Main Center of Jewish Life in the World
by Pastor Don Elmore
November 20, 2011
2 Kings 16:1-6
In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah Ahaz the son of Jotham king of Judah began to reign.
Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign, and reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, and did not that which was right in the sight of the LORD his God, like David his father.
But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel.
And he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree.
Then Rezin king of Syria and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to war: and they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him.
At that time Rezin king of Syria recovered Elath to Syria, and drave the Jews from Elath: and the Syrians came to Elath, and dwelt there unto this day.
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2 Kings 14:21-22
And all the people of Judah took Azariah, which was sixteen years old, and made him king instead of his father Amaziah.
He built ELATH, and restored it to Judah, after that the king slept with his fathers.
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2 Kings 16:6 (Septuagint)
At that time Raason, king of Syria, recovered Ailath for Syria; and when he had driven the Jews out of Ailath the Idumeans (Edomites) went to Ailath, and have dwelt there to this day.
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2 Kings 16:6 is the first place in the Holy Scriptures where the word “Jews” occurs; and that wasn’t until the 1700’s. What does that mean to Christians? What does it mean to Jews? We will do a little investigation looking at what the Jews write and believe and compare that with the truth of the Bible. We will begin with the recent article about the celebrating of the moving of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati from the downtown area to its Clifton acreage site, 100 years ago. The college began 136 years ago and moved to another downtown site before the move to the permanent 18-acre site in Clifton, which is very near the University of Cincinnati.
“As the first permanent Jewish institution of higher learning in the New World, Hebrew Union College opened in Cincinnati with great fanfare in 1875. A throng of JEWS AND GENTILES attended the formal opening ceremony on October 3 at the Plum Street Temple, with a choir and orchestra on hand to celebrate the occasion. A Cincinnati Enquirer story described the gathering as ‘a vast audience composed of Israelites and Christians so thoroughly intermingled and to such equal numbers that it was difficult to tell what sort of a devotional gathering it was.’”
Thus begins the first two paragraphs in the story The Cincinnati Enquirer had in its newspaper last Sunday (October 30, 2011). It was under the headlines of “Hebrew Union College Embodies History of American Jews”. Before I go any further, let’s talk about the two-capital-lettered-words in the reproduced paragraph above: JEWS AND GENTILES (my emphasis).
Christians are confused by the word “Jews” and “Gentiles.” It is used in the above paragraph as the two being inclusive of the entire world population. One is either a “Jew” or a “Gentile”—isn’t that true? First of all, there is no such thing as a gentile—that is a single person. Gentile is the word for “nation.” One person cannot be a nation.
“Jew” cannot mean all 13 tribes of Israel. “Jew” tries to deceive the listener into believing that he is from Judah—either the tribe or the Kingdom. The first place in the scripture where the word “Jews” is used is 2 Kings 16:6. That means that no one from Adam all the way down to the time when the house of Israel is about to go into captivity—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Saul, David, Jonathan, Samuel, Rehoboam, Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, Abaziah, Athaliah, Joash, Amaziah, Azariah, Jotham, Jeroboam I, Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri, Omri, Ahab, Ahaziah, Joram, Jehu, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam II, Zachariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, Pekah, Hoshea, Ruth, Boaz, Gideon, Samson, Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Barak, Jesse, Eli, Elijah, Obadiah, Elisha, Job, Adam, Noah, Methuselah, etc. were never called Jews and were not Jews. The Jews, the Bible says, were not delivered out of Egypt—but the Hebrews were. When the kingdom split into two distinct kingdoms, neither one were called Jews!
“At that time Rezin king of Syria recovered Elath to Syria, and drave the Jews from Elath: and the Syrians came to Elath, and dwelt there unto this day” (2 Kings 16:6).
In the verses right before this verse; we learn that Syria and the Kingdom of Israel were allied together and they both besieged the Kingdom of Judah but “could not overcome him (King Ahaz of Judah).” Syria then traveled south from Judah and captured the Edomite city of Edom.
