strangelydifferent than what I had expected after reading about Jesus and Hisreligion. As I said before, I felt good about what Jesus had saidin the previous books. But, it seems that things that happenin Acts are like a contradiction to Jesus. The biggest example is theadministration of Punishment to people. Some particularly bothersomestories are: (Acts 5:1-11) The death of the husband and wife for notpresenting 100% of their possessions to the Church. And, (Acts 12:23)the violent death of Herod. Also, (Acts 13:11) blindness to Bar-Jesus.Although my Bible, in all three cases, tells that Angels or God hadpunished these people, I could believe that a different translationcould accurately suggest that the deaths were caused by people of thechurch (the translation is fuzzy in that sense). Either way, no matterwho caused the death(s), it seems that these kinds of punishments wouldnot happen if Jesus were around; He always seemed to bless those whodid wrong to Him. From stories in Acts, I can see how the power of the CatholicChurch had progressed to where it was in the 1400's. I had always feltthat many of Catholic acts in history were direct mis-translations ofthe teachings of Jesus. Now I see, things like The Crusades could bebacked by all of the punishments I previously talked about; also, TheRich Catholic Church claiming all the possessions of poor followers canbe backed by the Apostles' re-distribution of wealth in chapter 4 ofActs. Another thing that I thought was a mis-translation by theCatholics was the use of confession to priests by the Catholicfollowers (I felt that each indiv. should confess only to God, not toa Man); however, throughout Acts, you see the power increasing forcertain Apostles, until they were regarded very highly to everyone.And, supposedly, the Apostles say that Angels come to them often, andtell them who to go out and convert. The Pope, and other priests couldeasily put themselves in the places of the ...
