Is. 35:7 And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the
thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons,
where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.
When David ordained the Levite musicians who made noise under
the king and commanders of the Army this was COMMANDED BY GOD in
the wilderness. After the musical idolatry the
Jacob-cursed Levites jumped at the chance to execute 3,000 of
the idolatrous "brethren." God turned the nation over to worship
the starry host and Moses ordained that the Levites STAND GUARD
at the Tabernacle and later unauthorized temple. Their task was
to EXECUTE any civillian who came NEAR the not-commanded animal
slaughter. Because they prophesied with David's
instruments we know that they were SOOTHSAYERS with instrumental
accompaniment.
In Israel which had fallen back into the Mount Sinai musical
worship of the Egyptian Triad, the people played instruments
LIKE DAVID but they played instruments and sang INSIDE of their
Holy Place as their worship of the Starry Host (Acts 7 etal).
The sin was that they were consumed with wine, women and music
AS their worship: the result was that the people did not attend
synagogue and hungered and thirst for the Word of God as the
exclusive role of the synagogue.
The Wolf and the Dog identifies the Cynics or the Catamite
old style praise singers.
I would
say that the modern
institution
needs QUALIFIED help. Elders are not APT to teach. However,
not too many years ago, even large churches made it with a
preacher and a secretary. Many opened their doors just in
time to get the building heated or cooled and closed them
after the last gossip left. Other than to have qualified
teachers around, the early synagogues did nothing during the
week but educate. If you wanted a degree from a Rabbi then
YOU paid the Rabbi.
Nothing good can come of
a large STAFF spending most of their lives as desk
jockeys. When Paul was "located" a whole province
benefited from his teaching. I think that "preacher's
forums" are spawning grounds for most division.
Only by selling--instead
of building more massive barns--and organizing like a
synagogue could some staff be DISPOSED OF. Someone has
said that if all of the preachers were stacked end to end
that would be a very good thing.
I am dogmatically
certain that a church does not need to hire a preacher
because there
is NO JOB DESCRIPTION in the church for such a person. The word
PREACHER means a HERALD and Paul Revere did not have a desk at North
Church. Furthermore, the herald "delivers the message as
it has been delivered to him" and the SENDER pays the
bill. If the herald alters the message he is subject to
the death sentence. Paul's preach words are usually DIALOG
or COMMUNE.
Why should anyone pay
a high price to sermonize on something other than the
Bible and when he speaks ABOUT the Bible is usually
shall or in error? I can tell you why! Because of the
institution the NEED a "flame" to attract the moths. My
experience would say that 20 years of listening to
sermons and singing Fanny Crosby often leaves you MORE
confused than educated.
Furthermore, even if you
hatch up a job description according to Paul and ALL of
church history it is an UNFUNDED job. The "synagogue" Jesus built has no
machinery called collections or budgets. People gave to
the poor and support was purely voluntary.
Now, paid preachers have
not been the issue. So, I still say that S.E. is
Biblically and historically sound in respect to the Name,
Baptism and the NON-use of machines. THAT is where the
ANTI-instrumental attacks hits. Where S.E. relies on
tradition, the NON-traditionalists are NOT going to argue
with him.
I would never pay a
preacher unless he is an evangelist sent out to preach and
teach where the gospel is not "the latest fad." sending
BIG GUN preachers on a two-week mission trip is criminal.
Published Monthly by T. R. Burnett
"The city churches
know very well how to settle the pastor question, and stop the
division over that issue.
..........Just send the hired
preacher out to preach the gospel, which is his scriptural
duty,
..........and restore the elders to
their Bible functions.
..........But will they do it? Prof. T. B. Larimore once held a meeting that
continued five
months.
At the last sermon
there were five
confessions, and he said the meeting closed "too soon."
He wants to hold a meeting (before he dies) that shall continue one year. He is only seventy-two. Burnett's Budget
"The bishops to feed the
flock, the deacons to serve in secular affairs, and the
evangelists to carry the good news to the world.
That is God's system. You can not beat it, unless you are
wiser than God.