We see in these passages that there are different peoples: Israel, Syria, Judah and/or Jews. Israel and Syria are fighting against Judah and could not overcome them. Then Syria went to Elath and drove the Jews from that town. Elath (Ezion-geber) was a Edomite city that dwelt on the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba. Syria captured this city and drove the Edomite (future jews) from there; or Syria captured Elath and drove the men from Judea from there and then the Edomites returned (Septuagint). Elath was a port city and Judah had to have a port city to have a navy. They captured Elath and used it for their navy. Either way, the jews cannot be Israel or Syria.
Remember that Abraham had eight sons with three different women. Abraham was descended from Eber, a Hebrew. Therefore, all eight of his sons were Hebrews. His eldest, Ishmael would be a Hebrew along with the other seven. This is interesting because the Arabs are descended from Ishmael and would be at least part Hebrew. But if Abraham would have been a Jew, then all eight of his sons would be Jews also; including the eldest—Ishmael. The father of the Arabs would be a Jew! Arabs would be Jews! How absurd! Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are not Jews either!
The Israelite Kingdom, the lost, divorced ten-tribes of Israel, is never called “Jews” in the Bible. Listen to what Rabbi Israel Brodie, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth from 1948-1965 writes: “The Jews of today do not represent the whole of the twelve tribes…Modern Jewry is considered as being descended from the tribe of Judah and to a lesser extent, the tribe of Benjamin.”
Listen to this statement about the Jews: About nine out of ten people in the whole today, who go by the name of Jew, do not have one drop of Abraham’s blood in their veins and none of their ancestors ever placed their foot in the land of Palestine. Most of the eastern Jews come from a completely heathen background, a heathen tribe called the Khazars of Western Russia. They are Turco-Mongoloids and not Semites. They were converted to Judaism en mass in the seventh century. Look it up yourself: the Khazar Empire of Russia and how it accepted Judaism at once, 1300 years ago.
Less than 10% of today’s Jews come from Jacob’s brother—Esau. Between the two main divisions in the Bible, Esau’s descendants were captured by Israel’s armies. They were given the choice: Join us in our religion or die! (This was forbidden by our LORD). Most of them took the first option; and soon became the Pharisees and Sadducees and king of the Israel people. But remember, the northern kingdom had been scattered and divorced at this time; the southern kingdom had been scattered and only a few (about 40,000) had returned to their former Promised Land. Louis Finkelstein, rabbi and head of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, said on page 21 of the foreword of his first edition of The Pharisees, the Sociological Background of Their Faith. “Judaism became Pharisaism, Pharisaism became Talmudism, Talmudism became Medieval Rabbinism, and Medieval Rabbinism became Modern Rabbinism. But throughout these changes in name, the spirit of the ancient Pharisees survives, unaltered.”
Descendants of Cain--Canaanites—Shelahites--Edomites—Ashkenazim and other mixtures go by the name of “Jews” in today’s world. Jews want to be associated with the tribe of Judah or the kingdom of Judah---but it never refers to the northern kingdom of Israel. They want to be from the tribe or kingdom of Judah--for that is where the kingdom blessing of ruler ship that was given to King David. They are not from the tribe of Judah (even the bastard seed of the Shelahites is not really from Judah) or from the Kingdom of Judah—but they want to be because that is where the covenant blessing of the scepter was given by GOD. The scepter blessing was with David (Judah) and his descendants.
From a speech given in 1976, The Jew and the American Bicentennial, by the longest living teacher in Cincinnati Hebrew Union College history; Jacob R. Marcus who was teaching at the school when he was over 100 years old, said: “Rejoice that as Reformers you are part of the greatest religious revolution in Judaism since your prophetic forebears broke with their pagan Israelitish coreligionists 2500 years ago.” What did he say? What happened 2500 years ago from 1976? That the Southern Kingdom of Judah broke with their pagan Israelitish Northern Kingdom of Israel two and half millennium ago. The Hebrew Union College, which trains rabbis and teachers of its reformed Judaism, says that they are Judah; when if you study history you will find that they became most of the Pharisees and Sadducees in the days of Jesus’ birth, but were actually separate and different from Judah. When the Edomites were forced to either believe the religion of the Kingdom of Judah or be killed, the majority of them, needless to say, choose to live (intermediate period between the two testaments of the Bible). They soon took over the political rule of Judah—they were the majority of its kings, priest and officers at the time of our Savior’s birth.
