Cheryl Schatz

I noticed that keeping my comments shorter, I am saying “Mark, Mark, Mark” a whole lot more. Hope you like your name used a lot 🙂 Anyway if I get tired of saying “Mark” then just know it is for you unless I use someone else’s name.

If we are to always take it literary you contradict yourself. You used Exodus 19 as ‘proof’ but then said the Hebrew priesthood never came to fulfilment? Did God lie or fail with Israel in your view?

No, God didn’t lie. He still has the promise for them. He said “if” and “if” is conditional. When they align with God’s conditions, they too will fulfill their calling as priests.

If Romans 12 is literal why dont we literary sacrifice ourselves. Like it or not, the ‘priesthood’ is symbolism and should not be used as supposed evidence to support the view that women can be pastors/elders.

We are literally offering our bodies as a sacrifice. It isn’t on an altar made of stones, but it is an offering. It isn’t symbolic. Just as those who literally offering their bodies to sin, we literally offer our bodies for righteousness.

Romans 6:13 | and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

Or are you thinking that those who offer (or present) their bodies to sin is not anything that is literal but only symbolic? I don’t think you will find symbolic sin in the list of sins but literal sins are sure there.

ou said “Can you back up your claim that there are “real” priests and only “symbolic” priests? The onus is on you to prove that there is only symbolism.”

yes i can- scripture only ever had men from the tribe of Levi a ‘priests’ in the real sense. If you think women filled this role show me.

You misunderstand me. I didn’t say that women would join in with the Levitical priesthood nor did I say that God’s promise came to pass. It did not. On the contrary, the Levitical priesthood would be part of the whole – the priesthood of the nation and “if” and “when” Israel meets God’s conditions, they will all be “ministers” for God.

THe rest of Israel was symbolised as kingdom of priests- all genders included. How else could God say that they were a kingdom of priests if it is not understood this way.

Hey, my friend, that is not a “proof”. It is just a statement without proof. And remember that God spoke about a future time when they would be priests. Since it hasn’t happened yet, what proof do you rely on that makes one priesthood literal and the whole as symbolic? If all are “ministers of our God” then is that not literal?

It would make God a liar and untrustworthy. How do you reconcile this?

It is easy to reconcile. It hasn’t happened yet for them. It has happened for us. We (the body of Christ) are all priests. We are all “ministers of our God”.

Peter saids in his first letter “But you are a chosen PEOPLE, a royal priesthood, a holy NATION, a people belonging to God, that you may DECLARE THE PRAISES OF HIM WHO CALLED YOU OUT OF DARKNESS INTO HIS WONDERFUL LIGHT”. If this is not metaphorical for our role as ‘priesthood’, how is it then literal. The fact is, you have entangled the literal Levitical Priesthood of the Hebrew cult with the with the metaphorical understanding of the people of God as a kingdom of Priests.

Other then what I have already said, we are literally declaring the praises of Him who called us out of darkness. Every time you give your testimony and praise God, you are literally declaring God’s glory and His praise. It isn’t symbolic. It is literal and spiritual. It is our spiritual service.

I think the problem that you have, Mark, is that you think that a priest “serves” only by killing lambs and offering bloody sacrifices. This was a temporal duty of a few. But the permanent duties that Israel will come into will not revolve around the death of an animal, but of spiritual service as witnesses of the LORD God Almighty. The work of a priest in animal sacrifice was merely a shadow of the reality which is in Christ. The priests pointed towards Christ by offering of the animals in death and the priests after Christ point back to the bloody sacrifice on the cross. The priesthood has changed with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.