JESUS WAS AN ANTI-CLERICAL

There is no evidence that Jesus established a clergy at all in the New Testament. If Jesus did not establish the clergy then the pope which means the chief clergyman in the Roman Church is not what Jesus wants him to be.

When you read passages such as Matthew 22:9,10 where Jesus says that the poor and blind etc will be invited as guests to his posh party meaning he espouses egalitarianism, it is impossible to think he would have allowed a clergy system.  The clergy are treated like a superior class and get the honorary places at parties and weddings.

When Jesus told the apostles to do the Lord’s Supper in his memory he did not say only clergy could do it. Neither did St Paul. There is no hint in scripture that only ordained clergy have the power to celebrate this rite and ordain new clergy. There is no suggestion that if overseers and presbyters and elders were ordained by laymen that they were not real clergymen even if this practice is illicit.

Jesus ranted and raved against the Jewish clergy. They were picked on like they were the only hypocrites in Palestine. This certainly had to do with him not liking their function as ministers so Jesus then did not like people who claimed to be the source of the word of God for that is against egalitarianism and equality and people’s own private judgement. It gives them power over the lives of people who are afraid to question them for they feel they would be questioning then God. Yet they were only preachers who told the people what to do. They were not like Catholic priests who claimed the power by baptism to put you into the family of God and make you like God and forgive your sins and give you the body and blood of God. Jesus then would dislike Catholic priests far more for they claimed more powers and would have a bigger hold on their flocks.

Jesus said that he who wants to be your leader must be the servant of all and his followers must not lord it over one another like the pagans do. In other words, he was saying there should be no leaders only servants. Now a servant that has authority to tell you what to do in the name of God is no servant because nothing gives you a bigger hold over people than that. A king will have many subjects who hate him but nobody is much of a king as the clergyman who many are afraid to hate for God sees them. He is more powerful than the king despite the king’s manpower and laws. Jesus banning leaders means he wanted no clergy for that is what clergy are. When Jesus told his disciples to do all the Pharisees and scribes told them to do but not to copy their actions he did not say he meant that they had to be respected like clergymen. The positions of elder, presbyter overseer or bishop in the early Church referred more to people who you were meant to discuss doctrinal or moral issues with and not a people who said, “This is the way it is. Accept it.”

Hebrews chapters 5 to 10, says that to be the priest, Jesus had to be called of God like Aaron was for nobody takes the priesthood honour to himself but is given it by God (5:4). Now Aaron and the Tribe of Levi were called by full revelation. That is to say, the command that they become priests was a revelation that is fully trustworthy and fully scriptural and had full scriptural authority. It was scripture. It was not a sense that God was calling them to the priesthood like Catholic boys have. It was more concrete and certain than that. Aaron and co were called through Moses through whom God spoke. It must have been the same for Jesus. Hebrews quotes scriptures spoken to Jesus which showed that like Aaron and the tribe of Levi God spoke to him clearly and called him to priesthood. No such call exists for Catholic priests so they are not priests at all. The pope has stolen his office for he has to be a priest to be pope.

Hebrews 7:24 says that Jesus’ priesthood was unchangeable and uses a Greek word for that that also means untransferable. The Greek scholars Thayer and Robertson are two experts that tell us this (page 101, God’s Word, Final, Infallible and Forever). The verse runs, “But He holds His priesthood unchangeably, because he lives on forever.” This was after saying that other priesthoods needed successors after the priests died. So Jesus has an unchangeable and untransferable priesthood which can only mean one that is not passed on to successors but kept by him forever. Some say this does not rule out having Melchizidek priests through whom Christ is priest, who exercise his priesthood and not their own for this means that there is only one priest who works out his priesthood through many priests who are strictly speaking only priests in a relative sense unlike the Jewish priests Hebrews says are obsolete for they were priests in their own right. But that would be a changeable priesthood for Christ doesn’t need to involve others in it. And Hebrews tries to make it simple, Christ’s priesthood is the only priesthood there is and does not involve succession. If others share in his priesthood that involves succession and contradicts Hebrews and the point it is trying to make which is that there is no priest but Jesus Christ.

The idea that men can be priests only in the sense that Christ acts as priest through and in them so that the priesthood they have is not theirs but his is just nonsense. Of course they are priests. If you use John’s authority to make a disastrous decision it does not follow that John is accountable for obviously John’s authority gives you the authority to become an authority for John as well. Despite Catholic obfuscation and lies, this is evident. There is no way around it, Hebrews condemns the Catholic priesthood and therefore the papacy which is based on the sacerdotal system.

The verse tells us that Christ holds his priesthood without altering anything BECAUSE HE LIVES FOREVER. He is immortal and doesn’t need any help for he has long enough to do whatever needs to be done himself. That is what the verse means. The fact that Christ is said to hold an unchangeable untransferable priesthood because he lives forever means he doesn’t need anybody else. The thought is that though Christ did all the work necessary as a priest when he died on the cross and he could change his priesthood for its work is over he doesn’t. He won’t change it or transfer it even partly. He can’t have other priests who share in his priesthood without changing it a bit. He won’t change even though he can so there are to be no Melchizedek priests in the New Testament Church. Because Christ lives forever he does not need to change anything about his priesthood and that is why we are told it is unchangeable. He is forbidden even to try. The priesthood must look unchangeable to simple people so that they can understand so he will not let others share in his priesthood for that involves change. Christ cannot stop being a priest for he lives forever. That means though he sacrifices no more he is still a priest in the same way that a retired doctor can still be a doctor. Christ will not let others share his priesthood because he has done it all and there is nothing left to share so that is why his priesthood is said to be unchangeable.

The pope is looked after very well. He gets wheeled around St Peter’s Square in his popemobile. Would Jesus have liked this? No for he didn’t want one person treated different from another. That is the whole point of saying that he who wants to be your leader must be your servant. He washed his disciples feet like a slave to illustrate the point.

My personal belief is that since Jesus showed elsewhere he was power-mad that this docile egalitarian Jesus is based on some other person for the two Jesuses are incompatible. Nevertheless, the Church has no right to have a clergy and to claim to be Christian for it is as plain as day from its gospel that the clergy are frauds.

The offices of the Catholic Church, deacons and priests and bishops and popes, are all unchristian. There were deacons and elders in the early Church. The deacons had a charity work function. The elders supervised the congregations and were not an elite class or clerical caste. They were not clergy at all. They were lay ministers.

The Catholic Church reads in the Gospel of John chapter 2 how Jesus went berserk in the Temple.  Jesus made a whip and put the sellers all out.  He told those who were selling doves to get out for they were making a market place of his father's house.  Nothing at all in the episode indicates that these people were doing anything dishonest.  Jesus doesn't accuse them of that.  He accuses them of making a holy place a marketplace.  To me the episode proves that Catholic shrines with their bookstalls and shops full of tacky religious souvenirs and Catholic priests getting a salary out of religion, indeed any kind of paid ministry that calls itself Christian, is actually so enraging and disgusting to Jesus that it would make him resort to violence. 

People are only turned off religion by the behaviour of clergy in their own religion. The Catholic Church was unaffected by scandal among clerics in other faiths but it was a different story when its own priests and bishops were found to be child abusers or sympathisers with such. This tells us a lot about the believers. They have the attitude, “My religion is good and those other religions are bad and because they are bad the scandals among their clerics don’t bother me and indeed don’t surprise me.” It shows that there is bigotry lurking inside them even if they cannot see it. The sensible attitude is that clerics going wrong prove whatever it is they prove about religion in general not just their own religion in particular.

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