d disgusting trick of the translators, a trick which has been kept up and running through the centuries, right up to our modern day clergy, who are ever so eager and willing to stoke the fires and fan the flames to gain their own ends.
Do you still think that any of them are possessed with good intentions? Think long and hard about it while you search the musty halls of tradition to support a church institution concept.
Have we not blown up the ego of the "clergy" until they feel that they need not answer to anyone for what they teach, or fail to teach? What rules do we see (spoken or unspoken) inside an institutional church that the so-called “authorities” have established?
No one questions the public speaker from the same audience, but waits until after "church" when no one is around to hear the question, except the speaker. Many times the group leaves the “church” with a one-sided view of the lesson, again "proving" that what the speaker said is from God.
To question a pastor/elder today, or "call one on the carpet" for something he taught publicly is almost considered a mortal sin. The church institution has been taught by man that group obedience to the “church authorities” in all things is from God. What power engulfs mere men when the group believes this! They are taught that to question them is to question Almighty God. Does this sound unlikely? Then try questioning them on a tradition held and taught by them. Perhaps you can try questioning them in regards to the subject matter of this article?
My guess is that you will be pounced upon to a pulp! How sad, and yet how revealing.
Men who hesitate to submit their thought process and conclusions to fair public examination must have some good reason not to. Preachers who preach only to the choir will never know whether what they preach has enough substance to it to stand the heat of public examination. Men who would deny freedom of speech to any others must have deep roots of doubt about the truth of their own convictions or their own ability to present it and defend it publicly.
Yes, brethren. Free speech is the foundation of our religious freedom.