A MORE SURE WORD OF PROPHECY (PART II)

“Peter Repudiates His Detractors”

By Akin Ojumu

From very early on, the early Church Fathers had to deal with impostors who embedded themselves within various Christian assemblies scattered around the Roman world of the first century. Gradually, these pseudo-Christians started to pollute and corrupt the congregations with destructive heresies and erroneous teachings. Some of these wolves in sheep’s clothing even tried to undermine the authority of the true Apostles in order to discredit the Gospel message they preached.

Apostle Paul used his second Epistle to the Corinthians to respond to some of the wild accusations that had been levelled against him by charlatans. For instance, Paul’s detractors suggested that he was not a true Apostle. If Paul were a true Apostle, they argued, he would not have suffered so much and so often as he had suffered. 

Another one of the fraudsters’ accusations was that Paul only spoke boldly in his letters, which he wrote from far away. In person, he was a pathetic wimp who couldn’t put two sentences together. The implication being, Paul was either a fraud, or a coward, or both, and he was not someone to be taken seriously.

2 Corinthians 10:10

“For they say, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account.””

Paul responded to these charges by letting the Corinthians know that despite his unimpressive physical appearance and incoherent speech, he is nowhere inferior to his eloquent detractors, whom he ridiculed by calling them “super-apostles.”

2 Corinthians 11:5-6

“Indeed, I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles. Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge; indeed, in every way we have made this plain to you in all things.”

Of course, Paul was not the only Apostle who encountered slanderers. In fact, all of the thirteen of the Lord’s Apostles, at one point or the other, had to lock horns with all sorts of false apostles who attempted to malign their reputation in order to undermine their authority. 

In the case of Apostle Peter, his denigrators accused him of peddling myths and fables. They said that the Gospel that he preached was nothing but folk tale and legend that he made up out of thin air.

To refute the slander that the Gospel he was preaching was a tale and myth he concocted in order to get people to follow him so he could amass wealth, power, and prestige – which was what the false teachers were really after – Peter brought the receipts. He provided evidence to prove that the Gospel he preached and wrote about in his letters were inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Now, in the criminal justice system, eyewitness testimonies are considered one of the most, if not the most important, pieces of evidence there are. And that’s exactly what Peter provided. The proof of his legitimacy was his eyewitness testimony of the life, ministry, miracles, death, dead body, burial, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. He let the people know that he was there from the beginning to the end.

2 Peter 1:16

“For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”

Now, out of all the events to which he was an eyewitness, the one Peter chose to make his argument in defense of the Gospel and his authority as an Apostle was the transfiguration.

2 Peter 1:17

“For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased, we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven.”

Peter being an eyewitness to everything Jesus did up till His ascension and his being there on the Mount of Transfiguration to hear the voice of God coming the Majestic Glory to affirm Jesus as His beloved Son was not only the validation of his authority as a true Apostle but also a confirmation of the Gospel message that he preached. 

The fact that Peter was there with Jesus when this spectacular event of the transfiguration occurred and his detractors weren’t was sufficient proof to put them to shame and silence them forever.

Stay tuned next till next time.