Rejection of Paul came first from the disciples and the early movements such as the Ebionites, and in time from Western thinkers who owed nothing to Islam, whose testimony The hostile witnesses gathers. This part turns from what others have said of Paul to what his own words foretold. Was Paul a prophet? His own prediction is the test.
A prophecy that failed
Ironically, the founder of the new teaching that dominates church theology ended his life in a scene unlike the noble picture of a heavenly messenger. The Bible itself refutes Paul’s claim to be one of the disciples. Consider the following verse:
16ὅτι αὐτὸς ὁ κύριος ἐν κελεύσματι, ἐν φωνῇ ἀρχαγγέλου καὶ ἐν σάλπιγγι θεοῦ, καταβήσεται ἀπʼ οὐρανοῦ, καὶ οἱ νεκροὶ ἐν Χριστῷ ἀναστήσονται πρῶτον, 17ἔπειτα ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες οἱ περιλειπόμενοι ἅμα σὺν αὐτοῖς ἁρπαγησόμεθα ἐν νεφέλαις εἰς ἀπάντησιν τοῦ κυρίου εἰς ἀέρα· καὶ οὕτως πάντοτε σὺν κυρίῳ ἐσόμεθα.
16For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.1
Paul’s prediction plainly states that he and the Christians still alive at the time would be taken up by the Lord (Jesus Christ) and go together to meet him.2 That is more than spiritual hope.
It is a form of prophecy written in the name of “the word of the Lord.” New Testament scholars such as Bart D. Ehrman3 and Albert Schweitzer4 acknowledge that Paul expected the parousia (παρουσία), a Greek term meaning “coming” or “presence” that refers to the reappearance of Christ in the apocalyptic tradition, within his own generation.
That is not what happened. What happened instead was the sword that “took him up” and parted his head from his body in the reign of Nero, around 64 to 68 CE.5
By the standard the Torah itself sets, a prophet who speaks in the name of the LORD, and the thing does not come to pass, has spoken presumptuously, and is not to be feared:
22when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.6
Textually and ethically, then, Paul meets the criterion of a false prophet, for delivering in the name of God a prediction that did not come true.
The same chapter of the Torah names the end of such a man. Of the prophet who presumes to speak in God’s name a word that God has not commanded, it says: “that same prophet shall die.”7
The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ died an old man, at the age of sixty-three.8 Paul died under the executioner’s sword, beheaded in Rome.9
Paul’s end therefore fails the Torah’s test twice over. The prophecy he gave in the name of the Lord never came to pass, and he died as the Torah says the presumptuous prophet dies.
- 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17 (SBLGNT; ESV). ↩
- 1 Corinthians 7:29. ↩
- See Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 130ff. ↩
- See Albert Schweitzer, The Mystery of the Kingdom of God: The Secret of Jesus’ Messiahship and Passion (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2001), pp. 21ff. Schweitzer states that Paul and his followers believed the second coming of Christ would occur within their lifetime, and that Paul’s death under Nero ended that hope. ↩
- See “Saint Paul,” FreeArt Gallery, https://bit.ly/43dM9gq (accessed 18 December 2024); “Saint Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles,” St. Paul’s Greek Orthodox Church, https://bit.ly/4dAC00U (accessed 18 December 2024); and “St. Paul,” Catholic Encyclopedia, https://bit.ly/4kfwumU (accessed 18 December 2024). ↩
- Deuteronomy 18:22 (ESV). ↩
- Deuteronomy 18:20 (ESV). ↩
- Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 3536, from ʿĀʾishah. ↩
- Eusebius, Church History 2.25.5. ↩
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2025. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
