Priesthood & Prophecy

By Adonijah O. Ogbonnaya Ph.D

 

Priesthood & Prophecy is a timepiece series of unfolding biblical treasures that harmonize the true duties of priesthood and the divine design of prophecy. Priesthood and prophecy are two major topics within Christianity that have oftentimes been misunderstood in relation to the believer's role as maturing Sons within creation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: As He Is T/A Seraph Creative
• Release date: Oct 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781958997482

Book preview

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1 - THE BINDING CONNECTION BETWEEN PRIESTHOOD AND PROPHECY

We need to talk about priesthood and prophecy. We have a misunderstanding of what our role is on the earth. It is easy to go into a camp that is not really what God wants us to do. To understand our role, especially in this particular time and age, we must learn about sonship, priesthood and prophecy. Sonship and priesthood are eternal. Prophecy is temporal. Priesthood always outlasts the prophetic because priesthood and sonship existed before the world was created. The whole process of prophecy is temporal because it occurs within creation. This scripture says:

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. (1 Corinthians 13:8-9)

The structure of the prophetic and its effectiveness is grounded on how you view yourself both as a son and as a priest. As a matter of fact, Priesthood existed before the world was created. We know this because the Bible tells us about the lamb that was slain before the creation of the world:

…and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. (Revelation 13:8)

When the lamb was slain before the foundation, it was not the destruction of life but rather the release of life into creation. In other words, what God did before the creation of the world is foundational to the structure of the universe and how it carries itself.

Sonship was in God. It is the original principle of Divinity. The Divine begetting principle is foundational within the Divine. The very structure of this progenation is the production of someone who is the manifestation of God who cannot be seen. Sonship is grounded in Divinity. It is connected to intrinsic righteousness because it carries the nature of the begetters. That means that sonship carries God Himself into creation. A son carries the fullness of God: His righteousness, holiness, goodness, mercy and grace. If one is a son of God, that person carries, if not in manifestation, the potential of who God is. Being a child of God and begetting a son of God is fundamental to Divinity, which means that you and I who are born of God carry the fullness of God. Sonship grows into redemption, rectification, and healing. Sonship carries the fullness of Divinity within that which is begotten. Anyone born of God carries completely what God is.

You cannot be a priest if you are not the child of someone who operates at an altar. Not to be gender-cruel, but the Bible uses the term son. The son becomes the priest in scripture. Priesthood, however, is originally a female function. Remember that Jacob had thirteen children. One of them was a woman named Dinah. After Israel is framed as a nation, Dinah is not mentioned. In addition, Jacob adopted one son of Joseph and moved one of his own sons, Levi, into the priesthood, which should have been the function of Dinah.

Priesthood is a position of the upper life or higher self of Israel where God needs humans for certain activities. How the priesthood was taken over by males, although it was originally a female function, is a rabbinical secret of secrets. The priest is the one who opens the gateways between this dimension and the other dimensions. In other words, they are keepers of the womb.

We have to start thinking in the context of this new era. What are the feminine functions that are needed to truly heal the world? Everything that human beings do even in their fallenness usually presages what God originally intended. All the issues we see today about gender, for example, are really about our human desire to return to what God intended where there is neither male nor female. In our fallen nature, we pursue this incorrectly from a purely physical perspective, yet it is ultimately a spiritual principle. Remember that, in Christ, we are one:

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:27-28)

Therefore, the binary principle becomes one when we get into Christ, which means it can begin to produce.

Let us come back to the priesthood. In Israel, there are three types of priesthood. Every priest, unless they are initiated by adoption, carries the blood of the line of their priesthood. Priests will prophesy both according to the line that they carry and according to the function that they have within the priesthood. Sometimes the function of the priesthood is determined by certain things. The prophetic movement of your being is determined by how you function within your priesthood. If your function as a priest is flawed, then your prophecy will be flawed. If you do not understand yourself as a priest, you will end up prophesying from a position that causes you to misunderstand things and create more misunderstandings. We must, therefore, find out more about these three types of priesthood and what they mean for prophecy.

