Things
Peter Never Said
Doctrine is an issue that major parts
of the religious system called "Christianity" shies away from today.
Striving for "union" rather than the seven-fold unity Paul spoke of in
Ephesians chapter four results in compromised doctrine, or in some
cases just downright ignoring it. So many are left with a "one pot
meal" of things gleaned from what people see in the bible, things
written by the writers of the books of the new testament. This results
in an inability to see or to discern the things that are different and
a concentration on things that are common, and often ignoring the
context of passages. When difficulties show up people will just
"spiritualize" many things that were written and meant to be taken
literally.
There
are many things that are common in the books of the bible written by
Paul, and the other epistles of Hebrews through Revelation written by
others, including Peter, James and John. There are many things in the
bible that are common in all ages. For instance, the book of Hebrews
tells us that Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever.
In the book of Malachi we find written that God changes not. Paul said
that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable. He
said that whatsoever things which were written aforetime were written
for our learning.
So all
of the bible, Genesis through Revelation, is for us. All scripture is
for us but it is not all about us. The particular part of the bible
written directly unto us and about us in the age in which we live today
is that part where we find Paul's epistles. There are 13 of them,
Romans through Philemon, and in them is found the specific doctrine of
salvation to the church, the body of Christ. There is another group of
believers to be found and that group is represented by the Hebrew
epistles of Hebrews through Revelation.
Realizing that salvation is common, that
all salvation depends upon the cross of Jesus Christ, and that many of
the practical instructions are common to both groups, there are many
things that are different. In other words the doctrine to one group is
different than the doctrine to the other group. The doctrine for the
one group applied in time past and will be applicable in the future, in
ages to come. But now, in the age in which we live,, the doctrine for
the church the body of Christ was written by Paul.
In order to show some of these contrasts,
here are five things that Peter never said:
1. Anything at
all
about the fall of Israel
The
focus of Peter's preaching
was on the fulfillment of prophecy, in other words, the things which
had been spoken by all of the old testament prophets pertaining to the
nation of Israel. Notice what Peter says in reference to the second
coming of Jesus Christ:
Acts
3:20 And he shall send Jesus
Christ, which before was preached unto you:
Acts 3:21 Whom the
heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which
God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world
began.
In other
words, the prophets had prophesied of a time
when Israel would rise to be the head of the nations, God's holy nation
and royal priesthood (2 Peter 2:9). The purpose of Israel ultimately is
to be a kingdom of priests. Gentiles will come to the brightness of
their rising. Notice in Isaiah:
Isaiah
60:1 Arise, shine; for
thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee.
Isaiah
60:2 For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross
darkness the people: but the LORD shall arise upon thee, and his glory
shall be seen upon thee.
Isaiah
60:3 And the Gentiles shall come
to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.
When
Christ comes again to sit on the throne of his glory in the Kingdom
upon the earth, Israel will be above and not beneath, the head and not
the tail. They will lend and not borrow, and so on...all of the
blessings you find in such places as Deuteronomy 28, but without the
curses. The Light of Israel comes and the glory of the Lord will rise
upon Israel and the Gentiles, all the nations of th earth will come to
that brightness. Notice here:
Zechariah
8:23 Thus saith the LORD
of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take
hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the
skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have
heard that God is with you.
This is
the focus of Peter's
preaching and his salvation message. Look at what Peter writes:
1
Peter 2:5 Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an
holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by
Jesus Christ.
1 Peter
2:9 But ye are a chosen generation, a
royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should
shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into
his marvellous light;
1 Peter
2:12 Having your conversation
honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as
evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold,
glorify God in the day of visitation.
So all of Peter's
preaching and the things he writes are in the light of the concluding
of God's prophetic timetable with the nation of Israel, as in Daniel's
Seventy Weeks in Daniel 9. The last of those seventy weeks, a time
period of seven years, has yet to be fulfilled and Peter's doctrine is
written specifically to Israel about that time. So his message is about
the salvation of Israel, about the rise of Israel, and not about their
fall and their casting away, and not about the fact that they became
"not God's
people" because of the unbelief of the majority of them. You find the
prophecy of just such a situation in the first chapter of the book of
Hosea, particularly, Hosea 1:9. What is missing from the prophecies
concerning the fall and casting away of Israel is the amount of time
involved. Peter also acknowledges that:
1 Peter 1:10 Of which
salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who
prophesied of the grace that should come unto you:
1 Peter 1:11
Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was
in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of
Christ, and the glory that should follow.
Israel's old testament
prophets could look forward in time and they could see the sufferings
of Christ and they could see forward unto the glory that should follow,
but notice that they enquired and searched diligently to find out WHAT
the suffering meant, and WHAT MANNER of TIME was involved between the
sufferings and the glory. Peter doesn't write about those things, but
PAUL does. Notice:
Romans
11:25 For I would not, brethren, that
ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your
own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the
fulness of the Gentiles be come in.
