Appendix B
The Council Chamber was in an uproar, I can tell you that. Much of what was said came with such language and filth that I am rarely giving you more than the gist of the conversation and I am sorry if a few of their words slip past but you must understand who was speaking. At first I wasn’t sure who they were or who was speaking.
They had fallen back into their criminations and recriminations like, “Whose stupid idea was it to kill Jesus in the first place?” No one seemed sure given the disastrous backfire of the plan. They all wanted to take credit for it at the time. But not anymore. It had been, what? 20? 25 years?
A Master watched bemused, finally he slammed his fist on the table and shouted for silence in a voice that shook us all to the core.
“SILENCE! FOOLS! DOGS! SCUM SUCKING PEEEEGS!”
He had their attention. They all had my attention, what was I doing there? Am I in Hell? I wondered what all these demons would do if they noticed me? Nobody seemed to. Did I fit in? . . . Wait a minute, I shouldn’t just fit into Hell, should I? Or maybe I should? No time to wonder about that now. I was here, that was that, and the language was horrific. And . . . wait, was that . . . Seriously? Is that Him? Not just A “watching Master”, but The watching Master?
Lucifer looks slowly around the room.
Starting in a quiet hiss he began, “It’s been 15 years. . . .”
“25” squeaked a small interrupting demon. “25 years sir.”
“. . . 35 years and nothing has worked. We tried putting them in jail. We killed them. We have made them illegal . . . If we do not come up with something soon, Hell is finished.”
Beelzebub normally fairly blustery was actually whining, “We tried buying the power over the Holy Spirit with Simon the Sorcerer. But Peter didn’t go for it. Then we . . .”
“Wait!” Ba’al interrupted “I might have something you speck of Fly’s Dung on a cloister wall!” The intensity in his voice was palpable.
We waited.
“That is how we will overcome them. We will show them how the Holy Spirit Himself can be controlled and what people will be willing to pay to those who control our vaporous enemy most effectively.”
“How?” A thousand minor minions asked? In a Babel of voices they tumbled out something like, “They can’t control him. Why would anyone want to pay someone to control the Enemy when every one of them from the most pathetic to those reputed to be Apostles themselves have the Holy Spirit controlling them and with devastating effect? Not one of them understand that leadership requires organizations. And organizations require rulers who control the people. And we can control the rulers effectively but have a much harder time with people.” The ones speaking for them shuddered at his narrow escape that day from a newly converted drunk in Corinth whom he had encouraged to get drunk before the love feast.
“Just the other day,” they went on “I thought to lure the Corinthians into starting an organization to get control of their church. I thought if I could get some of them drunk before their love feast they would see a need to put some people in charge, get some examinations going, see if they could control who could and who couldn’t eat and drink with them, for their own good of course they would think. It was a first step, you know.” He whined. “But that damned Paul! Did he tell the elders to pitch in and hold a court or something and be sure everyone is worthy to eat a love feast? No! Did he tell them to get organized, appoint elders and give them the job of sorting out all their problems? NO!” thundered a legion of voices. “The toad sucker told them to have the drunks examine themselves! to see if they were worthy!!!!! How can we corrupt an organization that is not organized by people who know how to take charge?! All Paul could do was serve them and demand that they grow up. He didn’t even demand they follow him because he was an Apostle. Something about the biggest coward, the first to escape over the wall at Ephesus when things got tough, always falling off a boat into the open sea, always getting whipped and stoned, never the command and control stuff of real leaders.”
Ba’al sighed. “That is the plan. What you did was a worthy effort as have been all our efforts at Corinth. But no matter what we did there they refused to solve the problem by putting their greatest men in charge. Instead, Paul showed them in each situation how to take care of things without having to empower a leader to whip people in line.”
“Aaaargggh!” He gnashed his teeth. “And that is their Achilles Heel, that is what we must change. We must find their best men, their most gifted. And tempt them to lead the way the world has always led.”
Azazel spoke up for the first time. “No, you both are onto what must be our long-term plan. But it is not as simple as that. We must put them into a state where the sin of a leader matters. And they don’t have leaders whose sins would really matter. I mean look at Peter. Does anyone of them really care if he blows hot one day and cold the next. He betrayed Jesus as much as Judas did. But did anyone care? NOOO! It’s because none of their leaders has the power to control the shape of the rest of them. That must be changed. We will not get far in this first generation; they are all too close to the enemy’s power of service to walk away. One of our great success since we seized power of the world . . .
