ENEMIES OF PAUL ARE AT IT AGAIN

By Akin Ojumu

From a pestiferous persecutor who hunted down Christians from Jerusalem to Damascus to an indefatigable itinerant who took the Gospel message from Jerusalem and all Judaea and Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth, Paul was a force of nature who confounded friends and foes alike.

From the get-go, his conversion experience was met with a healthy dose of skepticism, and his confession of faith was viewed with heightened sense of suspicion. Scared that he was cunningly trying to trick them, the Church did not trust him. Confounded that he had betrayed them, the Jews plotted to kill him.

Acts 9:23-30

“When many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him…And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple.”

Restless and relentless, Paul poured himself into preaching the message of The Way with the same zeal and zest he had earlier put into persecuting those who were of The Way. As his fame spread abroad and his influence grew, so did the list of his adversaries. Burning with jealousy at the massive crowd he was pulling to his meetings, Jewish leaders viewed him as a menace to their influence, and they considered his teachings a threat to traditional Jewish beliefs.

Acts 13:44-45

“The next Sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what was spoken by Paul, reviling him.”

As an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul’s ministry was characterized by anguish, misery, pain, and suffering. Hated by non-believers and scorned by his fellow believers, nowhere was safe for Paul. He experienced beatings countless times and got stoned on multiple occasions. 

It’s even estimated that Paul spent as much as a quarter of his time as a missionary in prison where he would be stripped naked and then flogged, a humiliating, painful, and bloody ordeal. The bleeding wounds went untreated; he would sit with his leg or wrist chained. His torn blood-stained clothing was not replaced, even in the cold of winter. The cells where he was locked up were unusually dark and damp, unbearably cold, and cramped with unwashed prisoners. Poorly ventilated and lacking water, the sickening stench from the few latrines installed inside the cells made sleeping difficult and waking hours miserable.

2 Corinthians 11:22-27

“Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one – I am talking like a madman – with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.”

Despite all these, Gospel hucksters and false teachers of his time went everywhere Paul had established Churches Paul to malign his name and discredit his teachings. As Paul went about the Roman Empire preaching the Gospel, impostors, whom Paul derogatively referred to as super-apostles, would sneak in after him to try and poach his new converts. 

1 Corinthians 1:22-23

“For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.”

Paul’s adversaries alleged that the reason he was buffeted with numerous woes was because of his sins. According to these slanderers, Paul’s adversities were the direct result of God’s wrath poured out on him for his sins. These enemies also claimed that the Gospel message that Paul preached needed to be supplemented because it was inadequate. Some of them even said that if Paul was so sure of his teachings, he would have readily accepted financial support like all itinerant preachers of that era did.

Greek culture measured the importance of a teacher by the fee he could command. The false apostles therefore accused Paul of being a counterfeit, since he refused to charge for his services (cf.1 Corinthians. 9:1–15). They convinced the Corinthians to be offended by Paul’s refusal to accept support from them, offering this as evidence that he did not love them (cf. v. 11) (Source: The MacArthur Bible Commentary).

Paul addressed these attempts to discredit his ministry and undermine his apostolic authority in his second letter to the Corinthians. With biting sarcasm, Paul asked his accusers how foregoing his right to support could possibly be a sin. He warned the Corinthians not to be fooled by his enemies, letting them know that these people who accept money and other financial support are only trying to tarnish his image because of their own personal embarrassment for taking money while he, Paul, didn’t. And Paul told the Corinthians that he intended to keep his ministry free of charge so that he would undermine the claims of the false apostles that they operated on the same basis as he did.

2 Corinthians 11:12-15

“But I will keep on doing what I am doing, in order to undercut those who want an opportunity to be regarded as our equals in the things of which they boast. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their actions.”

Considering all the pain and anguish Paul had endured for the course of the Gospel, you’d think the Apostle would be considered a hero of the faith by all genuine believers. Yet, when you hear modern-day preachers talk about Paul, you’d be tempted to think the man was an apostate and archenemy of the Gospel. 

Picking up from where their forerunners stopped, the modern-day enemies of Paul are hellbent on slandering Paul for the very purpose of devaluing his ministry and maligning his writings. And it appears there’s a concerted effort on the part of a number of today’s preachers, especially the self-styled apostles, to discredit Paul and his teachings.

Take for example Joshua Selman. This blasphemer once stood before his congregation and boldly declared:

“I hope you know that there are many things that Paul said in the Bible that are wrong according to the character of God’s word…I will never show you the Scripture, but I can show a place in the Bible where Paul permits a woman to sleep with a man.”

Another is Johnson Suleman. This scandal plagued scoundrel, whose cluelessness about the Gospel is an embarrassment to African Christians, once claimed that God told him that the reason his friend fell from the faith was because the friend spent his time focused on preaching Paul and not preaching Christ.

“So, I went to go and pray. And the Lord told me that, ‘You are preaching Paul, you are not preaching me…The teachings of Paul are not from the lips of Jesus, they were from Paul’s lips. They are the revelations of Christ that Paul had. But Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John…the Gospel were the account of things Jesus said and did.’ And he said to me, “My priority and focus should be on the life of Jesus. What Paul said is secondary…”

Joshua Selman, Johnson Suleman, and all the frauds out there trying to denigrate Paul and diminish his teachings are all enemies of God. These people are satanic voices spreading the lies of their father, the devil. What Paul taught everywhere he went and what he wrote in his thirteen epistles were divine revelations given to Him directly by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. 

Galatians 1:11-12

“For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”

In fact, Paul’s epistles were recognized by the other Apostles as divinely inspired and were considered to be Scriptures. And it’s for this very reason that they were canonized and included among the twenty-seven books of the New Testament.

2 Peter 3:14-16

“Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.”

Unlike Johnson Suleman, Joshua Selman, Arome Osayi and the other false apostles of our day, Paul was a true Apostle chosen by Christ Himself. He was in no way inferior either to the modern-day apostles or the super-apostles of the First Century.

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.”

In contrast to the self-appointed apostles such as Johnson Suleman, Joshua Selman, Arome Osayi, Michael Orokpo, and the likes, Paul did not go around dressed in well-tailored suits. At no time did the man travel in chauffeured driven bulletproofed Mercedes-Maybach Exelero or Mercedes G Wagon. Paul never flew in private jets, sailed in luxury yachts or owned any of these life luxuries.

Paul most definitely did not have armed bodyguards wearing Kevlar vests who formed a protective shield around him everywhere he went. Nowhere is it recorded that he had millions of admirers who trooped to his crusades shouting his name or singing his praises on social media. Rulers of nations didn’t roll the red carpet to welcome Paul into their cities. On the contrary, as soon as he landed in a city, they were already plotting to get him arrested, kicked out, or snuffed out.

Unlike the fake apostles of our day, Apostle Paul was the real deal. These miscreants and spiritual deadwoods trying to malign his name must realize they are eternally doomed.