The End Time Church: From the Cathedrals to the Catacombs

By Dan L. White

Copyright ©2016 by Dan L. White, all rights reserved.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB) which is in the public domain.

Chapter 24

Sits in the Place of God

It is said that a rabbi had no official power and only served as a teacher.

Jewish Encyclopedia, article Rabbi:
In the Jewish religion the rabbi is no priest, no apostle; he has no hierarchical power. He is a teacher, one who unfolds and explains religion, teaches the young in the school and the old from the pulpit, and both by his writings.[1]

However, in the New Testament, the rabbis certainly thought they had power.

The New Testament reality is that Jewish religious teachers held great power over the people because the people looked to them as givers of religious truth. The rabbis taught and the people thought that truth from God had to come through the rabbis.

Three factions of religious rulers are mentioned in the New Testament. The Sadducees were the priestly group in charge of the temple, and they were the wealthiest group, kind of like the televangelists of their day. In New Testament times, the office of high priest was appointed from the priestly families by Rome, as a political prize. Men like Caiaphas and Annas were not of the same spirit as Eleazar, the son of Aaron.

The scribes were responsible for transmitting and guarding the scriptures. They copied the law without really understanding it, and focused on the minutiae more than the meaning. They were also called lawyers.

The Pharisees were mentioned most often. The Sadducees oversaw the temple, while the Pharisees ruled the synagogues. As competing religious rulers, they were at odds with each other.

But all three groups were united against Christ and when he began to teach about God, those religious rulers confronted their new competition. Just who did he think he was, anyway?

Mar 11:27-33
(27)  They came again to Jerusalem, and as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders came to him,
(28)  and they began saying to him, By what authority do you do these things? Or who gave you this authority to do these things?
(29)  Yeshua said to them, I will ask you one question. Answer me, and I will tell you by what
authority I do these things.
(30)  The baptism of John—was it from heaven, or from men? Answer me.
(31)  They reasoned with themselves, saying, If we should say, ‘From heaven;’ he will say, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’
(32)  If we should say, ‘From men’—they feared the people, for all held John to really be a prophet.
(33)  They answered Yeshua, We don’t know. Yeshua said to them, Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things.

The priests and rabbis demanded of Yeshua, Who gave you this authority to do these things? They thought they were the authority on God, from God, acting in place of God.

When Christ, on the Sabbath, told a paralyzed man to take up his mat and walk, the religious rulers didn’t think he had the authority to do that. They accused him of making himself equal with God.

John 5
18 For this cause therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also called God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

Actually, that’s exactly what they did themselves.

A king makes laws. That’s what makes him king. He is the lawgiver. So the Jewish religious rulers took God’s law and then added to it. He wrote the laws and they edited and added to those laws.

That made them equal to God.

Mar 7:1-13
(1)  Then the Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered together to him [Christ], having come from Jerusalem.
(2)  Now when they saw some of his disciples eating bread with defiled, that is unwashed, hands, they found fault.
(3)  (For the Pharisees and all the Jews, don’t eat unless they wash their hands and forearms, holding to the tradition of the elders.
(4)  They don’t eat when they come from the marketplace unless they bathe themselves, and there are many other things, which they have received to hold to: washings of cups, pitchers, bronze vessels, and couches.)
(5)  The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, Why don’t your disciples walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with unwashed hands?
(6)  He answered them, Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
(7)  But they worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
(8)  For you set aside the commandment of God, and hold tightly to the tradition of men—the washing of pitchers and cups, and you do many other such things.
(9)  He said to them, Full well do you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition.
(10)  For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother;’ and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be put to death.’
(11)  But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, Whatever profit you might have received from me is Corban, that is to say, given to God;’
(12)  then you no longer allow him to do anything for his father or his mother,
(13)  making void the word of God by your tradition, which you have handed down. You do many things like this.

God never gave the Pharisees authority to alter his law in even one jot or tittle. In fact, no religious authority ever has the authority from God to add to his commandments, simply because nobody is ever equal to God. Nobody’s words are ever to be treated as God’s words because nobody else is God. Yet the people treated commandments of the Pharisees as commandments of God.

Most thought that to be a good God follower meant to be a good Pharisee follower. They were not allowed to question the Pharisees’ religious traditions, because you can’t question the king, can you? And the Pharisees taught that anyone who did disagree with them was cursed.

John 7
(47) The Pharisees therefore answered them, You aren’t also led astray, are you?
(48) Have any of the rulers believed in him, or of the Pharisees?
(49) But this multitude that doesn’t know the law is accursed.