“And Lost it!” squeaked that same devil of interruption and perfection. “Got his Lordship’s Ass Kicked right out of Heaven we did. . .”
Azazel turned his cold desert blue goat-eyes on the little squirt who faded to nothing.
“Yes . . . that’s not wise to say around here” He continued meditatively. “Once they tasted true power of submitting and loving and preferring one another it is hard for them to go back to the thin gruel of authority and power and disciplining them with elite leaders the way we run Hell.” He turned again to the little Devil. “For now, we need to plant seeds. Your seed of perfection might be just what their great ones need” He nodded to the silenced demon. “Yes, perfection is what they all need. Lets call everyone alive for the next 300 years the Father’s.” He chuckled. “So simple they won’t even remember the enemy specifically said, “Call no Man Father.”
He looked at the minor minion wondering why they looked so blury, “You, that was good work it is the future. What’s your name?”
“Legion my Lord.” Oh, no wonder. I could see it now, “He” is not a “he”, he’s a “they!” How prophetic, how modern.
“I think you are all on the right track. And clearly you are adequately staffed if we can just keep you away from pork. The plan won’t work right now. That sniveling love feast has turned every house, every wretched heart, every pub into a temple and our enemy lives in there, in all of ’em! Organizing around eating and fellowshipping because they, they . . .” He shuddered as if just saying it was a body blow to all he stood for. “. . . they love each other. And they don’t even screw each other at these parties like the Greeks so enjoy! Damn them.” He paused looking down, “It is disgustingly difficult to get any real tempting and destruction done. They all come in talking at once with each other. Solving each other’s problems, teaching each other, encouraging each other, sharing gifts with each other, singing making melody, even in their hearts. Right when you think we got a good hateful argument going suddenly they’re refining their ideas and hugging promising to think about it!” His voice was growing in intensity, “subMITTING TO EACH OTHER! PUTTING EACH OTHER FIRST! WE CAN’T EVEN GET THEM INTO AN ARGUMENT THEY KEEP LISTENING TO EACH OTHER AND ITS BECAUSE EVERYWHERE THEY GO THEY ARE ALWAYS EATING TOGETHER, LAUGHING TOGETHER,” until his voice was an inarticulatae roar chilling every soul, “NEVER BEING SOLOMN, NEVER PUTTING ON AIRS, NEVER TRYING TO GET ALL DRESSED UP TO IMPRESS GOD OR ANYONE ELSE. NEVER SILENT LIKE PROPER SUPPLICANTS. NEVER PUTTING PEOPLE IN CHARGE WHO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING AND CAN CONTROL THE ONES WHO DON’T!!! THOSE DAMNED FEASTS, THOSE DAMNED GIFTS! THUS SAYS THE LORD THIS . . . LET ME PRAY FOR YOU THAT . . . SATAN WE BIND YOU . . .”
“What in the name of Hell are you saying?” Lucifer interrupted in barely a whisper that left no doubt as to the intent behind his words. “You would utter those words here? Those words binding me in the name of the enemy?”
“My pardon Sire, I . . . I . . . I was just saying that each one of them is the terror to us that only a hand full of kings and prophets and priests were a problem of old before HE became flesh.” He spat the word “flesh” out like bloody sputum in his disgust. “Flesh is supposed to be our strength not His! We are the world, the flesh and the devil, not Him! Yet he takes possession of the Flesh, dwells in them, lives in them, even writes on the walls of their life as if he were a three year old! Or some gangster tagging a wall to claim territory. Each one of them filled with his Divine Presence. And they give us no handle to control them. No leader they blindly follow. This damn, ‘You have the Holy Spirit, you have new hearts’ business. What do they think? That each pathetic flesh suit is the Holy of Holies?”
“That’s right.” Abbadon spoke up for the first time. “We put them in jail, and the Holy Spirit fills every one of them and they start the First Church of Ephesus. And there, there, was . . . uh . . . one of them so insignificant I can’t think of his name talking to a Eunuch. A Eunuch of all creatures. We had his balls safely in Hell. And God even promised that without them they could not get close to the Holy of Holies. But we should have known God doesn’t keep his word. Suddenly Stephen, . . . that’s his name, Stephen, a NOBODY, . . .”
“Philip sir,” squeaked the same obnoxious minion. “It was Philip. . .”