"Some of the hired pastors are announcing that they are
ready (in June) to take the field and hold summer
meetings.
..........That is right. Let them go
out. Give the elders a chance.
..........They have been lying on the shelf eight
months.
..........Put them to work at their
God-ordained duties.
..........It is better to have the
churches in Bible order three months than not at all.
..........The warm-water evangelists
can do some gospel work between now and October.
"When the churches of
Christ restore the eldership,
..........and quit hiring preachers to
feed the flock on Lord's day,
..........there will be preachers to do
missionary work. Also money to pay them for their
services.
At present it requires all
the money of the churches to pay the salaries of
the hired preachers,
..........who bring the gospel to the churches,
..........to keep the elders and
members converted,
..........and there is no money to send
the gospel to the world.
..........Evidently, you have the
muzzle of the gun pointed back- wards. About face!
"It transpires that no
hired preacher has yet found the chapter wherein we can
read
about the one-man pastor hired to feed the flock on Lord's
day,
in place of the elders.
"The BUDGET has
a medal for the Bible college that can turn out a
young preacher with an ambition
to go out in the world and preach the gospel and baptize
two thousand people,
and not sit down on some city church as pastor. Have you
heard of the college, or seen the preacher?
"A church that can not
worship without using an instrument has very little
spirituality. -- Christian Pilot.
What about a church that can not worship without a hired
pastor?
The instrument destroys the Lord's music, (perhaps,)
the pastor certainly destroys the Lord's eldership.
Which is the worse?
"What do you think about
the inner man? Is the Holy Spirit in Christians the inner
man? -- A READER.
"No. The Holy Spirit dwells in the inner man. The inner
man is the human spirit, and the
outer man is the human body.
Rubel Shelly: Today's Sermon Today:
Was
Timothy a Located Missionary? Does that justify located missionaries in
the local established church? The American Restoration
Movement intended to remove all of the appendages which
had grown on the body of the church over the years.
Nothing, to some, hindered the growth of Christ's Organic
Body was professional "heads" which tend to replace Jesus
Christ and the Master Teacher:
> "If churches would learn to do their own work and lean upon their own God --
..........develop strength, instead of
the preacher's
support,
..........put the preacher in the mission field and weak places where they ought to be,
..........the dictator,
church-destroying, located minister would be outlawed." --
David Lipscomb
> "To employ men to preach the
gospel in a Christian congregation is a satire upon that congregation which
employs them.
..........It is the duty of every
Christian to proclaim the word to those ignorant of it...
That any man is to be
paid for preaching, i.e., for making sermons and
pronouncing them;
or that any man is to be hired for a stipulated sum to preach
and pray, and expound scripture,
by the day, month, or year, I believe to be a relic
of popery." -- Alexander Campbell
> "If I declare with loudest
voice and clearest exposition every portion of God's Truth
except for that one little bit which the world and the
devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing
Christ no matter how boldly I may be professing Christ.
For the soldier to be steady on all the battlefield
besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that
single point." -- Martin Luther
Paul might say, "Paid
preachers are a burden, not a benefit, to a church,
weighing it down, stunting it's growth, and making it
harder to convert people." Or, as the Church of Christ
scholar James A. Harding said,
"The pastor is not a
necessity. He is a FUNGUS GROWTH upon the church, the body of Christians, DWARFING its growth, PREVENTING its
development of its members; and until the church GETS
RID of him it will NEVER prosper as it should. In the
Bible we can find all the necessities.
"I can testify from my
own observation that a good eldership will lose its
efficiency, and its members become both UNABLE and
UNWILLING to do the work of elders, in a very few years
after the employment of a pastor. And if under the
pastor system a good eldership has ever developed, I
have never seen or heard of the case. I don't believe
that has or ever will be done." --James A. Harding, Gospel
Advocate, May 20, 1885
When the world comes to its end the
church (collectively) will have restored the religion of
Babylon and we will probably be building "synagogues of
Satan" when He comes. This view may have prompted Parkes
to say that civilized mankind is still organically linked
to those of the hunting past--
'Certain members of a
tribe, marked out either by unusual skills or by some emotional abnormality, ususally became
particularly adept at these operations, and gradually
assumed specialized functions. Released from the duty of
hunting, and concentrating on the practice of magic, the shaman, sorcerer, or medicine man was the
world's first professional." (Parkes, p. 29).