Look at their thinking. None of the religious rulers or the Pharisees believed in Yeshua, so that settled it. The thermometer of truth was not the Word of God itself but what the religious rulers said about the Word of God — religious orthodoxy, the teaching of the true church, the doctrine of the religious ruler, the papal bull (no comment on that last phrase).

Truth was not what the Word of God said.

Truth was what the religious authority said the Word of God said.

The Pharisees were not right because they were right. They were right because they were right.

And any who disagreed with the religious authority — who had to be right because they were right — were ‘astray.’

A close check of the Hebrew scriptures would have shown that Yeshua fit all the prophecies about the Messiah. Common sense would have shown that He who raised people from the dead had to be from the Giver of Life. Reflection on the teachings of Christ would have shown that his words were the words of life. Yet the Pharisees missed all of that. And most of the people of that time missed all of that — because they did not go by what God said but they went by what the religious authority said that God said.

This is the process.

The religious authority is thought to have received truth from God; then others receive truth from God through that authority. People do not go directly to God for God’s truth, but only to the religious authority for God’s truth. The Bible is not read to examine what the religious authority says, but only to confirm what the religious authority says.

Again — you can’t question the king, can you?

The authority does not say it puts itself in place of God. It says that God gave them their authority and they are using their God-given position to serve God and if you will serve God, you must be under them.

Since the people cannot go directly to God, and can only get to God through the religious authority, that puts the religious authority in the place of God.

The religious authority has the power to cut off from God — that is, to throw out of the synagogue — any who does not submit to them.

As in the following insightful example:

John 9
1 As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.
2 His disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?
3 Yeshua answered, “Neither did this man sin, nor his parents; but, that the works of God might be revealed in him. ”
4 “I must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day. The night is coming, when no one can work. ”
5 “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
6 When he had said this, he spat on the ground, made mud with the saliva, anointed the blind man’s eyes with the mud,
7 and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went away, washed, and came back seeing.
8 The neighbors therefore, and those who saw that he was blind before, said, Isn’t this he who sat and begged?
9 Others were saying, It is he. Still others were saying, He looks like him. He said, I am he.

This miracle of healing the blind man was so miraculous that nobody could believe it. The people wondered ‘Isn’t he the blind beggar?’ Then some said, ‘Yeah, that’s him.’ Others answered, ‘Sure looks like him.’ And finally the blind guy himself said, ‘Yep, it’s me.’

10 They therefore were asking him, How were your eyes opened?
11 He answered, A man called Yeshua made mud, anointed my eyes, and said to me, “‘Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash.’” So I went away and washed, and I received sight.
12 Then they asked him, Where is he? He said, I don’t know.

Now here is a telling point. The man called Yeshua caused the blind man to receive his sight. But instead of desperately trying to find the man who had caused this enormous miracle —

What did the people do?

13 They brought him who had been blind to the Pharisees.

Why in the world did they go to the Pharisees?

What had the Pharisees done?

Nothing.

Then why did the people immediately take the blind guy who could see to the Pharisees who couldn’t?

Because the Pharisees were the religious authority. The people took the blind man to the religious authority to see if the religious authority approved of the blind man being healed!

They didn’t.

14 It was a Sabbath when Yeshua made the mud and opened his eyes.
15 Again therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he received his sight. He said to them, He put mud on my eyes, I washed, and I see.
16 Some therefore of the Pharisees said, This man is not from God, because he doesn’t keep the Sabbath. Others said, How can a man who is a sinner do such signs? There was division among them.

The Pharisees did not approve of the blind man being healed because the healing did not go through them. They quickly got to the point of religious authority when they asked the blind man what he thought of Yeshua, who had healed him.

17 Therefore they asked the blind man again, What do you say about him, because he opened your eyes? He said, He is a prophet.

Meaning he has direct communication with God.

Uh-oh.

The blind man crossed the line. That was a line he couldn’t see, even though he could see, and that line was the line of religious authority. Because the healing did not go through the religious authority, the Pharisees would not believe a healing had occurred. So even though the blind man himself told them he had been healed, and even though the people who brought him in did so only because he had been healed, the Pharisees just could not believe he had been healed.

So they went to his mommy and daddy.

18 The Jews therefore did not believe concerning him, that he had been blind, and had received his sight, until they called the parents of him who had received his sight,
19 and asked them, Is this your son, whom you say was born blind? How then does he now see?
20 His parents answered them, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind;
21 but how he now sees, we don’t know; or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. He is of age. Ask him. He will speak for himself.

