The Kingly Priests (07)
Reading:
Job 1:
5 And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that
Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning and offered
burnt offerings according to the number of them all, for Job said, it may be
that my sons have cursed God in their
hearts. Thus did Job continually.
Revelation 1:
6 And hath made us kings and priests
unto God and His Father…
In our previous meditations, we
have been saying that Job was a priest according to the revelations made to
that generation. We also said that his burnt offerings were to become more
specialised in the Mosaic offerings which in effect was according to the
patterns of heaven to be later unveiled in the second and last Adam, Jesus
Christ. This, we found was the hidden mystery elaborated on by Apostle Paul. We
continue in this strain for now.
Job was a priest after an order
of the patriarchs; we are priests and the Lord Jesus is a priest for ever
called after the order of Melchizedek
The Wisdom of Man.
Man’s God-independent and
self-generating light has offered a search for what he calls the philosopher-king.
This has preoccupied the soul and the intellect of man since the over two
millennial Plato made this proposal. The debate still rages, seeking how to
produce the entity that can effectively govern mankind. The philosopher-king is
the thirst of the vain man in the wilderness, out of the realm of God’s life.
God yearns, not for philosopher-kings but priestly kings. He has, for over
twenty centuries, been calling, directing, coordinating and raising priests who
are kings or if this should be turned about, kings who are priests. It is the
same to him: he that is made a priest is also a king; if the Lord makes one king,
then is he also a priest. The one is the same and the same is one. No age or
generation was without God’s priests and kings. The execution of the wisdom of
the redemption of man was carefully put together by heaven and tilted towards
the raising and making of priests and kings to God.
Priesthood is not a sudden event
to be pushed to the rapture or heaven or the resurrection; it is a continuing
process. It was not an afterthought of God; it was part of the original plan
just as redemption. Before the end of all things, the blessed ones will be
found to be those that have become kings and priests unto the Lord. This is the
real excitement of redemption, not escaping hell, or leading a problems-free
life.
The priests, as shown in the
children of Aaron, were not to inherit anything with their brethren. I am,
said the Lord, thy part and thine
inheritance... The priests posses the Lord and they serve Him; they
minister to Him and share with Him. This is redemption. God is the inheritance
of the saints, the church, the royal priesthood, built up with lively stones as
spiritual house; they are the habitation of God. This quest of the heart was
part of the apostolic prayer of Paul: ….that
the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the
hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the
saints. The Amplified version puts the last phrase in modern English as …his glorious inheritance in the saints.
This should be the daily hunger-prayer of all the saints of God. It is not out
of place to take thought for personal cares, careers, goals and purposes, but
this is the major hunger of our souls. Most of us are yet to know the purpose
of His calling beyond being saved from sin, saved from hell and saved to go to
heaven or, more, saved to fly out of the planet earth in the rapture so as to
escape the horrors that will be unleashed on the earth. Kingly priesthood is
it.
O Father, grant that we will know the
purpose of your calling, our eyes of understanding being enlightened.
Especially grant that we will be able to know, identify, regard and pay full
attention to the value of your glorious inheritance in us. We are God’s
inheritance to offer upon my altar, to
burn incense, to wear the ephod. That again is priesthood: ordained to
reconcile man to God, taken from among
men [is] ordained for men in things pertaining
to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins. That is
why the priests are teachers who show the righteous ways of the Lord through
their own lives, displaying Manhood or Son-ship. The first Adam failed to reach
Manhood; the second and last Adam did.
The last Adam is today ministering
to the saints, by His Spirit, his life – the qualities of this life of His. God
is the inheritance of the saints. He has made us meet to be partakers of the
inheritance of the saints in light; we are partakers of God, our
inheritance.
Priests possess God and are possessed
of God and sharing in His nature, glory and eternal wisdom and thus are capable
judges. This is ruler ship; it is the kingship dimension of the saints. Kings
rule; kings judge. These kings’ jurisdiction of judgment extends beyond men to
angels. Know ye not that we shall judge
the angels. The priests of God are carriers of awesome power. They are
capable of evaluating things in the light of God’s truth and mind, matching
them with God’s judgments. Judgment means discernment; it means ability to
discriminate between or shift through values; it is about holding forth a
divine searchlight to examine things. Judgment also means dispensing justice.