Randa and I went to one of Lily’s support group meetings yesterday at the Springdale Vineyard Church. We meet in a little room under the sanctuary. There was actually a meeting going on while we were meeting. But I went to the bathroom and there were Bibles available free to take. So I took one. It was called The Story of God.
But it was only the New Testament; huge mistake. There was a small article at the beginning of the book entitled: The Drama of the Bible in Six Acts. I just want to make a short statement about this book…because it totally omits the relation between the House of Israel and the House of Judah. They fail to mention that Jesus came to die for both of these entities and that the gospel of the kingdom was preached to both in the New Testament.
They said that the wrong people nailed Jesus to the cross—they say it was the Romans, not the Jews. They write: “Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel’s story and a new start for the entire human race.” They, in another place, say: “But the Bible claims that this defeat (crucifixion of Jesus Christ) is actually God’s greatest victory. How? Jesus willingly gives up His life as a sacrifice on behalf of the nation, on behalf of the world.” This is where they are wrong.
But what was the situation about the northern kingdom? The northern kingdom (the House of Israel) was taken into captivity many years previous to this time by the Assyrian army when they were divorced by GOD. When they were divorced from Him they were:
- Jazreel: Scattered,
- Loruhamah: Lacking any mercy of God and,
- Loammi: No longer the people of God (Hosea 1).
But the promise was given to the House of Israel (holders of the birthright promise) that they would once again be rejoined with the Kingdom of Judah (holders of the scepter promise) and would both be a part of the new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31 and Hebrews 8:8).
“For finding fault with them, he saith, BEHOLD, THE DAYS COME, SAITH THE LORD, WHEN I WILL MAKE A NEW COVENANT WITH THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL AND WITH THE HOUSE OF JUDAH.”
Romans 9:24-26 quotes from Hosea 2:23 and 1:10:
“Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?
As he saith also in Hosea, I will call them my people, which were not my people, and her beloved, which was not beloved.
And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living GOD.”
Who were the gentiles that the Apostle Paul is writing about? This is a very important question because most of the entire Christian world answers it wrong, including the Vineyard Church and Answers in Genesis: It is the House of Israel; who was without the anointed ones, were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made near by the blood of Christ.
So the “gentiles” in the scripture usually refers to only the House of Israel which became the nations of Israel; not to all the nations that lived in the rest of the world. They are the only ones that the scriptures say were the people of God, and then were not his people because he divorced them, and then were once again the people of God—because after His life, death and resurrection (perfect sacrifice) was the ONLY WAY that He could then remarry Israel again.
So, the Cincinnati newspaper article that referred to “Jews and Gentiles” meaning the whole world of people is incorrect. “Jew” and “Gentile” refers to the “House of Judah” and the “House of Israel”—both part of the Israel people—recipients of the Abrahamic covenant. These two, the new man of Ephesians 2, are the two kingdoms who the “gospel of the kingdom” was preached to in the New Testament.
Now, let us notice how the teacher from Cincinnati Hebrew Union College, Jacob R. Marcus, began one of his speeches in explaining why their Jewish fathers became patriots in the early days of America’s Revolution:
“Ours is the greatest Jewry the world has ever known. There are almost 6,000,000 Jews in this country and 10,000 societies. This means that every man and woman here may hope someday to become president, at least of a Jewish organization. We are not newcomers: we are as old as America herself. When Columbus touched land in October, 1492, the first man over the side was probably the Jewish interpreter Luis de Torres; in the 1640’s, when Miles Standish and John Alden were sill alive, a Jewish merchant walked the streets of Boston. When we recall that under the British no Jew could hold public office we will understand why our fathers became patriots in 1775. They were not free.
