Paul was once a wicked person
San Pablo úringai sijnaque Pedrodé
Paul liked to kill those who believed in Jesus:
I want to tell you about when the Apostle Paul was a wicked person. That was when he had not yet believed in Jesus long ago. He liked to kill those who believed in Jesus, and to bully them. He didn’t know at that time that Dupade had chosen him to serve him.
I was like that. I didn’t know that Dupade had chosen me when I was living in sin. The time came when Paul believed in Dupade and taught people about his word. If anyone taught me about Dupade’s word long ago, it was a lost cause, and I no longer remember it.
Even though Paul was a murderer, he ended up teaching people about Jesus:
Paul ended up teaching the people. He told them about when he had been a killer before he believed in Dupade. He also told them about how he came to believe in Dupade. He wanted us future people to imitate him by reading his writings and sharing them with others. There are many verses in the Bible that he wrote for us, so we could learn from them. He said: “This is not my teaching at all, it’s Dupade’s Words.”
And he is still teaching us, for we are still hearing him whenever we read what he wrote, and he’s teaching people all over the world who have Dupade’s Word. He shares his testimony with us and says: “I left on a mission to arrest believers in Jesus, and to kill or imprison them.”
Paul heard a voice and he asked the voice, who are you?
He tells about nearing a city, when suddenly he fell to the ground blind, in view of his companions. It frightened them, and at the same time they heard a voice speaking to Paul, and they looked up, but saw nothing nor anyone above them. But the voice said: “Saul! Saul!” (This was his name before Jesus changed it.) But that is all the voice from above said.
Saul answered the voice, very humbly there on the ground. He said: “Who are you?”
The voice answered him and said: “Why, I’m Jesus, the one you are persecuting.” And he said: “You have been mistreating me.”
Saul asked him: “What do you want me to do, my Lord?”
But Jesus said: “Go into the city. Go, and when you get there they will tell you what you are to do.”
What I want to remind us of is how much we were like Paul. The men and women among us, we knew nothing about Dupade when we were children, and did not believe in him. And like Paul, sin was something we liked to do. We liked to fight and kill, just like Paul when he made war on those that believed in Jesus. But he didn’t know that Dupade had chosen him; that Dupade planned to send him to tell people about Jesus.
And that is how it is today. We are so proud, and full of sin, but Dupade wants us, just as he wanted Paul. He wants us to stop sinning and to serve him. He wants to use us. He has chosen us.
Ananias exhorted Paul and Paul obeyed him:
So, Paul and his companions went into the city and met Ananias who took them to his house. He told Paul: “The one I will tell you about is Jesus, the one who saves people. He is the one that made you blind. But Jesus wants to send you to the Gentiles to tell them about him.” This is what he told Paul, and Paul listened to him.
Hearing what Ananias said to Paul, I don’t know if he was referring to us Ayoreos as Gentiles, but he was referring to all the people in the world who were not Jews. Paul was the one Dupade sent to them after he believed. There’s no way Dupade could send Paul while he was persecuting believers, for he was killing them as enemies. But Dupade was going to send Paul to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ.
We Ayoreos were some of the last to receive Dupade’s Words in these days. But now we believe in Dupade. But we don’t obey his will. I don’t know if I’m telling the truth about us not obeying Dupade’s will, but that’s how it seems to me.
Paul left to serve Dupade and taught the people:
Paul taught the people. He told them about how Jesus had appeared to him and had said to him: “I am going to send you to the Gentiles all over the earth.”
Jesus had appeared to him. I don’t know whether he appeared to him in person or it was in a vision. But Dupade’s Spirit came upon him.
We claim to believe in Jesus, but don’t follow the will of Dupade:
We don’t always follow Dupade’s will. We read Dupade’s Word. We study it. I read in Dupade’s Word that he watches over me. What I read is ‘delicious,’ so good. Despite this, however, we go right on doing things that Dupade hates and not doing things that please him. I read about Jesus healing the sick, and how Jesus healed them long ago. I read about Jesus’ power to heal, but I don’t follow his example at all. But the first believers healed people. But we don’t know how to do that.
Another thing about us these days, Jesus wanted us to “drink his blood” (take communion) and told us to do that. Yet, we don’t do what Dupade asked us to do. Not only did Jesus ask us to “drink his blood”, but Paul in his writings reminds us to “drink Jesus’ blood” to remember what Jesus did for us. But we’ve stopped doing that, even though it is the first thing Jesus asked us to do.
But I’m very thankful that Paul gave his testimony and told us about the way he killed and persecuted those that believed in Jesus, and how afterwards Jesus appeared to him and he stopped being an angry person and started serving Dupade all over the world.
Paul was who took the good news about Jesus to the Gentiles:
He brought the good news about Jesus to the Gentiles, but the Jews who believed in Jesus didn’t want him meeting with Gentiles in their houses.
