Q: Who are the Modern Representatives of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes?
Selected from our Questions and Answers program
A: Well, that's a matter of opinion. Personally, I think the counterpoint to the Pharisees is more or less our legalistic fundamentalists: Those that have made their own little ten commandments and are trying to pour everybody else into their mold and to push everybody else through their own little wicket gate. You've got to do it the way they do it or you're all wrong. They, I think, are the modern comparison to the Pharisees. To the most part, the Pharisees were fundamental as far as doctrine is concerned. Now the Sadducees, I think, correspond to what we speak of today as the modern liberal or the modernist, as he's commonly called. That's generally the vegetable variety that we think of in connection with the Sadducees. The Sadducees denied all of the supernatural, and they ruled out a great many things. So I would say that they correspond, if you please, to the modernist and liberal. Then the scribes. Who are they? Well, I personally do not know. You might apply it to preachers today — a group of preachers who are supposed to know the Word of God and maybe do know the letter of it, and yet they do not know the heart. They have no heart for it. The ministry can become a profession just like any other can. I think that's one of the grave dangers many of us have to fight.
