By Theodore & Walid Shoebat
For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah, and in connection with that tribe Moses said nothing about priests. This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life. For it is witnessed of him,
“You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 7:14-17)
INTRODUCTION
A great slaughter, long ago, brought about a curse that scattered a great darkness, that shattered a sinister priesthood. Many murders were done, blood was shed, a great crime was committed, and while it was forgotten many centuries later, the cries of the slain were still heard by eternal ears; the blood soaked earth was still remembered by the eternal mind. A curse was placed on the posterity of the criminal — Levi — that his line would be scattered. The descendants of the murderer had forgotten the curse, and they were enjoying their power, thinking that it was never going away. But then they were reminded by the Messiah Who was foretold to them, Who they had forgotten as they got lost in their own prestige, that their end was nigh, that the curse was going to be fulfilled. We are speaking of the end of the Levitical priesthood, and its replacement by the priesthood of Christ. But its not just this — here we write of eternal light, eternal darkness, heinous crimes, the vanquishing of evil, the fulfillment of a curse, and the shattering of a sinister tribalism.
THE CURSE OF LEVI
The Levitical line was bound to end; a curse was put upon its patriarch, Levi, because he had orchestrated the mass murder of a group of Canaanite converts to the faith of Israel. These were the Canaanites of Shechem; they had agreed to convert to Judaism, and showed their commitment by getting circumcised. And as they were fatigued and weary from the circumcision, Levi, alongside Simeon, ambushed these converts to the faith of Israel, and butchered them all. Levi thought that he had gotten away with it, he thought that he had done the right thing, because the prince of Shechem had slept with his sister. The prince had made a deal with Jacob — Levi’s father — that he could marry his daughter as long as he and his people would convert to the faith of Israel. The agreement was made. But Levi did not want to allow these people into the fold of Israel, since they were subjects of a prince who ‘defiled’ his sister. He found something, a reason, a justification, to inflict bloodshed on another race. He thought he had slipped under the radar of eternal justice. But his father, lying on his death bed, reminded him of his crime and laid a curse on him, telling him that his line — which was to be the priestly clan of Israel — was going to be scattered. Fast forward thousands of years later, when Christ was walking the earth.
The Levites had forgotten about the curse, but there was Christ, to remind them that it was coming. He told them a parable. The owner of a vineyard allows some people to be tenants on his field to work the land. The owner sends a servant to the vineyard to gather some fruit, but the tenants beat him up. The owner sends a second servant, but he too suffers the blows of the wicked tenants. A third servant is sent only to suffer the same violence. I will send my son, said the vineyard’s owner. Surely, they will not lay a hand on him, he thought. The wicked tenants did not just lay their hands on his son, but killed him. And what shall the owner do to these wicked tenants? He destroys them all. After Christ said this parable, the priests desired to lay hands on Christ; for they knew that He was speaking about them. He was foretelling to them: that curse placed on the blood tainted Levi, for the crime he had committed, for the mass murder he had done, is nigh — your end is near. Levi did not want those Canaanites to enter the nation of Israel, and so he butchered Canaanite converts to his religion.
His line would be the priestly clan, and it would be replaced by the priesthood of Melchizedek who was a Canaanite king. So Levi exterminated Canaanites who were willing to be a part of his nation, only for his posterity to be scattered, to be replaced by a Canaanite priesthood. In one spark, the tribalism of the Jews is overthrown; at the dawn of a new epoch, Levi is toppled, and the eternal order held by his victims’ ancestor, triumphs.
Josephus tells us that Jerusalem’s “original founder was a Canaanite chief, called in the native tongue ‘Righteous King’ [or Melchizedek]; for such indeed he was. In virtue thereof he was the first to officiate as priest of God and, being the first to build the temple, gave the city, previously called Solyma [or Salem], the name of Jerusalem.” (War, 6.10)
The Lord says to my Lord: “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (Psalm 110:4) Levi butchered Canaanites, only for his line to later be dissipated, and eclipsed by the eternal order of a Canaanite. Levi did not want these foreigners to enter the tabernacle of Israel. And what did Christ tell the Pharisees? “For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.” (Matthew 23:13) Is this not what Levi did to the Canaanites? Were these Canaanites not more than willing to enter the gates of Israel’s religion? They were shut out, tricked and deceived, murdered. When Christ told the parable of the vineyard, He spoke of how the wicked tenants who murdered the son of the vineyard’s owner, had to be destroyed. And what does this mean? That the vineyard of God needed new tenants to tend to the vineyard. Christ was telling the priests, You will be replaced. And this is why they sought for His life, this is why they wanted Him dead: because He was a threat to their establishment, their power. They did not think about the curse that was put on Levi, and tell themselves: our order will come to end. They wanted their order to last forever, but their eyes did not settle on what their own Scripture said:
“Simeon and Levi are brothers;
weapons of violence are their swords.Let my soul come not into their council;
O my glory, be not joined to their company.
