The priesthood was there to satisfy the conditions for God to dwell amongst His People. But as in all history there is always cycles of revival and decline. We encounter the pinnacle generation of Aaron in Moses’ generation, then we contrast that with the generation in which Samuel was born into. 

God had declared His priests corrupt because they exchanged the glory for what was immediate and what was satisfying to the soul. Contempt for the spiritual had taken root. The high priest became blind and deaf. No longer able to see the Lord’s Will, nor hear His Word. He let his sons run riot and profane what is holy. 

Could it be we are leading the following generations to not even know what is sacred, what is profane?

When we consider that Eli and his sons died the same day…the Ark taken…the nation defeated, we then wonder what is happening today?

It seems we have a similar situation today…God’s servants have become blind and deaf. The priesthood has no joy, it is now a mechanism to satisfy a human agenda, not a privilege to dwell and work in the glory that brings life. We see pastor after elder committing crimes, under the cover of the hush hush. We then lose heart when we hear churches close, pastors falling. 

Then we hear of cancer rampant in God’s servants, sicknesses, and deaths. Paul even says that 1 Corinthians 11, where he cites the fact that death had come on some because of not discerning and having proper respect for the Communion Table. I just think maybe we accept that sickness comes because we are in a fallen world, when it is corporate sin which plunges the whole into judgment. 

Now, when we speak of judgment today, many will attack and say we are forgetting grace. But when Grace has continually cried out to us for years, to come away, find the Lord afresh, stop self seeking, and we reject, what remains? Is Grace inexhaustible? No. We reject the Cross and its work, we become its enemies. And that places us alongside those who have not received Christ. 

The priesthood, the ministry, is not an occupation, but a vocation to follow Joshua’s example, who dwelt in the shadow of the Glory. 

When David failed to bring in the Ark to Jerusalem, the Ark turned aside to the house of Obed-Edom, and how they respected the glory…that they were called near to God, forever. 

In these days of deception, death, disease, it pays to live in the place ordained for us. Anything else is religion. For religion, the curtain was torn, and the priests clothed in shame. It only took some 40 years from Jesus’ death to have Titus from Rome to demolish the temple and spread the people over the world. 

It is time to come back to our true call, a corporate priesthood, doing things that so align with heaven that heaven comes to earth. In revival time there is no sickness, and no death that takes hold, but each comes into a vibrancy of life. This is what we need today. 

Shalom