In 1782 a Virginia congressman went to Front Street in Philadelphia to borrow some hard cash from a Jew there. The Continental currency in that delegate’s pocket was not worth a continental. That Jew helped keep that Virginian in office; and in that same decade that congressman became the chief architect of a constitution which made it possible for Jews to become American citizens. The Jew was Haym Salomon; the congressman was James Madison.”
Why isn’t Haym Salomon in the nation’s elementary, middle and high school history books? Haym Salomon came to these shores in the year 1775, one year before America declared their Independence. Polish-born, Salomon—a Rothschild agent—then 35 years old; became almost overnight an impassioned patriot as he peddled among the American troops who were stationed on New York’s northern borders. He was so well known that when the British occupied New York City, they arrested him and threw him into one of their infamous military prisons.
He might have died there had he not been released by the German mercenaries who served the British. It is very probable that a German-Jewish quartermaster who was working with the “Hessians” convinced their general to free and employ Haym. Salomon went to work for them, but operated underground as an American agent inducing German officers to resign and helping French and American prisoners to escape.
But the British finally caught up with Haym’s activities. If he would have not fled, he would certainly have been executed by the British. He escaped to Philadelphia (the future capital of the United States), leaving behind his wife and infant child. He quickly became the consul general of France and the treasurer of the French army. By 1781, six years after he had arrived in America, he was probably the best known bill broker in the country, and it was in that capacity that Robert Morris, the Superintendent of Finance, employed him to sell the bills of friendly governments.
With the surrender of Cornwallis ready to happen, the Americans needed large sums of money to equip their troops. Salomon’s job was to serve Morris: as he was to transmute paper into gold and this Haym did.
There were many delegates to the Continental Congress who were often in need to borrow money to tide them over. They often appealed to Salomon for help—and not in vain. James Madison wrote to his friend Edmund Randolph how he had been loaned money by Haym Salomon many times.
Haym Salomon was a most generous contributor to the first Jewish synagogue in Philadelphia. Haym, as a member of the board of the new synagogue, joined in a vigorous protest to Pennsylvania’s authoritative Council of Censors, asking them to remove the offensive Christian test oath. The protestors accomplished nothing. Two years later Haym died. But five years after Haym Salomon died; Pennsylvania did remove the discriminatory clause (a major mistake).
In 1941, on Wacker Drive in present-day Chicago there is a monument commemorating the services of Salomon to the land that he came to live—America. General George Washington stands tall in the middle of a pedestal of black marble flanked on his right by Robert Morris and on his left by Haym Salomon. Underneath the monument it reads:
The government of the United States
which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution
no assistance, requires that they who live under
its protection should demean themselves as good citizens
in giving it on all occasions their effective support.President George Washington 1790
Now, let’s get into the history of the Jew in the United States. The first Jewish settlers arrived in Dutch-ruled New Amsterdam in 1654. They were 23 Sephardim or Spanish-Portuguese Jews. They had fled South America as they were kicked out of Brazil just as they had been kicked out of many European nations in their past history. They, after being thrown out of Brazil, got onto a boat and came to New Amsterdam, present day New York. Peter Stuyvesant, who was the leader of New Amsterdam, actually wrote a letter to his financial backers—Dutch West India Company--asking them to tell him that the Jews could not stay here in America. This was the turning point of America when they informed Peter to let them stay—for they were in too much debt to the Jews and did not want to cause any trouble. So, they stayed. And America’s troubles began just as the Bible describes.
After a few hundred more Sephardim arrived, by 1720, they were no longer the majority among American Jews. Intermingled with the Sephardim, ever since their very first days on the American shores, were the Ashkenazim: German and East European Jews from the Ashkenazim of Russia (Turkish descent). By the 1850’s and the 1860”s, East European Jews began to pour in, thrust from their native Russia by the hard times that they were experiencing there. By the 1880’s, over 2 million East European Jews came to the United States and settled in two megalopolises:
- Atlantic “supercity” reaching form the Potomac Valley to the New Hampshire border.
