"..by devaluing and ignoring the authority.."
absolutely astounding how an entire religion was founded on 1 verse about a rock...
Christ is all in all.
Christ is the head of His church: now, and always.
Your statement here is pretty much the foundation of all Protestantism. In it, you ignore the fact that Christ gave authority to the Apostles to rule the Church for the good of all, not as dictators, but in love.
But I will let a Protestant speak here, for despite his Protestant blindness to the truth of what he says, he speaks the truth:
The representative hierarchy renders judgments (Deut. 1:9-18). We can even go so far as to say that it mediates the covenant. By rendering its decisions, the Bible is applied in a practical way to God's people. Life is mediated to them through Judgment. We should understand, however, that this mediation takes place on two levels. There is mediation with a capital M, and there is lower case mediation that grows out of this. The first is redemption, "messianic"; it brings salvation. Moses and all the redemptive deliverers of the Bible (judges, prophets, priests, David, Solomon, etc.) mediated life to Israel with a capital M. The ultimate Mediator, however, is Jesus. Yet in Deuteronomy, there are also lower case mediators who administrate the covenant. They serve a judicial purpose, and fall into two categories. In one sense, the whole body of believers, general mediators of the covenant, is a representative of God (Exod. 19:6). So everyone in the covenant community can go directly to Him. But God appoints special overseers, like the ones in Deuteronomy 1:9-18. They have a special anointing to render judgment. This is how God manifests His transcendence. He has Mediators who bring the message of salvation, and they in turn have representatives, general and special, who rule under them. This creates God's visible sovereignty on the earth, making submission or accountability extremely important.
(I find his statement in red sadly ironic in that he as a Protestant is not submitted to the authority which Christ gave to the bishops of the Church through the Apostles. This is what I mean when I say that this man is "blind to what he wrote.")
Notice the progression from transcendence to hierarchy in this passage. Christ is raised and seated in heaven, and then His authority is planted on earth. The Lord declares Christ's transcendence, and then establishes Christ's visible sovereignty through the rule of His people as His authority. There is no escape from the principle of man's God-given mediatory authority. If God's authorities do not rule, neither does He, in the sense of a public manifestation of authority. He manifests visible sovereignty through the visible authority of those who are in visible covenant to Him.
Again, this is the whole point. Christ established his visible authority by giving His authority to the Apostles. To disobey them was to shake your fist in His face, not theirs. The same example can be found with Moses. Dathan and Abihu found out the hard way that Moses was not just a mere man. He stood for God, and to oppose him was to oppose God. Not good form, as they found out while sinking into the ground that had opened up underneath them.
"If you are not a member of the Church, then your words here are pretty much fluff and air."
I attend a church, yes
I didn't say "a" church. I said, "THE" Church, as in the one that our Lord established. He only established one Church, with the Apostles as the overseers of that congregation.
I've heard covenant theology from a 'reformed' fellow, and it sounded just as much of a rech as this does, in trying to establish some new doctrine..
The word "covenant" appears over 300 times in the Sacred Scriptures. Jesus said "This is the New Covenant in my Blood." To an intelligent person, the appearance of a continuous theme in a writing would be a red flag to not only take note of that theme, but to delve deeply into it to understand it.