A few more clips to look at. Let's go to the next one.

And these creeds are starting to pour out, and before Paul even takes his walk that

a mask is a plus to a plus three, Paul knows all these creeds, and he is ticked because

it's heresy. But he meets the risen Jesus. That's step four.

So blasphemy or Paul tells you what's upset him is that they were calling a crucified

man the Messiah. For Paul, that was ridiculous. You're saying that God chose a crucified

criminal, and so that's why I've got Paul upset. Paul never says anything about the

earliest Christians calling Jesus God that that's what he was upset about. And so just

read the passage.

Now here again, Abraham Mass is quite right that the early Christian confessions of the

deity of Christ precede Paul's own conversion on the Damascus road in AD 36. But I think

that Ermin is quite mistaken to think that the reason that Paul, the Pharisee, the Jewish

persecutor of the early Christian church was all upset just because they identified this

crucified criminal as the Messiah. That isn't going, that's not a heresy. That may be

a stupid mistake. But to identify Jesus as a Messiah isn't something that is going to

inspire religious persecution. Rather, it was as Abraham says because they put Jesus

in the place of God the Father himself. They regarded Jesus as equal in divinity to God

the Father. And that is truly blasphemous in Jewish years, and therefore would promote

a campaign of persecution. But Bart's explanation that they were upset because they called a crucified

criminal of the Messiah. That would never prompt a systematic program of persecution such

as was exhibited against the early church. All right. Next clip. And the fifth one, Bart

Ermin says this may be the biggest argument in the early church for proving who Jesus is. Paul

...