- Pacific “colossus” which strides from San Diego to the northern shores of San Francisco Bay
A generation before, Rabbi Isaac M. Wise, was born near Prague in Bohemia in 1819. He came to the United States in 1846 and was elected “Rabbi” in Albany, New York. From the outset, Wise wanted to promote a united, progressive American Jewish population. He encountered opposition from Jews of a more traditional bent and from those who wanted radical reform.
Wise moved to Cincinnati in 1854 because it was a thriving, growing city with the second largest Jewish population and was located in the middle of the country. He didn’t want to establish a Jewish college in New York City because there was too much opposition there from the Orthodox and more radical reformers.
He was convinced that America would become the MAIN CENTER OF JEWISH LIFE IN THE WORLD, and he saw Cincinnati as its Jewish capitol. He worked hard and finally founded the Hebrew Union College in 1875.
But ninety-two years before the founding of this Jewish college, in the year 1783, New York was the only state in which the Jews enjoyed full political equality—for New York was the only state of the thirteen where Jews were privileged to hold office. The Jews in the other twelve states were unemancipated. When the federal constitution was approved by a majority of the states in 1788, the Jews were satisfied: Article VI declared categorically that no religious test would ever be required for any office under the federal government.
ARTICLE VI
“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
The adoption of the United States Constitution was one of the most important events in the entire history of Diaspora Jewry. There had been nothing like it since 212 C.E., when the Emperor Caracalla granted citizenship to all free men in the Roman Empire. American Jewry was the modern world’s first free Jewry. One can well understand why the Jews of Philadelphia joined so gladly in the Federal Parade of July 4, 1788. In this, the greatest spectacle that America had yet witnessed, [the worst in American History—an ecumenical travesty, just like what happened when the Hebrew Union College moved to Clifton] the Christian clergy walked arm in arm with “Rabbi” Jacob R. Cohen. When the parade was over, the tired but happy Children of Israel (Jews) clustered around a kosher table of their own at Bush Mill to munch crackers, salmon, almonds and raisins.
Lord Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations, said, “God has given us many faiths, but only one world in which to co-exist. May [the work of Coexist] help all of us to cherish our commonalities and feel enlarged by our differences.” As Ken Kemble wrote this quote, Ken then added: “Ugh! Pardon me whilst I gag!” My sentiments exactly.
There were still twelve other states which withheld holding office from Jews; they were slow to honor the commitments implicit in their individual bills of rights. It took 100 years after New York emancipated its Jews before the last sluggard, New Hampshire, permitted Jews and Catholics to serve in a legislative office—in 1877.
Today, Sephardi and Ashkenazi—Iberian, German and East European—have been coming together to create a new amalgam, a new type, a new man, the “American” Jew. The ethnic adjectives proudly pointing to European provenance are stubbornly but surely beginning to fall away.
As we prepare to enter into the twenty-first century, a new Jew is on the rise, the child of all that has come to pass here and of all that came to pass in three millennia of world Jewish history.
The new Jew of tomorrow is already with us. He will be a literate, cultured gentleman, a college graduate, sympathetic to the arts and sciences and anything but parochial in his understanding of the hopes and aspirations of his neighbors. And like those about him, he will seek to gain his livelihood as a self-employed white-collar worker, and as a man of the professions. In this age of industrialism there is no other path open, certainly not for the Jew. The children of the next generation will all be democrats—with a small “d”—for Jews can survive in a Christian world only when there is at least tolerance for the spiritual dissident (that means that Christians will have tolerance and love for a person who says that their Savior was a bastard, who was the son of a Roman soldier and an Israelitish whore, and who now is dwelling in hell, boiling in a cauldron full of body fluids). No matter how it denominates itself, the majority of Jews will always be found in that political party which respects minorities, bears the diversity of ethnic groups—and shows friendship for the State of Israel. Do you remember the article in last Sunday’s Enquirer about diversity in the schools—multiculturalism is Jewish?
