Pastors

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Bible teachers must explain the Bible mysteries

Many pastors make the fatal mistake of getting angry with people who disagree with them.

COLOSSIANS 3:8   “But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, …”

I TIMOTHY 3:3   “Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous;”

The word "pastors" only appears once in the New Testament.

But pastors are condemned 6 times in the Old Testament. So, it is a very dangerous ministry. JEREMIAH 2:8   “The priests said not, Where is the LORD? and they that handle the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me,”

JEREMIAH 10:21   “For the pastors are become brutish, and have not sought the LORD:”

JEREMIAH 12:10   “Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.”

JEREMIAH 22:22    “The wind shall eat up all thy pastors, and thy lovers shall go into captivity: surely then shalt thou be ashamed and confounded for all thy wickedness.”

JEREMIAH 23:1   “Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD.”
JEREMIAH 23:2   “Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the LORD.”

God is not that impressed with our church pastors.

The New Testament never put a pastor in charge of an assembly.

The New Testament never said that the tithes belong to the pastor.

So, pastors fight to preserve their income  by rejecting Scriptural truth as they insist on remaining the unscriptural paid head of the church.

They tell their members to stay away from Bible teachers which is why the church members become increasingly Bible-illiterate.

Pastoral care means helping people with their problems. Being able to advise them on how to handle their personal problems, their family problems, their work problems, etc.

It is doubtful if one person has the ability or experience to handle all those issues.

That is why the New Testament has each local church being run by a group of local elders. A group of elders have more chance of being able to solve all the problems that people face.

Look how Paul established the church at Ephesus.

Miletus is a city just south of Ephesus.
ACTS 20:17    “And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church.”

Miletus was the first city to have the modern street grid where the streets were at right angles to each other. Thus, those streets would be able to cope with the future problems of motorized traffic that they had no idea about, back in those days.

In Miletus, Paul explained to the local elders of Ephesus how to run their local church in a way that would be free from the future dictatorship of a one-man head.

ACTS 20:28  “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.”

Feeding, spiritually, means preaching and teaching. The elders, as a group, feed the flock. Feeding is not done by one man.
ACTS 20:29    “For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.”
Bad guys will enter the church. The future one-man leaders of the church will be destructive.
ACTS 20:30    “Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.”

The bad guys will arise as leaders in the church and insist that the people must follow them and what they say.

Paul describes a man who wants to be the leader of the church as a wolf. A wolf is powerful and dangerous. Something to be avoided at all costs. They are scary animals that know how to kill.

In the Roman Catholic church, they called themselves priests and bishops in order to become the one-man head of the church.

When the Protestants broke away, then these one-man church leaders called themselves pastors, as if that made them leaders of the church.

Here is the only reference to pastors in the New Testament.

EPHESIANS 4:11   “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;”

This Scripture certainly does not give a pastor the authority to be the head of the church.
Evangelists get people saved by getting them to repent of their sins and accept Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Pastors help people solve their personal problems and build up their basic faith in Jesus. Teachers explain to them how to understand deeper Bible doctrines and find their guidance from Scripture.

Pastors were never sent to a Bible school to be trained. They just have a calling and enough wisdom to help people cope with the problems of life. A pastor needs to have the gift of a counselor who can solve social problems. That is what is meant by pastoral care.

But pastors are not Bible teachers. They simply do not understand all too many of the Bible's verses. Then, sadly, in their ambition to be in charge of the church and to get their hands on all the tithes, they reject the Bible teachers who know more than them about the Scriptures. Pastors can then dominate the church which, as a result, also knows very little about the Bible. The church gets used to believing unscriptural things because nobody knows enough about the Bible to question the pastor's belief.

The pastor can then enforce his authority over the church which makes church members scared to oppose him.

People do not get a call to be a pastor. That never happened in the New Testament.

What happens today is different.

Ambitious men desire to be the boss of a congregation.

That gives them power over the people and also gives them power to take the people's money.

This is the same way that politics works. The love of easy money is their powerful call. Their other strong call is their love of power over the people. They can force people to believe what they believe. They love to turn people into echo-chambers of their own opinions. It gives pastors a feeling of self-importance and boosts their ego.