“Like I said, Stephen is talking to him and he is baptized, OUR ENEMY LIVES - IN - HIM! The balless wonder is now the temple of the Holy Spirit and now he has converted half of Ethiopia. And we find out that Stephen’s four daughters are Prophetesses!’
“That’s Phillip sir.” Mumbled one of the Legion.
“Do you want to return to the pigs? That can be arranged. But as I was saying, That’s right! Worthless maidservants bearing the word of the Lord even the Spirit of the Lord, Prophesying as if they were men. Instead of bearing their children! Is nothing sacred? We had half of the humans locked out of any sort danger to us, their women! Bitches good for nothing but breeding until they fucking die, and suddenly they are our biggest threat! What are we to do? How do we train the men to master their wives like God told them to do back when they were men? Is nothing sacred? Is nothing secure? What does it take to shut those howling bitches up?”
Ba’al had been thoughtfully silent since he announced his plan. Then he spoke up firmly now convinced he knew the way to go.
“Yes, it will start like this.” He stood up and with a flaming middle finger walked to the wall and began to write an outline.
We must organize them. We will do this by continuing to encourage them to select the best speakers, the best teachers, the best prophets to speak to them. Nothing but the BEST for God’s Kingdom. Its natural! Do you want the best to pray, heal, prophesy, teach or do you want listen to old mugwart go on over there about how much water should be used in Baptism? And we will in the beginning encourage their holiness.
At the chorus of objection, “we tried that’s” and “Holiness?” and “Their holiness is the problem!” he waved his hand for silence. “No,” he said, “you have not tried this. This is not a short-term but a long-term plan for the millennia, for the ages. Holiness is only a problem if it is from the heart. You will find holiness the easiest thing to turn into a set of rules for the not so holy to follow. Once it sinks in, they can never extricate themselves from the burning quicksands of wealth, power, acclaim and authority that “Holiness” in the Rule of the Great One’s inevitably brings them as it is expressed through unassailable rules for successful holiness and living. If Jesus told them not to put their great one’s in charge, If Jesus gave them no specific do this or do that rules for holiness, then we know it is our only path to their destruction.”
He turned back and with burning finger wrote,
When the most gifted plan something they will find that a number will not follow their plan. We will encourage them to take it personally and encourage and particularly encourage those who agree with them to create some sort of organization to be more effective. We will breed them to distrust the ignorant congregation. They will more and more see willful division and disloyalty where there is only honest debate. They will inevitably see the need for discipline. The great ones will naturally move to create their monopoly on discipline. It’s what government does. We inspired it.
Beelzebub chimed in, “I see where you are going with this. We can get the leaders to shove the Love Feast where it belongs. It is so clumsy and long and distracting. We can boil it down to a ritual . . . you know some bread and wine and magic words, like what Paul told the Corinthians he said. We will get them to turn them into magic words that only the Holy Special can say to make the grace happen.”
“Very Good!” Ba’al said. “Very Good. We will make that point 3.” Writing in flames on the wall,
Create rituals that reduce the things that ignite devastating fellowship into magical song and dance that can be easily controlled by leaders we will be raising up . . . leaders who can sing and dance of course.
“That’s it!” Prince Molech spoke up out of his depression. “We get the enemy out of their homes and out of their hearts the same way. We get them to build a big building to hold all of their activities in, their rituals, their teaching. We get the Holy Spirit out of the sanctuary of their homes and bars and businesses and put him back into a central temple where He can be properly controlled by their leaders. A Holy Place. Properly contained. Where they can keep him safe. (He purred the last sentence.) What will we get them to call them, Priest, Father? Elder? Pastor? Shepherd? Overseer?”
“I like that.” Ba’al said an evil smile lighting his face. “The name doesn’t matter we will pick the names we find them using like, shepherd, elder, pastor, whatever, all that matters is that we define those names and in time they will believe that our definitions are actually in the Bible. The important thing is that as long as whatever they do is to think that their magic is controlling the Holy Spirit and through that control they use their special Status as Spirit Controllers to have authority over God’s people and deny to them any control and authority over Spirit and God’s Kingdom. . . .” He savored the next words like a strong liquor, and whispered “As long as they control the Spirit we control the Spirit.”
“No!” Said Azazel. “we tried that, Simon the Christian Sorcer was slapped down. ‘told to perish and his money with him.’”
