[Ohio]

Originally Posted by aron

What's happening here is nothing more than mythmaking, supporting something raised and rejected in the NT, that group leadership is "lording over one another", or "being great", which Jesus dismissed as "of the gentiles", or "of the nations". If you look at source material, what little exists, of practices in China of the Little Flock, this unbiblical pattern emerges. Then it got propped up by flimsy reeds, e.g., 'drunken Noah', and subsequently became the foundation of predatory, abusive and non-Christian behaviours.
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Exactly. It’s the same kind of fallen logic that elevated an elder in Rome to the bishop of Rome to the Pope to the Vicar of Christ over all the earth.

Just remove the actual reading of the text of the Bible by all the faithful, and introduce fragments of verses taken out of context which are manipulated to say whatever the emerging hierarchy desires.