God blessed the first Catholics to connect the world’s people with God’s Word in Amos 9:7: “Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O Israelites?—oracle of the LORD—Did I not bring the Israelites from the land of Egypt as I brought the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?”
Acts 15:7-21 describes the Early Catholic Council led by the only person in History blessed to be: “Thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Peter’s God-given Authority is clear in Acts 15:7-21: “My brothers, you are well aware that from early days God made his choice among you that through my mouth the Gentiles would hear the word of the Gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness by granting them the Holy Spirit just as He did us. He made no distinction between us and them, for by faith He purified their hearts.”
Then, Peter asked: “Why, then, are you now putting God to the test by placing on the shoulders of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear?”
What guidance was St. James blessed to give the early Catholic Council?
He applied Peter’s word about “rebuilding the fallen hut of David; from its ruins I shall rebuild it and raise it up again, so that all the rest of humanity may seek out the Lord, even all the Gentiles on whom My name is invoked.” In less than 30 years, the Jewish Wars against Rome would fulfill one of Jesus’ last Prophecies in Mt 24:2: “Not one stone would be left here upon another that shall not be thrown down.”
A generation before the rich city of Jerusalem was literally “flattened” in 60 AD by Vespasian and Titus, Catholics took the Truth of Jesus into the world without the distractions of circumcision and the thousands of tiny details that kept the Jerusalem Establishment from the Faith that could have led them to He Who Fulfilled their own Prophet’s Prophecies and saved Jersualem and millions of Jewish people from destruction in three Jewish Wars against Rome.
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Today’s Simple Rhyme: “The best way to pray? / Ask for grace to obey / Every Word of Jesus.”
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