“You understand nothing Ass’azel.” Mocked Molech. “We can call it Simon the Christian Sorcerer’s Strategy. Make it so the great one’s think that the reason God made them great is because only they the leaders can control the Holy Spirit. The point is control. We will make them think it was the money! But that’s not what they will call it. They would rather die than think they were controlling God, so we will encourage them to think that God is working through all the organizations we help them create in order to keep the work of the Church going whether or not God is involved. It is a perfect functional equivalent. We’ll have the Holy Spirit out on His vaporous ass in no time. If it takes 400 years I’ll be shocked.”
“Yes Brilliant!” said Azazel ignoring the insult, “You are an angel of light . . . meaning no disrespect Sire” he said deferentially toward Lucifer. “They organize to be sure that wherever ministry is needed in their opinion they can provide it, it never occurring to them that it is the ministry of the people themselves that is tearing up Hell . . . No offense sire. The more they limit the Holy Spirit to the proper leaders, the weaker and less able the people. The greater the leader, the greater the people’s need for them is and pretty soon they are calling dear leader’s actions and decisions divine actions inspired by the Holy Spirit whether or not he does anything. It is the brilliant feature of all organizing. If they don’t they are in chaos, if they do their leaders become manageable indispensable little gods.”
Building programs. People will need lots of money. We will be able in time to divert 80% of the money they give into maintaining their central buildings and like Molech said, get the Holy Spirit out of their houses, Tap Rooms and Businesses back in a central location. This will make church so much easier for everyone, plus with just a few rituals it will take less time . . . they will go for this. Salaries, hirelings. Did I mention budgets? Decency? Order? They will quite forget all Jesus himself needed for ministry is a bag and a thief and traitor to manage the funds.”
Azazel spoke up again, “We need to channel their leaders. Getting them in charge of an organization of leaders isn’t enough. We have to get the Holy Spirit out of each Christian . . . or at least make each Christian think that the real action of the Holy Spirit is in the leader. The logic of leadership organization and the pride of leading combined with the natural laziness of people . . .
“. . .it’s so crazy it just might work.”
Suddenly a flamboyant “5” appeared on the wall and fiery letters formed. Ba’al stepped back clearly annoyed at being upstaged this way. He was in charge here after all.
Build a stage at one end of the room or in the middle, and have only the leader speak and teach from that stage and make everyone silent except when told to speak or read or say something or sing . . . for holiness and respect or some such righteous drivel, we will tell them, but our purpose is to end this endless ministry of helping, loving, submitting, problem solving as if the Holy Spirit can handle everything with anyone however lowly esteemed. Above all get the kids out of there. I hate kids. We can’t have them Baptizing them as if such were the Kingdom of heaven. We must switch the enemy’s definition of faith for our own so it can be focused on their own tiny navels. A few years of one person speaking, one person doing all of the rituals, one person counseling and trying to solve everyone’s problems and they will forget that there is any Holy Spirit anywhere else but in the building, in the Pulpit you know, that Christian Simon the Sorcerer running the service. He will have all control of the congregation, the Kingdom, the power and the glory are His, because controlling the Holy Spirit is His. He must be in control hands were laid on Him for just this control. Help them write books of rules to explain how it is that the Holy Spirit has returned in power to their leaders and His manifestation in the followers is to submit to them.
“AMEN!” they shouted in chorus. “Just like here!”
Ba’al started writing point 6 with a growl not waiting for Azazel to steal his show again. He was leader here, it was a point of order!
We will write books of order, rules, canons for how Church and worship should proceed. In a few generations we will take the brightest and best of them, put them in the center of attention, center of affection, center of crying need and the egos of all but a few will become . . . as wonderfully bloated as our own. (He scratched his crotch appreciatively.)
“Aren’t you forgetting,” Beelzebub interrupted sarcastically, “That the enemy really does love the little hairless slugs? You think he is going to let all of his leaders worship themselves?”
“No of course not!” Lucifer answered startling all of them. He began to laugh at the perfection of the plan.
His laugh was pure evil, in his eye a beam of dull genius gleamed like a beacon flooding the room in a lurid light making even the princes of the demons flesh crawl in filthy possibility of perversion. Look what he could do to light itself! I thought. I couldn’t help but think what his light had become over the years since the dawn of time. How had it had boiled down to this putrid ooze.
