Beware the Leaven of the Pharisees
In our Come Follow Me reading for the week, we covered a few of the same stories as in previous weeks, and so I searched for something new to focus on. The result is a somewhat obscure verse with no cross-references that is not oft-quoted and rarely dissected and analyzed. Mark 8:15 reads, “And he charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod.”
In this case, leaven is used in the scripture as an example to teach principles and doctrine and as a metaphor. Its practical everyday use in making bread is well known. The flour, water, and salt are transformed from a brick into a delicious staple for a meal. A little bit of yeast, given time to activate, makes bread light and delicious. A catalyst in polymers has the opposite effect, turning a resin into a solid by changing the composite’s molecular structure. In the case of both leaven and catalyst, tiny portions permeate and change the nature of whatever they are introduced into.
Societies are like bread. They are mixtures of people, cultures, and things that, without some leavening, are plain, mundane, and less useful than they could be with a bit of leavening of leadership, inspiration, and motivation. Great leaders, thinkers, philosophers, teachers, and preachers are the leaven of societies. They can change the fabric of societies and cultures, making them more productive and successful. They can also destroy everything, which brings me to the warning the Savior gave his disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod.
These two groups, Pharisees and Herodians, were the religious leaders and the aristocracy of the time. They wielded tremendous power and influence. If you did not go along with them, chances are that you were considered to belong to a lower class or shunned by society. Today’s Pharisees and Herodians are most big tech executives, media companies, and corrupt government officials. Those who do not conform to their narrative are canceled and marginalized.
But these large controlling entities are not the leaven we must be concerned about. The leaven that controls even the behemoths are the vocal minorities. They are spawned and encouraged by academia and funded by what I can only describe as evil people who, in turn, are in direct communication with and under the control of Satan. I don’t see any other plausible explanation or source for the chaos unfolding in front of our eyes. It is good that I am no one with tremendous influence because I would, no doubt, suffer the wrath of the media powers that be.
Today, we find ourselves in a world turned upside down. The voices of sanity are rare and not easily accessible. Shifting societies have been carefully and patiently manipulated, causing the citizenry to become complacent, apathetic, or fast asleep. Our schools were and are the target of the evil leaven. Indoctrination has replaced education, or at least, our children’s education is inundated with ideologies that transform them into followers, not thinkers. They are taught what to think, not how to think.
You are mistaken if you think this has all happened in the past few years. The results of decades of thought manipulation are now manifest in the whole light of day. People are now boldly declaring evil ideas, and the combined overlords of tech, media, and government are backing unnatural concepts that reject individual liberty and thought.
I do not see the hypocrisy of the Pharisees or the tyranny of the Herodians any different than what is happening today. In the past, the enemies of those in power were exterminated or crucified, in the case of Jesus, as an example of what happens when you do not conform.
So what are we to do? We must beware, wake up, and be self-informed through scripture study, prayer, and receiving personal revelation. We must seek out voices that speak truth to power. As we are converted, we must strengthen others. We must become people of understanding, knowledge, and power. Secular knowledge is essential but must be carefully navigated to avoid the sophistry of false ideas contained in it. Avoid all ideologies that pit people against each other. They are mind traps that are hard to escape.
Believing the Savior when he said after the warning in verse 15, “And when Jesus knew it, he saith unto them, Why reason ye, because ye have no bread? perceive ye not yet, neither understand? have ye your heart yet hardened? Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember? When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve. And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? And they said, Seven. And he said unto them, How is it that ye do not understand?”
I am confident that the truth will prevail even amid evil chaos if enough of us seek and teach it. We must become the leaven for truth, liberty, and sanity in an insane world. Good leaven is produced in the temples of the Lord when people make and keep sacred covenants. We hear that so often that it becomes commonplace; however, the more sacred we make our covenants, the more powerful we become, even to the changing of our hearts and the hearts of others. That is how God wins in the end.