Remember the Coneheads from Saturday Night Live? :-)

I couldn't agree more that Popery lives on in the Protestant church. When I was struggling to be heard by the leadership of the last institutional church that I attended, I would ask a simple question, "where is what you are telling me can be found in Scripture?" The answer was often (in my own words) "you don't need to worry about that because we are the clergy" or "you have vowed to obey us so do what we say" or some other such nonsense. It is completely unBiblical, but they don't really care. As soon as you push back then you become "dangerous" to their power structures and money and control. I can see why so many saints were martyred by the church that Jesus created to serve them

My advice to anyone reading my words is simply this... any time a church leader asserts "authority" over you, flee their presence immediately. While the role of an elder is certainly Biblical, any elder that claims to "rule" is not. Their role is that of an undershepherd. They are there to gently guide the sheep toward the Chief Shepherd and help protect them from danger, not to determine their own path. And what little Bible knowledge that they have is limited to verses like Hebrews 13:17 which tells us (in English) to "obey". Yet in the context of that verse and in reading the Greek, it seems more plausible that we are to be "convinced by" them. We bow the knee not to the elders (mini-Popes), but to Christ Himself. "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me" - John 10:27