Tuesday, July 08, 2008

The Council of Jerusalem

Hi this is Ria posting under my mom's name, just to confuse you :) I'm reading the Story of the Church right now and have been assigned to choose from the many questions following each chapter, one to answer with a paragraph each week. And I picked this one partly because the youth group that I am part of is planning to reenact this council at our next meeting. So without further ado...

What dispute was settled at the council of Jerusalem?
The difficulties which culminated in the counsil of Jerusalem arose while Paul and Barnabas were preaching to the Gentiles. In the preaching of these two, the Gentiles were told that it was not necessary to be circumcised, to avoid the unclean foods, in short to observe the Mosaic law so strictly observed by the Jews. However many converts from Judaism to Christianity disagreed and when Paul and Barnabas arrived in Jerusalem a council was held. Although Scripture does not give us much of an idea of how the argument played out, we do know that the council was eventually convinced by Paul and Barnabas and declared to the Gentiles:
"...it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay no further
burden upon you than these necessary things: That you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication: from which things keeping yourselves, you shall do well."