More about Apostolic Authority

For the last eighteen hundred years, the church has triumphantly declared that the gospel has cancelled the Torah and that Gentile Christians have replaced the Jewish people. Those dogmas stem from a failture to understand the distinction between Peter's apostleship and Paul's apostleship. As the apostles endorse Paul and send him out as the "apostle to the Gentiles," they do so with one caveat: "Remember the poor ones!" Find out the surprising meaning behind that single instruction.

The Big Meeting

Paul complains that "false brothers secretly brought in ... slipped in to spy out our freedom ... so that they might bring us into slavery" (Galatians 2:4). Who are these false brothers? In what sense are they false? In what sense had they been secretly brought in? What was the freedom in Messiah on which they were spying? These and more questions are answered as Paul brings Titus to a meeting with three top-ranking apostles to seek an endorsement for his gospel to the Gentiles.

Running the Race in Vain

Was Paul a Lone Ranger and John Wayne type of apostle who heard directly from God, or did he honor higher authorities? In this episode, Paul goes up to Jerusalem to submit his gospel of Gentile inclusion to the authority of the apostles, fearing that he may have been running his race in vain.

"I set before them (though privately before those who seemed influential) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure that I was not running or had run in vain." (Galatians 2:2)

The Apostolic Decree

Did the apostles only give the Gentiles four laws? What about the other laws of the Torah? Why these four laws? Are they the same as the seven Noachide laws?

A discussion on the four prohibitions of the Apostolic Decree in Acts 15, their meaning and significance, and their origin in Torah Portion Acherei (Leviticus 17-18). Listen to the lecture that became the basis for one of the new chapters in the Ten-year Anniversary Edition of Restoration: Returning the Torah of Moses to the Disciples of Jesus.