Douglas - Section 70a, b

<Section #70A> Clayton Douglas states: “THE NEW PAULINE DOCTRINE OF LAWLESSNESS ... Paul has a lot to say but little or no Scripture to back it up. Likewise, he seems to either have been ignorant of, or blatantly hiding the words, contradictory to his own, that Jesus spoke. He claims to preach ‘the Gospel’ and even ‘the new Gospel’ yet he speaks little or nothing at all about the actual life, ministry and teachings of Jesus Christ. Instead he writes about his new doctrine of Lawlessness, and spends most of the rest of his ‘Epistles’ defending his violation of the Torah. This should be a great warning to us!”

In reply to section <#70A>: It should be readily apparent to anyone who ever read Paul’s letters, that Clayton Douglas is the Spouter of Lies. Clayton Douglas is the Comedian! A quick perusal of the A.V. reveals that there are roughly 60 direct quotes of the Old Testament in Paul’s letter to the Romans alone, not counting the many allusions and indirect references, such as those found at Rom. 1:32, 7:1-6, 9:20-23 and 16:20. Additionally, several chapters in Romans are all about the Old Testament, including chapters 4 and 9. Clayton Douglas speaks not the truth!

As I discussed in section <O> of my response to the Paul-bashing H. Graber, on p. 18, Paul’s letters are not his gospel. Surely the gospel which Paul preached, which he often referred to as the gospel of the kingdom (which Luke also did, i.e. Acts 28:31), is that gospel which is found with Luke. Paul’s epistles illustrate an application of the gospel for the Christians of his time, as well as an application of the law. Anyone who thinks not should go back and read Romans chapter 2 or 1 Corinthians chapter 5 over again. These chapters clearly demonstrate that Paul upheld lawfulness, and that both good and wicked deeds are rewarded in kind by Yahweh. Clayton Douglas is a liar, the Man of Scoffing, who probably hasn’t even read Paul’s letters in their entirety, let alone studied them! Time and again, Douglas shows his utter incompetency in developing good judgment.

Reading Paul’s epistles, we must bear in mind that we surely do not have all of them. It is certain that a letter to the Corinthians prior to 1 Cor. existed and is now missing (see 1 Cor. 5:9), and perhaps there was one more of these, but 2 Cor. 7:8 may only be referring to the 1 Cor. which we have. There was also an epistle to the Laodiceans, mentioned at Col. 4:16, which is lost. Yet it would seem that since Paul’s ministry lasted for close to 30 years, we may expect that he wrote more than 16 or 17 epistles.

<Section #70B> Clayton Douglas states: “Strangely, this man, who was only shortly before murdering Jesus’ disciples, now expected everyone to believe him to be infallible and above any criticism. Considering his Satanic track record, it should be expected that Paul would have to prove himself through works or ‘fruit’ if he was to be accepted. However, not only are there no works except for preaching for money, but this Satan never even publicly repents nor seeks forgiveness for his oppression.”

In reply to section <#70B>: We have seen here that Paul murdered no one, in sections <#39> (p. 94) and <#59> (p. 118) of this response, where it was also demonstrated that Paul did indeed apologize for his early persecution of Christians. Recycling the same false accusations time and again, Clayton Douglas only magnifies his own lies. Neither did Paul preach for money, but as an honest reading of 2 Corinthians chapter 12 demonstrates, just the opposite is true. Such is also evident at Acts 20:33-35. This was discussed in part in section <#54> of this response on p. 112. Clayton Douglas is rather the Comedian.

Paul did not consider himself infallible, but he did consider both the Old Testament scriptures and the gospel of Yahshua Christ to be infallible, and rightly so. On p. 18, in section <O> of my response to H. Graber, I said that “An honest study of Paul’s letters reveal no fault on Paul’s part when compared with the four gospels, though in places Paul’s mere humanness is surely revealed, and as Paul at times himself admits.” Those admissions are found at places such as Romans 3:5 or 6:19, where Paul admits speaking “as a man” or “after the manner of men”, and not from scripture, meaning that he was indeed not considering his words to be infallible. At 1 Cor. 7:12-40 Paul admits that his advice there was his own, for which see both 7:12 (“I speak, not the Lord”) and 7:40 (“after my judgment”), obviously because he had no scriptural or gospel example to draw from by which to answer the question at hand. Paul wrote his advice here concerning marriage in a time when Christians were undergoing a harsh and violent persecution, the weakly translated “present distress” of 7:26, and because of that he advised against marriage for that time. Otherwise, of course, Paul esteemed marriage as a very important necessity (i.e. Heb. 13:4; 1 Tim. 3:2, 5, 12). So we see several examples where Paul warned that his teaching was his own when it could not be based upon Scripture, and by no means did he claim that such teachings were infallible. Clayton Douglas, the Man of Scoffing, has surely not studied what is necessary in order to discern these things.

The records in Acts demonstrate that Paul surely did “prove himself through works” (Acts 14:3; 19:6, 11; 28:8), and Peter accepted Paul (Acts 15) and testified concerning Paul’s legitimacy and wisdom (2 Pet. 3:15-16). Douglas, the Comedian, Spouter of Lies, spouts accusations which are untrue concerning things which he has neither studied nor understands! Clayton Douglas, Christian? ... or Patriot? Hardly! To qualify as either, one must erase from his mind all his errant concepts and start all over again from the beginning!