“No, can’t you see.” Lucifer said. “Even those who survive perhaps the most brilliant seduction in history. Yes, they will be brilliantly holy, saints in every good and perfect sense. The plan needs them because they will be trapped with congregations who have long given up the idea that they can do anything; that any spark of the Holy Spirit is left them; certainly no gifts as Paul describes them. This will make #7 a stroke of genius, for even the holiest among them will doggedly defend this travesty we are foisting on them lest they brand him as disloyal, or Church haters. And with his own eye he inscribed,
“They will convince themselves,” he continued, “that the gifts of the Spirit involving God doing things directly to them have ceased. This will solidify the power of the leaders of the organization making their reign permanent. We will leave nowhere for the Voice of God to be heard except in their technical methods of interpreting the Bible for sermons. Even the pastors and priests who stay true to their humble purpose will have no support in congregations committed for a thousand different reasons to their own impotence and the elder’s greatness. The more he humbles himself and pleads with them the more they will stop up their ears and praise him . . . for his exemplary humility if nothing else.
There was stunned silence. Deafening.
“Budgets, full time salaries, Buildings . . . you have no idea how these simple devices will turn every dispute into a righteous battle to spend God’s money, and use God’s house the right way. And voila, the body being the Holy of Holies? Gone! Poof! Things Jesus never gave a tinker’s damn about will be their obsession. It will make it damnably expensive to start new Churches and grow for instance. No more just starting a group in the house next door! Whatever they discover about God in their startup, their first love for Him for instance, will be utterly lost by the time the building is paid for.
He looked straight at me, apparently noticing me for the first time. Pinning me in his gaze. He grew silent.
“They will obey Jesus.” I squeaked in the ichor of his light as it washed over me. To me my voice barely made it out. But the effect it had on the hosts of horror was quite the opposite. They stepped back. Was that fear? I thought everyone saw my trembling, my squeak, but I sensed that they were even more shaken by something else.
Satan laughed again a laugh of pure perversion. “No one will believe you. They did not believe Jesus. If they are not even going to believe God,” and there it was his very mention of my Lord was as foul as any inmate I have heard cursing an unfaithful girlfriend over the telephone from jail and all he did was name Him.
“If they are not even going to hear someone who returns from the dead, why should they hear you?” He went on. “And they did not listen to Jesus nor will they listen to you. You will see the Church will be the first to stop listening to Jesus. You will be ignored at first. If you ever do speak in a way they can hear, they will shout you down with our legion of different reasons to reinforce their need for power or be led by power.” He turned and smiled at them. “To keep their pastoral meatgrinder of church buildings, budgets salaries, and center stage spotlight, magical rituals done by only the right words and only the right holy men shaking their bags of bones, and holy silences to be forced to listen to whatever is going on rather than ministering themselves! Rituals where there were love feasts. All this going full blast withering the greatest spiritual giants who answer the call to the ministry and castrating every faithful attendant of their holiness show. For each successful pastor who is not ground up he will only live in the end to minister strength hope and future to my lie. BUT, With each pastoral failure they will turn to greater and greater control of the people quenching whatever is left of the Holy Spirit. This is Molech’s unique administrative and bureaucratic specialty, consuming children.”
“OH! And you think it will just destroy the elders who come into this ecclesiastical glory hole? Their families and children will be destroyed when they are put under the magnifying glass of a congregation’s judgment. Oh yes! Their children are mine and the judgment of the Spiritless congregation will deliver them to me as will the very zeal of their patriarchal fathers to recreate a family, no a - a world, a master slave authority structure, a world Jesus himself said was over, finished, going back to the Beginning I think he said. But don’t worry! By then we already will have convinced them that one man ruling another was the way from before sin claimed them so let them return they will see only power needing powerful men to wield it. In fact what Paul told the Romans is perfect Everyone will believe that the authority of God is given to every pagan judge and king out there. ‘He who rebels against authority rebels against God.” They will never pay attention to what He actually said.
I was possessed by I do not know what. It was not fear any more as I realized what he was saying. I stepped forward with an inexplicable joy and asked, “So you confirm that I am on the right track in what I have been finding in God’s word?”
The Counsel of Hell’s Princes stood up in anger. Theirs was a perfect plan. It was their last chance. If they could just organize the Church, if they could just take the young men and women with the most potential and put them in the grip of searing prominence and glory — that center stage of a pulpit so freely bestowed so jealously guarded. They could taste and see of the bark chipper they were on the verge of turning the Church into.
