Converts - 1 Corinthians 4:9-21

Interestingly, Paul moves into a darker topic, saying, “for I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death.” I didn’t really understand what the significance of that statement is, especially considering it is in the middle of all the talk about judgment. But the world “last” is cross-referenced with 1 Nephi 11:34 which says, “And after (Jesus) was slain I saw the multitudes of the earth, that they were gathered together to fight against the apostles of the Lord.”

This cross-reference really puts into perspective the significance of the death of the apostles that will come up later, or I guess we’ve already seen some, with James being killed already. It must be because it’s been 2,000 years since all this happened, and it’s really difficult to really understand all of it, but I’ve never viewed the “great apostasy” as that big of a deal because it happened and the human species survived. But surviving is different than thriving, I guess and I’ve thought about it a lot, why even send Jesus and create the original church 2,000 years ago if the people were just going to kill every body and corrupt everything anyway.

I’ve thought about this concept a lot and some of the points that I’ve comes up with are that even though the fullness of the gospel was removed from the earth with the death of the apostles, Christianity as a movement has improved millions of lives over the course of the last 2,000 years. Authority in the church has absolutely been abused, no question about that, but that would have happened regardless of the entity used as a front for those activities. Even if the information was diluted, the gospel provides hope to people, a relative code of conduct, and other positive traits. 

I guess the other question would be, if not in the meridian of time, then when? What point in time in this great human experiment would be the optimal time to introduce the gospel? And we also have to keep in mind that Jesus’ teachings were important, but it was in fact the atonement that was the critical part of his mortal existence. I guess that’s what really matters because the gospel was with Adam in the beginning and had been perpetuated throughout history by prophets and chosen peoples.

When Jesus showed up and started teaching the higher law, it wasn’t novel stuff, it was the gospel that had always been there. So even though the law given to the Jews was a “higher” law, the Nephites had already discerned these aspects from the scriptures and direct revelation that they had through the prophets that they hadn’t rejected. Then of course there was the compilation of the Bible that guided so many generations in the years leading up to the final restoration of the gospel through Joseph Smith.

Christ’s teachings laid a foundation for people to build upon in their own ways so that they would be prepared for when the restoration came. Because if Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ just showed up one day to Joseph Smith, he probably wouldn’t have been in praying in the woods, he probably wouldn’t be asking the question “which church should I join?” there would have been no yearning for more because there wouldn’t have been anything to be incomplete in the first place.

The IM notes, “When Paul taught that the Apostles ‘were appointed to death.’ He hinted that his calling as an Apostle would lead to his death. He also related that many in Corinth viewed themselves as being wise and strong while considering Paul and other Apostles to be foolish, weak, and despised. These two factors- the Apostles’ death and Church members’ rejection of apostolic authority- would ultimately contribute to the Great Apostasy. President Henry B. Eyring of the First Presidency taught that ‘if the Saints who heard Paul had possessed a testimony of the value and the power of the keys he held, perhaps the Apostles would not have had to be taken from the earth… Paul wanted the people to feel the value of the chain of priesthood keys reaching from the Lord through His Apostles to them, the members of the Lord’s Church.’” 

The second aspect that the IM is addressing is what Paul talks about in the rest of chapter 4, which is that some people believe “we are fools for Christ’s sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honorable, but we are despised.” This is another interesting concept because we know that there were definitely issues between the saints when Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians got together. It would be reasonable to expect that there would be some gentile converts who would view the Apostles as inadequate to lead them. 

The gentile converts were used to religion that was flashy, ever changing, and gods who were fickle. The pagan leadership depended on donors to support themselves financially, and we all know how it goes when money gets mixed up in religion. This practice lead to the same type of churches that we get today when money is in the mix. The churches would probably be large and excessively decorated, the preaching would be entertaining and energetic, and the messages would be what the people wanted to hear. Then comes a poorer Jewish man who probably wasn’t highly educated in gentile ways teaching something completely new and different. Even if the message rang true about Christ, eventually those long held prejudices would arise and cause conflict within the gentile convert.

Likewise, even though a Jew might hear the gospel of Christ and respond to it, they might take issue with the other Jewish Christians who were leading the church. If you were a devout Jew and converted to Christianity, you would understand what a sacrifice taking on the mantle of Christ would be. But if you looked at your leaders as giving up Judaism too easily, then you might start to think that they have no suffered in the way that you did, and begin to distrust them. That is just one of the mindsets that might have caused Jewish converts to Christianity to slowly turn on the apostles, to the point where the fullness of the gospel and the priesthood had to be taken from the earth.