Would-be pastors do not get a call to be a Bible teacher as they are too lazy to do the hard work of studying the Bible and then proving their point from the Bible. Also, there is no Scripture that says the Bible teacher is the boss of the assembly. Thus, the teacher cannot claim the tithes belong to him. As a result, there are very few Bible teachers around as they have no guaranteed pay.

Would-be pastors do not get a call to be evangelists as an evangelist moves around and thus cannot be the boss of an assembly.  Thus, the evangelist also cannot claim that the tithes belong to him. Consequently, there are few evangelists around.

Apostles are missionaries. They move far away. Especially the apostles to the Gentiles. But when we believe the New Testament exactly, then we already have the apostles who wrote the New Testament.

Prophets have to predict things correctly. Very few people can do that.

Very few people qualify for these last two ministries, especially as they can only say what the original apostles said.

Believing the New Testament gives us the prophets like Paul, Peter, James, Jude, and John.

Plus the prophecies in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  In addition, we have all the prophets of the Old Testament.

So, just by believing the Bible, we have plenty of information from the original apostles and prophets.

Consequently, today, the only ministry left for a money-grabber and a power-over-the-people-grabber is to call themselves a pastor.

Then they just make up a rule that they are the boss of the church and are allowed to collect all the money. And people fall for that. Thus, they corrupt the structure of the church, which is why Jesus stands outside the seventh or last church-age door.

REVELATION 3:14   And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write;

REVELATION 3:20   Behold, I stand at the door, and knock:

Every church that has a human head cannot be part of the wise virgins who get caught up to Heaven as they have been fooled by the wrong church structure and are thus part of the foolish virgins.

Striving to be part of the wise virgins is the difficulty of our age as everyone is asleep.

MATTHEW 25:1   “Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.
:2    And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.”
MATTHEW 25:5   “While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.”

A woman symbolizes a church. A virgin is a clean woman symbolizing saved Christians. But many saved people are foolish virgins, fooled by their church leaders into unscriptural ideas. A fast-asleep church is not concerned with being Scripturally accurate. They just want to be left in their smugly complacent state.

Who keeps them asleep? The pastor, who is their unscriptural head, preaches to them most Sundays.

He learned his denominational or church doctrines in some kind of Bible school. The New Testament never had Bible schools.

Only one school is mentioned in the Bible.

ACTS 19:9    “But when divers were hardened, and believed not, but spake evil of that way before the multitude, he departed from them, and separated the disciples,

disputing daily in the school of one Tyrannus.”

There was a school that claimed to teach the Scriptures, but it obviously had many false doctrines, as Paul had to endlessly dispute with them on doctrinal issues.

This is the danger of Bible schools. False doctrines creep in and then become established in the syllabus. The Bible school then keeps on turning out men who claim to be qualified as church leaders but they have been taught many wrong ideas such as Christmas, 25 December, Good Friday, Trinity, replacing God's name with three Titles, etc.

We get a calling to serve God and believe the Bible.

We do not get a calling to some paid position in the church.
In the first church age, it was a group of local elders who fed the church of God.

I PETER 5:1   “The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed:
:2   Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly;

not for filthy lucre, 

but of a ready mind;”

They did not feed, which means to preach and teach, the church in order to make money. Even Saint Paul worked as a tent maker.

I CORINTHIANS 4:12   “And labour, working with our own hands:”

How does a pastor counsel people over the difficulties encountered in the workplace unless he also has a job that makes him familiar with those difficulties?
I PETER 5:3   “Neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock.”
"Lords". There were no big shots in the early church. No man was elevated as a leader.

To elevate a holy man as the head of the church is a Nicolaitan spirit.

Nico means to conquer. Laity is the congregation. Nicolaitan is a man conquering the congregation. God hates that. But the church holds to that idea and likes having a man in charge.

REVELATION 2:15   “So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate.”

Be careful of church people. They are too lazy and Bible-illiterate to think for themselves. So, they promote a pastor to be in charge and do their thinking for them. We call that brainwashing. And that will become the mark of the beast. The beast is the church's power.

God bless you and keep you safe. You must like to ask questions. That is a very good sign. It will not be very easy for the Devil to fool you. Keep on thinking for yourself. That is the product of intelligence.

Clever people question others. Wise people question themselves.