THE THIEF COMES TO STEAL, KILL & DESTROY (PART XVI)

“Pillaging God’s House & Plundering God’s Flock”

By Akin Ojumu

Christian ministries today are like family-owned businesses presided over by the CEO pastor with his wife and children serving as Senior Executives. The man runs the show. It’s him God has supposedly given the vision. And it’s to him God speaks and gives direction.

Since it’s the CEO pastor’s ministry and vision, everyone else is a subservient supporting cast, hired hand, and clientele whose sole purpose is to support the vision of the “man of God” and help grow the family religious business empire.

When the CEO pastor dies, he passes the ministry on to his wife. And when the wife passes on, the ministry is inherited by the first son. In certain cases, it’s irrelevant that the first son is an unserious unregenerate secular soapbox entertainer with artificial dreadlocks on his head which he claimed he was instructed by “God” not to cut.

Whenever a denomination is run as a one-man show and not governed by a plurality of biblically qualified elders, the high and mighty man of God reigns supreme and is accountable to no one. As the pastor or general overseer, he is seen by his followers as a god, and he himself trots around as god.

Unfortunately, what this type of religious system breeds is vainglory, idolatry, and spiritual tyranny. Such an establishment is a cesspool of false theology. Places like such are sewers of erroneous doctrine. Because the pastor’s word supersedes and is superior to God’s Word, when it comes to choosing between what God says in the Bible and what the general overseer says, the word of the general overseer wins all the time.

And such was the Rabbinic/Pharisaical Judaism that existed in Israel at the time of Jesus. It was an oppressive system rife with extortion, exploitation, and greed. These vainglorious windbags with an overinflated sense of self-importance saw themselves as gatekeepers to eternal life. Yet, the religion they foisted on the people was an apostate idolatry of their own making that bore no resemblance to the Law of Moses.

It was because of this apostasy that the Lord Jesus denounced the religious leaders relentlessly throughout His 3-year ministry. He excoriated them for their teachings and practices which had turned the people away from God and ushered them along on the broad road that leads straight to hell. The Lord castigated their brand of Judaism which was a Ponzi scheme set up to fleece weak, desperate, and vulnerable people. He condemned the religious leaders for transforming the worship of God into a means of extortion and He rebuked them for turning the House of God into a den of robbers.

Appointments of High Priests had become purely political, based on power and manipulation. Bribery and violence characterized the religious establishment. For instance, High Priest Ananias entrenched himself in power and burnished his reputation by bribing key people in positions of influence.

To continue to operate the Temple, the religious leaders invented an elaborate system of extortions to generate funds that included the Two-Drachma Tax (Matthew 17:24-27) in addition to multiple tithes and offerings imposed on the people. Likewise, they made it a habit of disqualifying the animals the people brought from home for sacrifice and instead sold them animals from their own stock at exorbitant prices.

In furtherance of their extortion scheme, the religious hierarchy installed on the Temple ground rows of stalls where they made the people come and purchase items needed for the sacrificial offerings at steep costs. Jesus condemned this whole arrangement, calling it a “den of robbers,” and he went on to overturn their tables and drive the extortionists away from the Temple (Matthew 21:12).

From the gains of their rackets and shakedowns, the families of the High Priest and the religious leaders became extraordinarily wealthy. Like leeches sucking the life blood out of the people, they grew fat on the labor of the poor. They lived lavish lifestyles; massive mansions in the suburbs, richly embroidered attires, gold rings on all five fingers of both hands, (hence the name, five-fingered man), etc. Incredible sums were paid as dowries and allowances for perfumes and jewelry. The widows of High Priests were beneficiaries of extremely generous pensions, paid right out of the Temple treasury.

Furthermore, the religious rulers were not very sympathetic to concerns of either the lower cadre priests or ordinary Jews. Flavius Josephus, the First Century Jewish historian, recorded instances of Chief Priests sending their servants to take by force the tithes from lower-ranking priests, “beating those who refused to hand them over.” The situation got so bad for the low-level priests that some of them starved to death.

And that’s not all. A high-ranking rabbi in the Jewish aristocracy is said to have referred to ordinary Jewish people as “unclean animals” who were so worthless and inferior that it was alright to kill them on holy days when the butchering of clean animals is forbidden. Another Rabbi said that it was acceptable to “tear a common person to pieces like a fish.”

Illustrating the decadence of the religious leaders was when Pilate brought into Jerusalem (and possibly into the Temple court) several busts of the emperor. For fear of losing the privilege they enjoyed, the religious leaders looked the other way and said nothing. It was not until ordinary Jewish people protested to Pilate, entreating him to remove the images, for such were contrary to their laws, that the images were removed.

To make matters worse, the Scribes, along with the other religious leaders, deployed the tactics of manipulation and fear as means of lining their pockets. One of the most prominent rabbinical teachings of the time was that people who wanted God to bless them had to pay for it. They also taught that people could purchase their way to Heaven.

Consequently, they set up thirteen receptacles in the Temple treasury strategically placed in the Court of the Women. There it was that people came to drop money to obtain God’s blessings and purchase their salvation. According to rabbinical teachings, the more money you gave, the more blessings you received. Of course, the people were literally pouring money into the receptacles to buy their blessings and redemption. The rich gave large sums of money, while the poor gave everything they had left.

It was this system of exploitation that led the poor widow, in Luke 21:1-4, to drop her last two copper coins in the Temple treasury. She did it because she had been made to believe that she could procure God’s favor and blessings with money. Sadly, this woman was a victim of a corrupt religious system, a system that took advantage of the ignorance of the vulnerable and preyed on the fear of everybody else. A religious system that would strip a poor widow of her last two copper coins is an epitome of cruelty.

Religious leaders who were meant to be shepherds of the people had become wolves pillaging God’s House and plundering God’s people. Those who were supposed to be protectors of the poor masses had turned themselves into predators from whom the people needed protection.

And these are the thieves and robbers in John 10:1 who climb into the sheepfold not through the door but through another way.

To be continued.