Remember, you are a son and, as a son, you are a priest as well. Priesthood has a strong feminine vibration and perspective. We know that most cultures have men as priests, but many old cultures have women as priests called priestesses. Because of the way that religion has functioned throughout history, the reality of the femininity of the priesthood was subjugated to the male principle in such a way that you had the males ministering at the altar of the womb of creation. This is not pagan—it is a reality. The temple is even built as a womb. You move from the outer across three dimensions into the Holy of Holies. The whole process within the temple is about going back into the womb of creation, into the depths of who God is, and coming back, being born completely anew through the doorways and the uterus of the temple. Biology is a metaphor for theology. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). How the temple in Israel was built aligns with how your body was built. In fact, the temple was built to mimic your body to reflect humanity in full.

Let us look at some scriptures that talk about the three types of priesthood and its different functions:

On the outside of the inner gateway there were two chambers in the inner court, one at the side of the north gate facing south, the other at the side of the south gate facing north. And he said to me, This chamber that faces south is for the priests who have charge of the temple, and the chamber that faces north is for the priests who have charge of the altar. These are the sons of Zadok, who alone among the sons of Levi may come near to the LORD to minister to him. (Ezekiel 40:44-46)

AND

Thus says the Lord GOD: No foreigner, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, of all the foreigners who are among the people of Israel, shall enter my sanctuary. But the Levites who went far from me, going astray from me after their idols when Israel went astray, shall bear their punishment. They shall be ministers in my sanctuary, having oversight at the gates of the temple and ministering in the temple. They shall slaughter the burnt offering and the sacrifice for the people, and they shall stand before the people, to minister to them. Because they ministered to them before their idols and became a stumbling block of iniquity to the house of Israel, therefore I have sworn concerning them, declares the Lord GOD, and they shall bear their punishment. They shall not come near to me, to serve me as priest, nor come near any of my holy things and the things that are most holy, but they shall bear their shame and the abominations that they have committed. Yet I will appoint them to keep charge of the temple, to do all its service and all that is to be done in it.

But the Levitical priests, the sons of Zadok, who kept the charge of my sanctuary when the people of Israel went astray from me, shall come near to me to minister to me. And they shall stand before me to offer me the fat and the blood, declares the Lord GOD. They shall enter my sanctuary, and they shall approach my table, to minister to me, and they shall keep my charge. When they enter the gates of the inner court, they shall wear linen garments. They shall have nothing of wool on them, while they minister at the gates of the inner court, and within. They shall have linen turbans on their heads, and linen undergarments around their waists. They shall not bind themselves with anything that causes sweat. And when they go out into the outer court to the people, they shall put off the garments in which they have been ministering and lay them in the holy chambers. And they shall put on other garments, lest they transmit holiness to the people with their garments. They shall not shave their heads or let their locks grow long; they shall surely trim the hair of their heads. No priest shall drink wine when he enters the inner court. They shall not marry a widow or a divorced woman, but only virgins of the offspring of the house of Israel, or a widow who is the widow of a priest. They shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the common, and show them how to distinguish between the unclean and the clean. In a dispute, they shall act as judges, and they shall judge it according to my judgments. They shall keep my laws and my statutes in all my appointed feasts, and they shall keep my Sabbaths holy. They shall not defile themselves by going near to a dead person. However, for father or mother, for son or daughter, for brother or unmarried sister they may defile themselves. After he has become clean, they shall count seven days for him. And on the day that he goes into the Holy Place, into the inner court, to minister in the Holy Place, he shall offer his sin offering, declares the Lord GOD. This shall be their inheritance: I am their inheritance: and you shall give them no possession in Israel; I am their possession. (Ezekiel 44:9-28)

There are four levels of priests with different functions. First is the high priest. The family of Aaron was chosen to be a priestly family. The high priests of God were chosen from Aaron’s family to minister to God in the temple. This was how it was set up from the beginning. You had a priest, Moses, who was not supposed to be a priest. Moses ordained Aaron to be a priest. The next one is the sons of Levi who were also priests but did not minister inside the temple. Then you