Mommy and Daddy squirmured — they squirmed and murmured.

‘Our kid was born blind, he can see now, but don’t ask us about it.’

You see, instead of being ecstatic over their son’s healing, they were afraid of losing their salvation. The religious rulers had the authority to cast them out of the synagogue, and Mommy and Daddy thought that was equal to losing their contact with God. I mean, you had to go through the Pharisees to get to God, right?

22 His parents said these things because they feared the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that if any man would confess him as Christ, he would be put out of the synagogue.
23 Therefore his parents said, He is of age. Ask him.

Thanks a lot, Mommy!

The pompous Pharisees were in a prickly pickle. Try as they might, they could not deny the miracle. But they had not authorized the miracle. All miracles must be authorized by headquarters!

Of course, they didn’t have any miracles themselves.

So they kept trying to find some way to slide out of their predicament.

24 So they called the man who was blind a second time, and said to him, Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.
25 He therefore answered, I don’t know if he is a sinner. One thing I do know: that though I was blind, now I see.
26 They said to him again, What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?

Now what difference did it make how the man’s eyes were opened? Christ used spittle and mud. If he had used flour and shaving cream, would that have mattered? No. The Pharisees were simply, desperately trying to find any legal crack to sneak into. Lawyers do that, too.

The blind man, however, had gained a certain boldness from his recent experience, and he looked the Pharisees directly in the eye — so to speak — and let them have it.

27 He answered them, I told you already, and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? You don’t also want to become his disciples, do you?

Whoa! You don’t talk to the king — or the religious authority — like that!

28 They insulted him and said, You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.
29 We know that God has spoken to Moses. But as for this man, we don’t know where he comes from.

You see, by now the blind man could see way better than the Pharisees.

30 The man answered them, How amazing! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes.
31 We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God, and does his will, he listens to him.
32 Since the world began it has never been heard of that anyone opened the eyes of someone born blind.
33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.

Of course, the Pharisees themselves could do nothing other than talk about themselves…

Then the Pharisees came directly to the point. They were the religious authority. They were the rabbis, the teachers, the masters over the spiritual slaves. So they kicked the heretic out of the synagogue.

34 They answered him, You were altogether born in sins, and do you teach us? They threw him out.

Fortunately, he had really, really good vision and didn’t have any trouble finding the door.

We have to grasp the incredibly resolute attitude of the Pharisees. A man who was blind from birth, whom for years they had seen sitting and begging, that man was right there in front of them seeing everything probably better than they did — and all they could think about was protecting their position.

The Pharisees and the Jewish religious rulers put themselves in place of God. They made religious laws like God, and like God they decided who was in the synagogue, or who could be saved and who couldn’t. The ultimate weapon of the religious authority who stands between people and God is to cast the people out of the authorities’ institutional religion. People think that cuts them off from God — because that’s what the religious authority says — and that scares people to death.

John 12
42 Nevertheless even of the rulers many believed in him, but because of the Pharisees they didn’t confess it, so that they wouldn’t be put out of the synagogue,
43 for they loved men’s praise more than God’s praise.

How ironic. People thought they had access to God only if they were in the Pharisees’ synagogue, when actually the reverse was true. They had to come out from under that religious authority to truly follow God.

We have seen that a king sat in the place of God when he had the power of life and death in his scepter. So, too, the Pharisees and the religious rulers of the Jews sat in the place of God, making commandments and determining who could be in the synagogue and seemingly receive salvation. The Pharisees’ and Sadducees’ political power was limited, but their religious power was enough to control the lives of the people.

This is a pattern that is often repeated, where a religious institution gets between God and the people, and then sits in place of God for those people.

The process is —

1. A religious authority is set up.
2. That authority is said to be under God, giving the truth of God.
3. Then the people look to that religious authority for God’s truth, instead of looking directly to God.

This happens over and over, where a religious king sits in the place of God.

As we have seen when Saul tried to kill David, when Solomon tried to kill Jeroboam, when Athaliah tried to kill all the male descendants of David, when Augustus defeated Marc Antony and several other Roman celebrities, and when Herod killed the Hasmoneans, and his own sons, and the baby boys around Bethlehem —

A self-obsessed king tries to kill off his competition.

And that’s exactly what the Pharisees and the religious kings of the Jews decided to do.

Endnotes

[1] The Jewish Encyclopedia: Philipson-Samoscz, 1909, Funk & Wagnalls, New York and London, https://books.google.com/books?id=OFhLAQAAMAAJ