Cheryl

Don,

One last thing I don’t think I answered very clearly.  It is in regarding to your question about why God didn’t show displeasure in the apostle’s picking of Matthias.  I think this belongs in the realm of why God allowed divorce and why he didn’t push people to quickly in the areas of slavery and polygamy although each of these areas is clearly wrong.  I believe that God allowed Paul to “take” his place as one of the apostles of Jesus Christ to be a witness to the resurrection.  He did not have to advise the apostles that Paul would come along and claim to be this last witness.

I also believe that by God allowing the disciples to chose their own replacement by choosing the two candidates, this is an example to us that men who are fully dedicated to God can make errors based on their assumptions and their faulty presupposition.  This doesn’t mean that God rejects them.  It just means that the truth will be found in the text, not in our presupposition of what the text should say.

Again, I want to assure you that I am submissive to be corrected.  I just have a high standard of allowing the text to correct me, not our assumptions.  My pastor has found out that I do humbly admit that I am wrong when I am proven wrong.  I love receiving truth and I love those who love me enough to correct my error.  I both love them and respect them.  But those who correct me have to use the text itself in context.  That is my foundation and that is what I want to be corrected from.  Until I see the text correcting me, I will hold to the claims of Paul.  I too believe that he was an apostle of Jesus Christ picked as an apostle of the resurrection.