Matt 21:23: “And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority?

We must always remember that in Scripture, “by what authority do you do this thing?” is the devil’s question. Of course it would be child’s play to write a scenario in which a good and godly man was impelled to ask the question, but even with that cheerfully acknowledged, in Scripture it is the devil’s line:
“And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority?” (Matt. 21:23).
This is because a certain kind of man always gravitates to the seats of power, and he always learns how to operate the levers under the desk, and one of the first things he learns is how to question the credentials of some disheveled and high-school drop-out of a prophet. The shot is that we need to have the “proper authority” to deal with such issues. The chaser is that we will ensure that the “wrong” kind of person never gets near the “proper authority.”
And all goes well until the Son of Savonarola shows up at the General Assembly and overturns a few tables in a meeting of the previously decorous credentials committee.  --Douglas Wilson