So we see that blindness has
fallen upon Israel. It is for a reason and is not permanent. How long
will Israel remain in blindness? Until the fulness of the Gentiles are
saved. Now go back in Romans 11 and read the context:
Romans
11:11 I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid:
but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for
to provoke them to jealousy.
Romans
11:12 Now if the fall of
them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches
of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?
Romans 11:13 For I
speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I
magnify mine office:
Romans
11:14 If by any means I may provoke
to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them.
Romans
11:15 For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world,
what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?
At
the time of Acts
chapter twenty, the time when Paul wrote the book of Romans, Paul hoped
to save some of the Jews, those who would hear that gospel that Paul
preached and believe it. But you can clearly see that Paul writes that
instead of RISING, which was the prophetic message to Israel, that they
have FALLEN, and that through their fall, salvation is come to the
Gentiles. As Paul wrote those words, the blinding was going on and
Israel was being cast away. But again, their blindness and their being
out of favor with God is only temporarily. It has been a long "time
out" on the prophetic clock...almost two thousand years, but God is not
done with the nation of Israel. They will yet rise again.
But
YOU DO NOT LEARN ABOUT THIS FROM PETER. He never said anything at all
about it. So you can see that Peter's ministry and message of salvation
and doctrine is strictly Jewish. It is about Israel, for Israel and
unto Israel. Something else that Peter never said one word about is:
2. Anything at
all
about the body of Christ
When
Peter preaches in the book of Acts he preaches exclusively to Jews. Notice his audience;
Acts
2:5 And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every
nation under heaven.
Acts 2:14 But Peter, standing up with the
eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and
all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to
my words:
Acts 2:22 Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of
Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and
signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also
know:
Acts 2:36 Therefore let all the house of Israel know
assuredly, that God hath made the same Jesus, whom ye have crucified,
both Lord and Christ.
So Peter preaches a salvation message to
Israel consisting of repentance, water baptism and enduring unto the
end, the end of their lives or the end of the tribulation, whichever
was to come first. It is strictly a Jewish message and you can see from
1 Peter 2:12 above that the people he writes to are living among the
Gentiles but that they are not Gentiles. Peter has a negative attitude
toward Gentiles in his letter:
1 Peter 4:3 For the time past of
our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when
we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings,
banquetings, and abominable idolatries:
Instead of Peter
preaching about or writing about a joint body of believers made up of
both Jews and Gentiles, his message is almost a carbon copy of what
Moses said to Israel in Exodus 19:
Exodus 19:6 And ye shall be
unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words
which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.
1 Peter 2:9
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a
peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath
called you out of darkness into his marvellous light;
There is no joint body of believers in that message is there? Peter's doctrine
is totally Jewish, it is
all in a tribulation context and all looks forward to a future day of
atonement at the second coming of Jesus Christ. But yet, Paul's
doctrine stands in contrast to all of that:
Galatians 3:27 For
as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
Galatians
3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free,
there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
1
Corinthians 12:13 For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body,
whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have
been all made to drink into one Spirit.
1 Corinthians 12:27 Now
ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.
It is very
hard to see how one could be a part of a royal priesthood and an holy
nation while at the same time be in a joint body of believers where
there is NO nationality isn't it? The answer is that there had to be
two groups of believers during the time period of the book of Acts.
That first group faded away. Those of the church at Jerusalem (Acts
8:1) were martyred, or else died in faith. (Some may have fallen away
as Annanias did in Acts chapter five). Peter's ministry is basically
from Acts chapter one through Acts chapter 12 as it is recorded in the
bible and from then on the focus is on Paul's ministry.
3. The teaching of ONE baptism
When Peter preached in the book of
Acts there were
two baptisms involved. You can see them here:
Acts 2:38 Then Peter said unto them,
Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ
for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy
Ghost.
Peter is preaching the same "baptism of repentance" which
at the first began to be preached by John the Baptist. There are two
baptisms involved in the verse. The first is water and the second is
the laying on of the apostles hands in which they received the Holy
Ghost. In this case they were baptized WITH the Holy Ghost, which is
not the same as being baptized BY the Spirit. Here is another case of
the two baptisms in Peter and John's ministry:
Acts 8:5 Then
Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them.
Acts
8:12 But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the
kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both
men and women.
Acts 8:14 Now when the apostles which were at
Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent
unto them Peter and John:
Acts 8:15 Who, when they were come
down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost:
Acts
8:16 (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were
baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.)
Acts 8:17 Then laid
they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.
So
there you can see the two baptisms which were in operation in Peter's
ministry. Peter also writes about both of them:
1 Peter 1:5 Who
are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be
revealed in the last time.
There is the power baptism, Jesus
Christ told them that they would receive power "after that the Holy
Ghost is come upon you." The baptism WITH the Holy Ghost was done by
Christ himself. Scripture variously says that "he poured out" that he
"shed forth" and that the Holy Ghost "fell of them" that heard the
word. We shouldn't confuse this martyrs baptism with the one Paul
writes about.
