Right so where does it say what you said? It doesn’t. Your preacher made it up. You can infer that if you want but you can infer anything if you try hard enough. Since we only have one base account we can only use that and at no point is there a mention of making money being the issue.

They’re remarkably similar accounts,

That tends to happen when people copy each other. Like how Bruce Wayne was an orphan in my different media. John copied off the three others, Luke off Matthew, and Matthew off Mark. So of course if Mark had it the other ones would. Where Mark got it is a muddy. Chances are he made it up based on the news of the Temple’s destruction in 70AD.

Why not click the links?

I don’t enable human intellectual laziness.

Regardless, I mostly made my point. For the “reap what you sow” message, my personal opinion is that it isn’t literal. I don’t think he’s saying they’ll get wealthy with worldly money if they donate money (i.e. charity as an investment), but that they’ll receive spiritual blessings for putting others ahead of themselves (i.e. if you sow love, you’ll reap love).

Ok? I don’t care. It doesn’t change the fact that he was telling people to give him all their money.

The reason for moving money to Jerusalem was likely two-fold, a famine in Egypt likely impacted Judea more than other regions, and Paul wasn’t well liked in Jerusalem, so he worked extra hard to get money to those suffering in Jerusalem to help solve both problems. He was a prominent figure in the church, hence why repairing that relationship is important. That sounds like a pretty reasonable explanation, but we obviously have limited information here. He likely also raised money for local congregations, but there wouldn’t be as much of a point to dwelling on that in a letter that’s intended to build faith.

And? He bribed people to like him. Not really an original idea.

Well, given that he’s dead and we don’t have many accounts of his life, I can’t really speak to his trustworthiness. There are people I absolutely trust to use money appropriately, and there are those I don’t. Supposedly he gained the trust of certain groups and not others. We don’t know how he used the money, we just know he thanked people for donations, at least in certain cases.

He said that he was not lying between 5-10 times in “his” 13 letters. If you want to trust a person who is often telling you how trustworthy they are, instead of showing it, be my guest. Me personally I know what projection is, I know we always catch the anti-gay politician with a rent-a-boy and the guy who constantly tells me how I should trust him is the one I shouldn’t.

Ever notice how in all his letters when he talks about himself he is always the badass and the victim at the same time? Might want to read up on grandiose victimhood and how common it is with people who have Narcissistic Personality Disorder.