“Depart.” Lucifer said. “We are finished with you here.”
“You do not dismiss me until I am finished with you. The world has changed. The day of the true power of submission, service, love and truth has already dawned 2,000 years ago when your feckless tomb failed to hold him. When he broke Roman law committing a capital offense to by rolling away the stone, breaking the Roman seal and stepping into His New Creation. That same power will transform not only the government of Marriage, the Church and all other governing bodies, in business and nation so thoroughly that in time they will no longer be called governments at all. That word will be reserved for God’s Holy Spirit at work in every heart writing God’s law on the walls of that heart more surely than you wrote the destruction of the last 2,000 years on that Church on that wall over there.” I realized we were in the basement of a pagan Temple that would one day become a building set apart to the worship of God. Realizing the irony that being set apart for worship was exactly their plan. But also realizing that in time even the Pagan temple, become the prison that the Church would lock itself into was itself a plan that would explode in their face.
That seemed to take them by surprise. I don’t know if they did not know what era I had come from or if they were surprised that I thought they would be as successful as coming from the 21st Century I knew they would be. Just like I was surprised to realize that there really was hope for God’s people. That the last 2,000 years were a crippling hold over from the fall and God really did have a plan to reign and indeed was reigning and in time we would pick up where that first generation left off.
“Yes you heard me, for at least 2,000 years and I don’t know how many more you have captured the center stage for every pastor and priest. But your Church organizations and leaders and withering limelight will not be the last word, because the power you offer them is too ephemeral and fleeting. You are too successful and the fruit of your sword rots too soon. What God holds for each of his children will not be denied them, not by you, not by every pastor and board of elders who has ever thought that God’s legacy to each of His children was in reality only a legacy for themselves to exercise in their behalf. What God holds for each of His children is the power that belonged to the children themselves even though they gladly gave it away if only a human authority could comfort them. God will not give any who separate his Kingship, His friendship, his Husbanding, His walk to someone else to have the last word with his bride or children or people or anywhere else in creation. There will be no bureaucratic liaison representing Christ to His people and His people to Christ — no Leah or Hagar to creep into His marriage bed and supplant His bride, no Chaldean Officers regardless of their endowment to seduce them with church governing. Even now the grand children of the 60’s, the Millennials, are being discipled by principles from God’s word which have been released into society to disciple them though they don’t confess their origin. They will hear, even now the Gospel is going from the Church to the Gentiles and those who were not my people will become my people.”
*****
Of course, this never happened. Or did it? You have to ask, could even the demons of Hell have devised a more perfect strategy to neuter the Church than the one that unfolded in history?
What would a Church — a congregation — look like that did not organize itself based on leaders who have the power to force the submission of their followers?
Now the first thing most people think when they hear this question, is to assume that we are proposing a Church with no leaders. And they immediately object that without leaders there would be no way to force followers to follow, then we would be in a state of anarchy or chaos. But this is a nonsensical conclusion. It is based on the presupposition that the only reason people follow Jesus Christ is because leaders force them to. The only reason heresy is refuted is because elite leaders force their followers to disagree with it. The only reason the flock is protected and taught is because leaders force them to listen to their teaching.
So let me make clear, we are not asking, “What would a church look like without leaders?” Answer: We believe God ordains leaders and they should be followed.
Please read that again — We believe God ordains leaders and they should be followed and submitted to.
What we ask here is, “What would a church look like if leaders led by their example, by their persuasion, by their holiness and pastoral concern, their example as Peter tells them to do, and not the power to force others to follow as Peter and Jesus both told them not to do?”
What would Jesus’s Church look like? Is this possible?
The next 10 chapters will explore that Question. We will begin first where all books of church order of every sort begin, with the Lordship and Kingship of Jesus Christ. On that there is no disagreement in any book on the question of Church Government.
But if you have been offended that the Millennials have been groomed by God to become the Christians who can take this step, then you know what the Jews in Rome felt like when Jeremiah said that a people not my people would become my people. And when Paul said Jeremiah was referring to the gentiles, and finally when Paul made the equally absurd claim that the gentiles would in time become the promised people of God. In Rome Paul’s ministry is summarized in two ways:
Acts 28:28 — “Therefore let it be known to you that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear it!”
And Luke Concludes the History of that first generation with a summary of all Paul taught: The Kingdom of God.
Acts 28:30-31 — 31 preaching the Kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence.