A____ wrote:
Mike, in Mat 23 are the things Jesus is saying about the scholars and Pharisees the same words he would have for the Pastors and Catholic Priests of today?  If yes, then how do they respond when they are confronted with this fact?  Obviously they deny it, but how exactly do they explain it away? Also, these churches today that have book stores and coffee shops in their lobbies and justify it by saying they are using the proceeds to do God’s work, are they guilty of  the same things that the money changers were doing in the Temple back when Jesus went in and tried throwing them out? Mike, one last thing what does Scripture say about today’s religious leaders that are making huge profits by selling their books, Cd’s, DVDs, etc.?  Is that what the Bible is talking about when it says “freely you have been given freely you should give”?  Are we commanded to give freely of everything we have, including our products and services if we are business people and have faith that all our needs for food, water, shelter, clothing, etc. will all somehow be met.  I am very confused on this topic, so if you would please try and help me clear this up I would be very grateful.  Thanks for all your help, A____

Mike wrote:
Hi A____,
You asked about how the Protestant ministers and the Catholic priests respond when confronted with the scriptures which are acturally referring to the masses of Christianity who are not chosen. You refer specifically to Mat 23.
The answer to that question is that they see Mat 23 as referring only to the Jews in Christ’s day who wanted Him dead. They have been blinded to the fact that Christ spoke in parables to keep the masses who believed on Him from knowing who He was.

Mat 13:1  The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side.
Mat 13:2  And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.
Mat 13:3  And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow;
Mat 13:10  And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?
Mat 13:11  He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.

Christ spoke to the multitudes “who believed on Him” in parables “because to them it is not given… to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God.” These were “those Jews which believed on Him.”

Joh 8:30  As he spake these words, many believed on him.
Joh 8:31  Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, [ then] are ye my disciples indeed;
Joh 8:32  And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Joh 8:33  They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?

These “Jews which believed on Him” typify the Christian multitudes which believe on Christ today. But just look at the attitude of “those Jews which believed on Him:”

Joh 8:37  I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you.
Joh 8:38  I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.
Joh 8:39  They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham.
Joh 8:40  But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham.
Joh 8:41  Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, [ even] God.
Joh 8:42  Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.
Joh 8:43  Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word.
Joh 8:44  Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
Joh 8:45  And because I tell [ you] the truth, ye believe me not.

“Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word” (vs. 43)

And that is why, to this very day, the masses of Christianity CANNOT believe that Christ really meant it when He said “love thine enemies.” It is not because they don’t want to obey Christ; it is because they “cannot hear my word.” I often refer to a sermon by a well- known minister who preached a very convincing and convicting sermon on the fact that we ought all to love our enemies and return good for evil and turn the other cheek. He went to great lengths to make the point that this was not mere rhetoric on the part of Christ, but words by which we must live daily under the severest trials. I was glued to the radio. This was a mainstream Baptist minister who was actually teaching what Christ taught. I could not believe my ears. I was hearing this in our car as we commuted to a Bible study at the home of a friend. I commented to my entire family how unbelievable it was that this mainstream minister was staying true to the words of our Lord, that as His followers and as those who bore the name of our Father we must obey His words under every circumstance.
But it was not to be. In the true form of the Adversary himself this minister gave 99% of a half- hour program telling the truth and insisting that the Truth was hard to keep, and that we must simply make the sacrifice needed and humble ourselves to the abuse of our brothers and obey the words of Christ to “love thine enemies…” In the last minutes of his sermon he made it very clear that he did not really mean a word he had spoken. In the final minutes of a half- hour radio program entitled ‘Love Thine Enemies’, this pastor concluded: ‘Having said all of this about how you are to treat those who do you wrong, am I saying that if someone breaks into your house and is threatening to kill your wife and your children that you should say to that person that they need to get to know the Lord? Absolutely not! If someone is breaking into your house to harm your family, you are to step on that person like a cockroach! If someone is threatening your country, you need to join the armed forces of your country and go out and confront and destroy that enemy and step on him like a dirty roach!’
And that is what Christ meant when He told the parable of the good Samaritan. A Samaritan was the equivalent of a traitor because Samaria was the city which Jereboam established as his capitol when he broke away from Judah and took ten of the tribes of Israel with him. It was in Samaria that Jereboam changed the feast of Tabernacles from the 7th month to the 8th month and made a golden calf and told the peole of Israel to worship the golden calf in Samaria instead of in Jerusalem. When Christ told the “Jews which believed on Him” to “love thine enemies,” He wanted to make it clear that He was not simply talking about family and fellow believers. By using the example of a traitorous Samaritan, “who was a neighbor to him” it is demonstrated that as far as Christ is concerned, your worst enemy, even a traitor such as Samaritans and Judas himself, must be loved and forgiven. Is this to say that we would not die with our Savior in order to save the lives of those who our enemies want to kill? Absolutely not! But Christ’s definition of dying for your friend is not the same as that of this minister or that of the unconverted apostle Peter. Just as this minister advised his congregation and the entire world to do, the apostle Peter took a sword to defend to the death his Lord. Now the life of our Lord is worth more than the lives of all the wives and children and husbands and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and fathers and neighbors and friends in the entire world. Nevertheless just look at the word of our Lord to the apostle Peter who was doing nothing less than following the advice of this very well- known Christian minister. Here is what Christ said to Peter who wanted to “step on these intruders like a dirty roach.”  After all, these peole were threatening the life of the Son of God:

Mat 26:51  And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest’s, and smote off his ear.
Mat 26:52  Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

It is not a physical sword which causes those who “take the sword” to perish. What causes those who “take the [ physical] sword” to perish, is rather that which causes us all to die to the flesh. It is the Word of God. But Peter had not yet died to the flesh to the extent of being able to “love thine enemy.” Like all of us at first, and like all the ministers of “historical orthodox Christianity” who teach that we ought to ‘love our enemies unless they really are our enemies and mean us and our families bodily harm, in which case you ought to step on them like a dirty roach,’ Peter was not yet converted:

Luk 22:32  But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.
Luk 22:33  And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death.
Luk 22:34  And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.

