in their possessions; for it has artisans skilled in every manner of craft ... and the dwellings on the island are worthy of note, being ambitiously constructed and finished in stucco with unusual workmanship. This island is a colony planted by the Phoenicians, who, as they extended their trade to the western ocean, found in it a place of safe retreat, since it was well supplied with harbors and lay out in the open sea; and this is the reason why the inhabitants of this island, since they received assistance in many respects through the sea-merchants, shot up quickly in their manner of living and increased in renown” (Loeb Library edition). It may be conjectured that the Maltese, being Phoenicians, and Paul being a Hebrew speaker, could surely speak to each other in a tongue which the Greek Luke could not understand, and so Paul’s denial was not recorded. But surely just because it wasn’t recorded doesn’t mean it wasn’t made. Yet that is not all, for Douglas continues:
<Section #81B> Clayton Douglas states: “Even when any type of special status was alluded to regarding him, Jesus abrogated it by saying ‘Why do you call me god, one alone is god,’ (Mark 10:18) and humbly proclaiming that even ‘Greater works than these shall you do’ (John 14:12)”
In reply to section <#81B>: And here Douglas attempts one of the sleight-of-hand magic tricks he picked up in all of the jewish magic books he’s read! For in Mark 10:18 Yahshua Christ is recorded as saying: “Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.” Douglas, believing that the word processor is quicker than the eye, removed an ‘o’ from good in an attempt to magnify his false accusation against Paul. Surely Douglas is The Comedian! The two words are much harder to confuse in their original Greek, “god” being 2,`l and “good” being •("2`l. Elsewhere Yahshua Christ stated “Is it not written in your law, I SAID, YE ARE GODS?”, a reference to the 82nd Psalm at John 10:34. The jews thought that by calling oneself a son of God, one considered oneself as equal to God, and they considered that blasphemy in spite of the scripture at Deut. 14:1 and Psa. 82. Surely Clayton Douglas, the Man of Scoffing, shows an ignorance of this (taking the same position as the jews did to Christ’s Words). Yet Paul, a man of humility, never claimed to be a god of any sort!
Finally, we have already seen Douglas himself acknowledge that Paul was nearly blind (section <#19> of this response on p. 64). Paul, wanting to lend a hand in the situation on Malta following the shipwreck, lifted a bundle of sticks and placed them onto the fire. A viper, surely from that same bundle of sticks and which Paul did not see, then sprung out from that bundle and attached itself to Paul, thereby avoiding the fire. There is nothing “abnormal” about this, except that Douglas would prefer his own twisted version of the story, as we have seen Clayton twist nearly everything he discusses.
<Section #82> Clayton Douglas states: “So who is right? Is Jesus correct when he says ‘I have not come to abolish the Law’ or is Paul right when he says that Jesus ‘destroyed the barrier ... by abolishing in his flesh the Law with its commandments and regulations?’ (Hebrews 10:19-20) Was Jesus Christ right when he said that Heaven and Earth would sooner pass away than ‘one letter of the Law,’ or should we instead follow Paul who said the anti-thesis of Christ’s words: ‘But now the Law has come to an end with Christ and everyone who has faith may be justified.’ Romans 10:14”
In reply to section <#82>: The first part of Douglas’ statement here comes not from Hebrews 10, but from Ephesians 2:14. In Ephesians 2, Paul is discussing the reconciliation of the “lost” Israelites (which the Ephesians surely were a part of) to Yahweh by His sacrifice on the cross. Because Israel, the nation, was “married” to Yahweh, and Israel played the harlot, the nation was put off, divorced, by Yahweh. The Levitical law governing marital relations prevented the reconciliation of the husband, Yahweh, to Israel. This law was the “barrier”, or “middle wall” in the A.V., which Paul mentioned. Thus, Yahweh died on the cross for Israel, fulfilling the law and freeing Israel from the Old Covenant. All of this was a clear matter of prophecy discussed at length in this response in section <#50> on p. 108, and what Paul explains to the Ephesians is in perfect keeping with this prophecy, which Christ came to fulfill.
Douglas continues by misquoting Romans 10:4, and mislabeling it 10:14. Romans 10:4 says in the A.V.: “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” This word “end” is the Greek word τέλος (5056), where I have “fulfillment” here in my own translation. Liddell & Scott in their Greek-English lexicon define the word “the fulfillment or completion of anything ... i.e. its consummation, issue, result, end ...” Yahshua Christ tells us that He came to fulfill the law, and Paul correctly tells us that Christ is the fulfillment of the law. Clayton Douglas, the Man of Scoffing, sees problems and conflicts where there certainly aren’t any!
<Section #83> Clayton Douglas states: “Again, I ask you, did Jesus Christ not say himself that a slave cannot serve two masters?
“‘You cannot be the slave of two masters! You will like one more than the other or be more loyal to one than the other. You cannot serve both God and money.’ Matthew 6:24
“So which ‘master’ do Christians now serve? Which ‘master’ do you serve?”
In reply to section <#83>: And for this very reason Paul of Tarsus told the Romans: “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? ... I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness” (Romans 6:16, 19). The word “iniquity”, twice in this passage, is the Greek word ἀνομία, Strong’s #458, literally “lawlessness”. It is apparent from this passage, contrary to Douglas, that Paul of Tarsus was certainly not promoting lawlessness! Clayton Douglas, The Comedian, has judged Paul on the basis of but a few verses taken out of context and mixed with the lies of a long list of jews, sexual deviants, and other assorted miscreants, whom he follows straight to perdition!
