Category Archives: The Universe

One note: the church is setting up a heirarchy. Peter and a group of unnamed elders were at the very top, underneath them were The Twelve, underneath them were the leaders of the various city churches. The Catholic church has codified this heirarchy, proclaiming Peter to be the first Pope. I don’t buy it, but I can see an internal logic to the Catholic’s argument.

There’s also a bit of a split in the church already. Well, specifically within The Twelve. Barnabas and Paul were going to go out on another evangelical mission. Barnabas wanted to take John with them, but Paul refused, saying that Mark had not done as much work as the others, and wasn’t worthy. After a lot of fighting, they ended up splitting up, with Paul going alone to Silas while Barnabas and Mark headed off to Cyprus.

Like any escapee in any action movie, Peter’s next logical step is to find somewhere to hide. Fortunately, John’s mother lived close by, and had regular prayer meetings. So Peter ran there, figuring that he’d have sympathetic people who would help keep him safe. Peter knocked on the door, and heard Rhoda walking over to the door to answer it. Peter called out to her, and in a perfect bit of comedic action, Rhoda ran back into the house! She was so excited at hearing Peter’s voice that she totally forgot to open the door!

Poor Peter was locked outside the door, and he knew that the Roman guards had to be searching for him by know. Peter knocked on the door, then started pounding on it, trying to get someone – anyone – to let him off the damned street!

Holy shit, Peter starts killing people! And believers, to boot! Ananias and his wife Sapphira sold their land, and put most of the money at “the apostles’ feet.” However, Peter became enraged that Ananias didn’t hand over all of the money. Which seems unreasonable to me: It was Ananias’s property, why couldn’t he keep some of the money? Peter sees it differently, however, saing that Satan is making Ananias lie to the Holy Spirit. Ananias then falls down dead, apparently from hearing Peter’s words. As you’d expect, most of the people present freak out.

Peter gets around this minor issue by saying that since David provably died, David could not be talking about himself. So David had to be talking about the Messiah.

I am not making this up! I can hear the cries of logicians throughout the centuries, their whimpers saying “There’s no logic here, none at all.” This speech does show one important fact, something that we must be certain to remember: Peter is not above distorting scripture to get his point across.

In case you didn’t notice from my previous entry, I am not liking the Gospel of John. Mostly this is because John is creating a very different version of Jesus than any of the other gospel authors. In John, Jesus is almost condescending in how he talks to his disciples and followers. He is also… Read More »