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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