Yes, Parkes said that
the magical priesthood was the world's oldest profession.
However, history will show that the first and second
oldest profession was intimately connected often in the
same person.
Implicit in the record
of these men is that they acquire their "sacred" duties
frequently because they do not have the mental skills to function productively. They might not have the
power to pull a bow or the courage to face a raging, wild
animal. However, they might perform a musical chant and draw you a picture of
your arrow in the rump of a wild boar and make you believe
that he was doing his "share" of community work.
"The development both
of religion and of the arts can be traced back in a
continuous line to the hunting era. The group ritual of
the primeval
tribesmen
were the origin not only of all religious ceremonial, but also of the drama and of poetry and music, while magic gave birth to the visual
arts." (Parkes, p. 30).
"Awed by the mysteries
of his own spirit no less than by those of nature,
primitive man was likely to attribute to divine
influence any abnormal emotional state, whether above or below the
usual level. Medicine men customarily went into states
of trance in which they were believed to be in
communication with the gods, and many tribes supposed
lunatics and sexual deviants to be divinely possessed.
In most early
societies, moreover, men evolved techniques for deliberaly inducing the
abnormal forms of consciousness in which they supposed
themselves to achieve union with divine power,
sometimes by the use of drugs and other physiological stimuli, sometimes by hypnotic dances and music. The wild utterances to
which they gave vent on such occasions were regarded
as the words of a god and were interpreted as
divine commands or predictions of future events."
(Parkes, p. 32-33).
"God in the Cow
Pen,
pictures an old-time camp meeting, with the local
prostitute plying her trade in the woods adjacent. There
is a relation between sex and the emotional and mystical aspects of
religion
that deserves a saner and more sympathetic study than it
has yet received. Most mystics have been women and many were unmarried or
experienced an abnormal sex life. Of the four hundred cases
of stigmatization on record, over three hundred were
women and all but twenty were unmarried. The language
and imagery of the mystics are often extremely erotic" These are "examples of
persons in whom sexual abnormality and mysticism
blended." (Clark, Elmer T., The Small Sects in America,
p. 90n, Abingdon)
It is noted that the Hebrews
institutionalized the music of women but then excluded
them from clergy. As in all priesthoods, homosexuals
often became the "clergy performers" playing the role of
women: the Ephod of David was a feminine garment which
he removed to make himself vile called "praise."
"The trained musicians
which eventually appear around the time of David and
Solomon mark a distinctive change in the history of
Jewish music. Before this time much of the music was
made by women." (Zondervan Pict., Music p. 313).
Carroll D. Osburn, ACU
training prophets, chanellers and facilitator change
agents.
The church is not pagan
worship center with priests, prophets, prostitutes and
singers. Rather, one's gathering is most often a form of
the word "synagogue." The synagogue had no pyramidal
"ministry" system and "there was no praise service in the
synagogue." Synagogue or church was School of the Bible
and then School of Christ. Having a dominant leader who
professes to be Post-Modern is allowing one to extort
money while making great fun for being able to fool the
fools (Paul's imagery). Or, it might be like hiring Osama
Ben Laden to be president of the United States.
This can happen only
when elders think that "He is as apt to chase a coon as
teach the Bible" is a compliment.
Here is the
Beginning-Time and End-Time
Babylonian Harlot system of temple and ministry.
The
"Assembly of Christ" as organized as a family
would operate without professional father or mother.
Many later evangelists agree and lament the demise of
the the office of evangelist. Expediencey has often
called the evangelist in from the cold of the mission
field, but it is not possible to assign leadership to a
professional as CEO without destroying the male
leadership of the collected body. Clergy was imposed to
stand between evil people and a holy God under the Law:
Christ came to allow all believers to come boldly before
His throne. In the Babylonian System the female singers
were always "the harem of the gods." The female goddess
had the responsibility of prevailing over "the
gates of hell." However, she did not have the power until
she got the male "leader" drunk and stole the
power of music, the eldership and perverted
sexuality.