Marcus, continues on:
“We believe in the right of every individual to live with his conscience and to accept in Judaism only that which will enable him to be a free person living on the highest ethical plane….but we do look forward to the advent of a Messianic Age where men will act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God.
Let us rejoice. We have gone far since September 1775, when the officers of the Jewish congregation in New York City met for the last time as second-class British subjects; we have gone far since August, 1776, when most members of that congregation went into exile as Americans rather than live under British rule.
We are liberals, for our laymen and our rabbis preach the gospel of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. There is but one God and one humanity. We have emancipated ourselves from the dead hand of authority.”
But that is one of the world’s great untruths! For that is exactly what most of the world believes…that all men are descended from one man—Noah and/or Adam and that there is only one race—the human race? This heresy comes right from the mouth of the antichrists their selves! Freemasons, Judeo-Christians, Jewish religions, Universal churches, Roman Catholic churches, Answers in Genesis, Protestants, etc. all teach this damning doctrine! It is the gospel of Judaism; not Christianity!
In Deuteronomy, chapter 7, Moses tells Israel that they are forbidden to marry anyone of the Canaanites (future jews). No missionaries are to be sent to see if any Canaanite would believe—for not a one can ever believe. Moses tells them that the anger of the LORD will be kindled against them because they will cause you to serve other gods. Israel, at that time only, was commanded by GOD to annihilate the Canaanites in total, but they must also destroy the Canaanites’ altars, break down their images, and cut down their groves and burn their graven images with fire. The reason was: “For thou are an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7:6). And this was said seven books ahead of the first time the word “Jews” is used in the Holy Scripture.
Moses, a little bit later said: “Only the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day” (Deuteronomy 10:15). God chose the seed of their fathers….seems like the Bible is racial!
Cincinnati can give the Hebrew Union College almost a full page article declaring how much they approve of it—but our Savior told the fathers of Hebrew Union College that they had another father and that they are not our brother! There are three main groups of people in the world today:
- Israelites: the covenant people of God (Old Testament and New Testament).
- House of Judah: Judah, Benjamin and Levi with David and his descendants as their king—Jesus Christ was born of the house of David; Jesus Christ came to shed His blood for them—His sheep.
- House of Israel: Ten tribes of Israel; served other gods and became pagan; divorced by God—became the nations of Israel (Gentiles); Jeremiah brought to them the ruler ship of David by marriage; Jesus Christ came to shed His blood for them—His sheep.
- Jews: House of Cain, Canaanites, Shelahites, Edomites, Ashkenazim, etc.; Mixed breed, non-covenant people who call themselves Jews; and who hates Jesus Christ and anyone who believes on Him. They murdered our Savior Jesus Christ and His followers. They are now trying to set up the New World Order without Jesus Christ! As they say where Jesus is now, that is where they will be.
- All other nations in the world; non-covenant people. Whoever blesses Abraham shall be blest; whoever curses Abraham shall be cursed.
We must constantly rejoice with our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ who showed His love for our fathers and His love for their seed. We, as the recipients of the everlasting covenant made with the sheep—we have constantly heeded to the other nations; instead of listening and following he laws, statutes and judgments of our GOD.
For example, we asked GOD to abduct from His throne over our nation and to allow us to choose a king from among our own people. How dumb can we be? We, in America, can’t even do that. We asked GOD to step down from off the throne ruling over us and have a king ruled by a fallen descendant of Israel?
GOD quickly gave us David and his descendants to be king, but most of Israel rejected this idea. They even rejected who the priests could be—choosing other tribes to be their priests instead of the tribe of Levi. The Bible tells us the loving story of who GOD could remarry after His divorce: the same wife that He married in the Old Testament. He could do this by dying in her place, so that she could remarry the risen Christ. He did and paid the price for us…there was no other way! Blessed be the LORD GOD of Israel, whose mercy goes on for generation after generation!