They didn’t know what Jesus had told Paul, so Paul said to them: “Don’t have doubts about what I am doing.” The Jews didn’t trust the Gentiles because they didn’t keep the Law, even though Paul explained to them that Dupade had not put the Gentiles under the Jewish Law.
The Jews said: “Dupade has given us his Law, and he wants the Gentiles to obey it also if they want to believe in Dupade.”
But Paul said: “Dupade didn’t give them what was uniquely for us Jews, but this is what he wants them to do: He doesn’t want the Gentiles to be under the Law, but to not do things that he hates. Dupade has told us not to eat what the Gentiles put before their idols. That food doesn’t belong to Dupade, but it belongs to idols. He told us not to eat choked animals whose blood stays in them, things like that.”
Paul also said: Dupade told us about another thing. He said: ‘Don’t have sex with women other than your wife.’ Paul told about this in a letter he wrote to Dupade’s believers and there he mentions the women, too, and said they should only have sex with their husbands, they should only have each other.
You see, Dupade wanted us Gentiles to remember that some things in people’s cultures are evil, and that Dupade hates those things. In some cultures, people offered food to their idols and then they eat it. But Dupade does not want us to eat meat when we don’t know if they offered it to idols first.
Daniel and his friends would not eat the King’s food:
That is the kind of meat the King purchased for his food. The food the King gave to Daniel and his friends was his very own food. That is why Daniel wouldn’t eat it. Daniel wouldn’t eat it, because he knew that the King worshiped the false gods that he offered his food to. The king saw nothing wrong with his food, but Daniel did.
But we Ayoreos alive today in this world still do things that Dupade hates. We ignore what Dupade says about things. We rebel against him. But I want to say this: we should take note of what Dupade forbids us to do, and why he forbids something.
It’s also a sin to not do what we should do. He only wants us to keep in mind the things he tells us. For it is good for us, and that is why he tells us to do these things.
There are books that influence us in a negative way:
There are things written in books that influence us when we read them. We aren’t even aware of their influence on us. We read them and then we don’t pay attention to what Dupade says. It’s as though the new things we read about give us a new perspective and take away from us what we’ve learned about resisting the things Dupade disapproves of. Instead we should only we be interested in happily doing what pleases Dupade. (Romans 12:2)
When Paul taught the people, he sometimes did it in Dupade’s house in the city where he used to live. When he told them how he had persecuted Dupade’s believers previously, it frightened them. They knew that he had taught them before he knew Jesus, but now the Jews turned on him. And they wouldn’t accept his new teaching. And they wanted to harm him, but Paul escaped from them.
We were like those Jews in the temple and we opposed the teaching about Dupade’s Son Jesus:
We were like those Jews in the temple, so quick to oppose the word of Dupade. To not believe it. We were so proud when we first heard the things of Dupade. We were still fighting with each other. We were still going to war against each other. In our ignorance, we didn’t want to have anything to do with Dupade’s Word.
We rebelled against Dupade and did what he hated, just like Paul. He was ignorant in the beginning. The truth seemed hidden from Paul long ago. And it was hidden from us also. We thought we could steal without Dupade knowing about it, and even after we knew he could see what we were doing, we stole things anyway. We were just like Paul.
Jesus appeared to Paul, and he has also appeared to us Ayoreos:
But Jesus appeared to Paul long ago because he had chosen Paul to take his word to the Gentiles. And Jesus has chosen us to serve him. Dupade want’s us to carry his love to the whole world. When we believe in Jesus we are new people. Just like what happened to Paul. When he met Jesus, he was new, also. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
I think about how Jesus died for our sin. Some say: “I don’t believe in Jesus, but I’m a good person.” It was Dupade’s love for us that prompted him to send his son to earth to die for our sin. That’s because he wants to be in a relationship with us. Wouldn’t it be good if we wanted Dupade just as much as he wants us?
Dupade is the one we can count on to never dislike us. Ayoreos and Cojñone, we’re alike in the way that we dislike each other. But Dupade wants us to love loving each other because we love and trust in Him.
When we fight with each other we’re fools and are thinking like Satan. When we’re kind, we’re thinking like Dupade.
I’ve told you about how Paul was. He did many bad things. He killed and persecuted those who believed in Jesus. But one day Paul said to Jesus: “You are my Lord! What is it you want me to do?”
It would be a good thing for us to say those same words that Paul said so long ago, we should say to Jesus: “You are my Lord! What is it you want me to do?”
Key:
Dupade – God
Dupade’s Word – Word of God, Bible
Ayoreos – People of the Ayoré tribe
Cojñone – People not of the Ayoré tribe
Pedrodé – Tobité, Bolivia – 1970.
Transcribed and translated to English by: Maxine Morarie.