And the
"ministry pyramid" can be found in many churches
today.
We honor those who still
minister rather than master but your tribe is in
danger of extinction and the peddlers of "doctors of
the law" spit in the face of Jesus who fired them.
Inanna who
went through the gates of hell is also ZOE the women
who "presides over the flock" by using music and
drama. ZOE even
subjects the "minor jehovah" into forming a musical worship team
even as the clergy tried to induce the perverted
Dionysus lament and dance by piping to Jesus.
Here is part
of the problem--Women and Children Rule Over You: F. LaGard
Smith: I would call on the church to ABANDON
YOUTH MINISTRIES, which
have toppled the spiritual hierarchy.
The
Ideal of Jesus on Professional Clergy
Micah 3
Isaiah.58.html
Ezekiel 34:
Isaiah 59:
Jesus
Christ Our Only Teacher
The Core Gospel Reserved for the Evangelist
Early Agreement
in the Church on Professional Clergy
Shepherd
of Hermes, Professional Prophets, False
Preachers
The DIDACHE, Prophets for Pay
John Chrysostom
on Professional Clergy
Chrysostom,
John Homily I, Worship Drama, Music, Dance or
Christ?
Performing Ministers - John Chrysostom, Homily
XLVIII Matthew 13:53
John
Chrysostom, on John Homily 2, Trinity, Sophists,
Philosophers
John
Chrysostom
Homilies Acts Chapter 7, Acts 7, Stephen Against
Law, Temple and Ritual
Irenaeus on
Professional Clergy or Preachers
Irenaeus
Against
Heresies and Speaking in Tongues
Irenaeus Against Heresies and Laughing
Exercises
Plato on
Professional Clergy or Preachers
Ion
by Plato: Socrates Ridicules Inspired Musicians
and Speakers
Timaeus, by Plato: The Hire of a Soldier. 
1/29/02
Tertullian on
Professional Clergy or Preachers
TERTULLIAN
-
SCORPIACE - ANTIDOTE FOR THE SCORPION'S STING
Tertullian - The Shows, or De Spectaculis -
Showtime "Worship"
The Reformation
Movement
Erasmus The
Priest Who is not honored for taking his salary
from rich women and dying of syphillis but as a
precursor to the rejection of the Catholic
clergy.
Erasmus
on
the Professional Clergy
Erasmus on the Preaching Monks
Erasmus
on
the Princes
Erasmus
on the Pope
Other
Works by Erasmus
John Calvin
The Necessity of Reforming
the Church (1543)
Colonial Period
Tennet's
Epithets Agains Performance Preaching
The
sweet waters of Shilo's streams must
ordinarily pass into the Churches through the stinking channel of prelatical
pride.
Contemporary
Denominations
Model of
a New Wineskins, Dominant Pastor Church
Richard Gooch - Professional church ministers
and Women
Dostoyevsky
and Preaching Clergy
R. L.
Dabney on Preaching
Dominant
Clergy - Tests For
PaleoPaganism
and its Clergy
Restoration
Movement on Professional Preachers
Professional
church ministry in the Restoration Movement
J. D. Tant Located Preachers Firm Foundation
1934
Gospel
Advocate Apology to J. D. Tant
Reading
the Word not Professional Clergy in the
Restoratiom Movement Thomas Campbell
Daniel Sommers Preachers must be Sent out
Thomas
Campbell Evangelists in Restoration Movement
Diotrephes Pastors or
Ministry Elders
Preaching
as Performance
The Deaconess
See Separate Index Here
Narrative
Theology: End-Time Result of Ignoring the Will of
Christ about Professional Preachers.
Today's Sermon Today: Was Timothy a Located
Missionary?
Does that justify located missionaries in the
local established church?
From
Wineskins to Jubilee to Narrative Theology
Rubel Shelly: Paul's
Retrospective on Exodus
The
Exodus
Rising up to Play: Rubel Shelly
Home Page
Restoration Movement
Musical Worship Index
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