Now that baptism was for power, they had the power
"to become the sons of God," as in John 1:11-12. They had the power to
suffer and to endure unto the end, again either to the end of the
tribulation or the end of their lives. Many of them, if not all, died a
martyrs death. The first one was Stephen in Acts seven and then James
in Acts 12. So that's one of Peter's baptisms. Here is the other one:
1
Peter 3:21 The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us
(not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a
good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:
When
Peter preached he had told his audience to "save yourselves" from this
"untoward generation." They did that by their good conscience toward
God being obedient to the baptism which separated them from that
untoward generation. A crooked and perverse generation. The Lord called
the leaders vipers and snakes, and he said in Matthew 21:43 that the
Kingdom would be taken from them and given to A NATION bringing forth
the fruits thereof.
So while Peter preached two baptisms and the
writer of the book of Hebrews writes about "baptisms and laying on of
hands" in Hebrews 6:2, Paul wrote in Ephesians that there is only ONE
baptism for us today, and it is not water:
Ephesians 4:4 There
is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your
calling;
Ephesians 4:5 One Lord, one faith, one baptism,
Everyone who is in the ONE
body has the ONE baptism Paul writes about. It
is the baptism BY the Holy Spirit, not the one WITH the Holy Ghost, but
BY ONE SPIRIT are we all baptized into one body. It is the baptism referred to in Galatians
3:27-28, 1 Corinthians 12:13 and Romans 6:3. It is NOT the water baptisms that Paul refutes in 1
Corinthians 1:14-17. Water baptism was a Jewish ritual. It belongs to
the Jews and the things of the Law of Moses and not to the church, the
body of Christ.
4. Salvation by grace alone through faith alone
Peter never preached a message of the
completeness in Christ that a believer enjoys today, as in Colossians
2:10. Peter's doctrine in both his preaching in the book of Acts as
well as what he writes in 1 and 2 Peter is strictly Jewish, it is in a
tribulation context, and looks forward to a FUTURE day of atonement at
the second coming of Christ. Notice here:
Acts 3:19 Repent ye
therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when
the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.
Acts
3:20 And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you:
That
is the record of Peter's preaching. Notice he says that your sins MAY
be blotted out WHEN certain future times come and the Lord comes. Now
look at what he wrote about salvation:
1 Peter 1:13 Wherefore
gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the
grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ;
1
Peter 4:17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house
of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that
obey not the gospel of God?
1 Peter 4:18 And if the righteous
scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?
Peter's
doctrine is very much involved with works of righteousness. He is very
much like James who said that "faith without works is dead" in James
2:24. So they are enduring to the end for GRACE at the end as he
clearly says in the verse above. All of that stands in contrast
to what Paul said to the church, the body of Christ:
Romans 5:6
For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the
ungodly.
Romans 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in
that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:10
For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of
his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
Romans
5:11 And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus
Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.
Our
salvation today comes about by simply placing our trust in the fact of
the crosswork of Jesus Christ, trusting him and what he alone did to
save us. Our salvation comes about, not by doing something but by
believing something:
Ephesians 2:8 For by grace are ye saved
through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Ephesians
2:9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.
5. Anything at all about the Rapture
Instead of looking to be
caught up to meet the Lord in the air, Peter was taught things like
this:
Acts 1:10 And while they looked stedfastly
toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white
apparel;
Acts 1:11 Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand
ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you
into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into
heaven.
Now as those apostles were standing there
gazing into heaven as the Lord ascended up out of their sight, where
were they standing? They were on the Mount of Olives. And they
were told that the SAME JESUS would so come IN LIKE MANNER. Notice here:
Zechariah 14:4 And his
feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before
Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the
midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a
very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the
north, and half of it toward the south.
Peter was taught a
message by Jesus Christ in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It was the
message of the Kingdom being restored and Israel being restored. He was
told to go and preach that message, and he did. But when the Lord
appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus and he became Paul the apostle
of the Gentiles he gave Paul a different message with different
doctrine:
Galatians 1:3 Grace be to you and peace from God the
Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ,
Galatians 1:4 Who gave
himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil
world, according to the will of God and our Father:
That word
"deliver" is a very forceful word. It literally means to "snatch out."
1
Thessalonians 4:16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with
a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God:
and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
1 Thessalonians 4:17
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with
them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever
be with the Lord.
Where will we meet the Lord? On the Mount
of Olives? NO....IN THE AIR. And so shall we ever be with the Lord.
Philippians
3:20 For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for
the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:
Philippians 3:21 Who shall change our vile
body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according
to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto
himself.
So the conclusion is that although there
are many things common to all there are many things that are different.
In order to be established in the faith, grounded and settled it is
necessary to rightly divide the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15) where
the word of truth is the gospel of your salvation (Ephesians 1:13).