Only in the one in whom the Father
lives, His priest that has come to Manhood, who has possessed a level of the
Lord can stand for the Father’s mind in all issues of life. Yes, the kingly
priests of God are on earth guiding, shaping events, determining directions and
giving accurate judgments; they are judges on the throne of their God. Kingly
status is not regalia and a seat called throne; it is about the grant of
authority; it is about issues responding to divine thoughts in our spoken
commands. A king is full of authority in his domain; his wish is the law, the
rule by which things exist. This is therefore the kingly priest – they establish
and enforce the righteous will and mind of God on earth. Awesome. Priests as
kings reigning as kings on behalf of God are capable of bringing judgment and
destruction. Those angels dispensing judgments in the book of Revelation look
like priestly kings to us.
Present where the priests were
I found myself, the first day
of January, in Ilorin, Nigeria where I was involved in a prayer session. The
session was led by Brother Fredrick Adegoke who is a professor in the
university. The people raised all sorts of judgments against all manners of
men. Then at a point, the brother was declaring judgment on Osama bin Ladden
and…., he was trying to remember one other name when another brother helped out
and shouted Gaddafi. “Yes,” answered back the brother leading the prayer. “That
is him. I was looking for him in the spirit but he was trying to hide, to
dodge; he wanted to escape the spirit.” Then he declared judgment.
At that time, Gaddafi and Osama
were secured, especially Gaddafi. There was no remote possibility that anything
could happen to him in the beginning of that year. A couple of months more,
Libya, Gaddafi’s country erupted in a revolutionary zest and zeal. And soon it
was all over; so also was Osama too. Talk of priestly kings. Several years ago,
a priestly king who was an Oxford scholar by the name of Derek Prince, lived as a missionary in Kenya. This was just
immediately after the country’s independence from Britain. One day, he and his
congregation were praying when there was a vision of a red horse galloping up.
The missionary immediately identified
that red horse as communism. The praying people declared that communism would
not take over the land and that decree stayed till today.
The kingly priests are people,
who having come to maturity, can raise, pull down and establish as they are led
by the spirit - that we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness
and honesty. I am sure that the history of Africa will take a new and complete
turn about for the best from the present staring genocide, arranged pogrom and
ethnic cleansing as well as economic hardship if the priestly princes of the
nations of the continent can stake their stand and act. Presently, where there
seems to be a semblance of peace in the continent, there is a huge diversion of
these priests to building the kingdom-earth; showing one another how much of
God they each have by measuring the blessings of their great achievements of built
super-amphitheatres well able to seat hundreds of thousands of gospel-raised millionaires.
All motivational stuff! But we know that Jesus did not step into planet earth
to raise millionaires but to raise sons, priests unto God, if you like. Distraction
is to be so busy for God and be engaged in doing some other things to fail to
know the heart of God, the Father and, like Israel, to fail to know the day of
our visitation.
Most African Christians ape
their North America counterparts to a fault; but they fail to imbibe the
priestly culture of those they imitate. These are people who, even in their
frivolities, have learned not to take lightly the Father’s heart concerning
their nations. They are hardly tempted to take their eyes off the issues of the
heart of the Father concerning the nations. They could be accused of many
faults, but it is evidence that the evil one has not been able to hit them with
as much impunity as he has Africa nations and peoples. Let the priests note.
Though these three men,
promised the Lord, Noah, Daniel and Job,
were present in it, they should
deliver but their own souls by their righteousness. These were priests of a
kind. They could avert calamities as well as establish righteousness. The three
of them majorly succeeded in their days: Noah saved eight souls including him
and several animals; Daniel stood in intercession for Israel and Job prayed for
his friends as ordered by God. But later priests, in the days of Ezekiel, had
been occupied with other things other than their priestly functions and
righteousness had but disappeared from the land, just as in our own days, hence
God’s judgment of dispersal with promise of salvation just for the righteous
individuals. For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and
if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel
of God. It is time the Church woke up from slumber and come to her place.
Lord, we pray that you will
direct our hearts and desires to your heart. Cause us to hear what you are
saying at this hour and that we may go in the same direction as you. We pray
that we may really wake up to the heartbeat of the Father and quit these
present frivolities. Of course, we are hardly able to know how far we have
departed from the priestly responsibilities of
teaching and pursuing righteousness. Return our hearts to you; cause our
eyes to see and know and repent. Thank you, Father.
Number 18: 20
Ephesians 1: 18
1 Samuel 2: 28
Hebrew 8: 3
Colosians 1:12
1 Corithians 6: 3,
4
1 Timothy 2: 2
Ezekiel 14: 14
1 Peter 4: 17
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