Like Peter, our flesh is indeed willing to die for Christ and God and family and country. But we are not willing to be “crucified with Him.”

Gal 2:20  I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

But the answer to your question: “how do they respond when they are confronted with this fact.  Obviously they deny it, but how exactly do they explain it away?

Joh 8:43  Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word.

Confronting Babylon with the fact that she is a harlot does not give her the eyes to see or the ears to hear what she truly is. All she will do is what she did to Christ when He told her that she was “of your father the devil.” What she did was to “seek to kill me,” and indeed they placed Him on the cross. And Christ’s physical cross and His physical death on that cross is the shadow of our cross and our death as we present our bodies as living sacrifices to Christ and His Father.

Rom 12:1  I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, [ which is] your reasonable service.

I have in my youth tried to force ministers of Babylon to see their own spiritual condition only to be told by the Protestants that Babylon is the Catholics and by the Catholics that Babylon was Judaism. There are many creative interpretations of exactly who is Babylon. It takes divine revelation to show who really is Babylon the great, the mother of harlots. In the final analysis she is not without, that is outside, any of us. She is within us all. ‘Babylon the great’ is nothing less than the “beast which comes up out of the earth” in all of us.

Rev 13:11  And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.

“Another beast coming up out of the earth” is the beast in us which has “two horns like a lamb.” But this beast which is “like a lamb” is actually full of all kinds of false doctrines. In reality “the whole stay of bread and the whole stay of water has been taken away from” this beast and though he “appears as an angel of light,” though he has “two horns like a lamb,” yet for those with ears to hear, he “speaks as a dragon.”

Isa 3:1  For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water,

A minister of Babylon can speak on the stay of bread and the stay of water for a long time, but before he is finished he will taint that bread and water with his heresy. The unchosen Levites simply cannot eat the food of the chosen priests:

Num 18:3  And they shall keep thy charge, and the charge of all the tabernacle: only they shall not come nigh the vessels of the sanctuary and the altar, that neither they, nor ye also, die.
Num 18:4  And they shall be joined unto thee, and keep the charge of the tabernacle of the congregation, for all the service of the tabernacle: and a stranger shall not come nigh unto you

Babylon serves to bring God’s elect to Christ:

Gal 3:22  But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.
Gal 3:23  But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
Gal 3:24  Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
Gal 3:25  But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.

“After faith is come we are no longer under a schoolmaster,” no longer in Babylon which is our “schoolmaster to bring us [ literally billions] to Christ.” Coming out of Babylon is coming out from under this ‘schoolmaster,” the “many called but not chosen” Levites who cannot eat the meat or the shewbread of the priests:

Heb 13:8  Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.
Heb 13:9  Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For [ it is] a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein.
Heb 13:10  We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle.

It is the Levites who “serve the tabernacle” but cannot eat of the shewbread or of the priests meats who are Babylon in each of us before we come out of Babylon and become priests just as Aaron came out of the tribe of Levi to become the high priest of Israel. But Babylon will never be able to see herself as such. Only after we ourselves “come out of her my people” are we able to “look behind” ourselves and see from what we came.
I hope that answers your first question.
Your second question was:

“Also, these churches today that have book stores and coffee shops in their lobbies and justify it by saying they are using the proceeds to do God’s work, are they guilty of  the same things that the money changers were doing in the Temple back when Jesus went in and tried throwing them out?

The answer is; yes, they are guilty of the exact same thing. “Freely ye have received freely give” is about as understandable to Babylonian ministers as is “love thine enemies.” They simply “cannot hear my word,” they simply cannot eat the same meat and bread which is “lawful only for the priests.”
Your last question is:
“Is that what the Bible is talking about when it says “freely you have been given freely you should give”?  Are we commanded to give freely of everything we have, including our products and services if we are business people and have faith that all our needs for food, water, shelter, clothing, etc. will all somehow be met?”
No, we are not to give freely of our services as business people to whoever asks us. Here are Christ’s words on this subject:

Luk 10:7  And in the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give: for the labourer is worthy of his hire. Go not from house to house.

And this parable:

Mat 20:8  So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.

1Co 3:8  Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour.

Eph 4:28  Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.

Believe me when I tell you that if you do not have a wage or a contract you can very well end up working for nothing and having nothing “to give to him that has need.” We are all expected to provide for our families. We are not expected to provide for the families of strangers except as we are able:

1Ti 5:8  But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house , he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

Luk 3:14  And the soldiers likewise demanded of him [ John the baptist], saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.

“Freely ye have received freely give” is true of God’s word. You do not receive your house or your apartment or your groceries for free. So there is nothing wrong with charging for your services. The fact of the matter is that it would be wrong not to receive a wage for the work you do to provide for the needs of your family.
“As also saith the law” is applicable today as it was in Moses’ day so far as wages are concerned:

Lev 19:13  Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning.

Jer 22:13  Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work;

Mal 3:5  And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger [ from his right], and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.

God expects us to charge a fair wage for our efforts to meet the needs of our families, and He is extremely upset at those who fail to pay those wages when they are due.
I hope this has answered your question to your satisfaction.
Mike