For in their anger they killed men,
and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen.Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce,
and their wrath, for it is cruel!
I will divide them in Jacob
and scatter them in Israel.” (Genesis 49:5-7)
“You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (Psalm 110:4) Levi’s priesthood was destined to come to an end, but the order of a Canaanite was to last forever. It is quite amazing how eternal truths work. We read the Bible and see how its filled with stories of the Hebrews; conquest of Canaanites — amongst other nations; and yet, there is only one line in the Old Testament about the order of Melchizedek, only one line about the curse that was to end Levi’s line. And so, with man’s common way of thinking, he does not see a future in a non-Jew, but puts all the emphasis on physical Israel, because there are so many verses on literal Israel and so little on Melchizedek. Yet it is on Melchizedek where we see the order of our salvation; it is on a foreigner where we see the priesthood of our Savior; it is on a man who has no connection with Jewish blood where we see man’s destiny.
What did the wicked tenants say amongst themselves before they spilt the blood of the son of the vineyard’s owner? “Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours.” (Luke 20:14) They wanted to steal the eternal priesthood, because they wanted to last forever, not realizing that this inheritance of an everlasting priesthood is in Melchizedek, a member of a people who their precious forefather, Levi, murdered.
On the branches of the rotting tree of their priesthood, they desperately clung, trying to escape the inevitable curse that sprung out from the mouth of their forefather Jacob for the crime that was done by their beloved ancestor Levi. The crime was forgotten by their tickled ears, but the eternal memory had not forgotten. The wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24) was on the earth, in the flesh, to tell the sons of Levi that the curse was upon them, and their priesthood was going to be shattered.
What did Christ say after He gave the parable of the wicked tenants? “What then is this that is written: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’? Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces” (Luke 20:17-18) And what was the curse on Levi? “I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel.” (Genesis 49:7) They went against the Cornerstone, and their priesthood was scattered to pieces. After Christ warned them that whoever falls on the chief cornerstone (Him) will be shattered, “The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them” (Luke 20:19).
They wanted to kill Christ because they knew that He was the threat to their priesthood. They did not care for divine truth, but power was all they sought after. This was most clearly seen after Christ resurrected Lazarus from the dead. When the man who was once deceased was now seen alive, “the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus.” (John 12:10-11) The sons of Levi — the chief priests — were clinging onto their power so much, that they were even willing to murder a man who was brought back to life, because the One Who resurrected him was going to end their priesthood.
CHRIST AND THE DEATH OF LEVI
The sons of Levi were trying to escape the curse that was put on their forefather. Levi did not want the Canaanites of Shechem to enter, and his posterity — the chief priests — did not want the Holy One of the order of Melchizedek — a Canaanite — to destroy their priesthood and bring Israel into the fold of the Messiah. As a response to the chief priests plotting against Lazarus, Christ gave the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. All that Lazarus wanted was to eat of the scraps of the rich man’s table, but he lied outside — in despair and decrepit — with dogs licking his festering wounds. Lazarus died, and the rich man died shortly after, only to awaken in hell. He opened his eyes to utter horror, and looked up and saw Lazarus in paradise with Abraham. “Child,” said Abraham, “remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.” “Then I beg you, father,” said the rich man, “to send him to my father’s house for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.”
Abraham replied: “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.” And the rich man said, “No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” Abraham said to him, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” (Luke 16:19-31) Jesus was directly speaking about Caiaphas and his father-in-law Annas. Lazarus died and was raised to life, and “the chief priests” sought to kill him because Jews began to follow Christ due to this miracle.
Thus, as Abraham told the rich man, even if someone was brought back from the dead, they would have never believed. Such were their hearts, so deeply entrenched in hell; so bent on evil were they, that even the greatest of miracles was despised, and they sought to murder a man who was revived from death. Only God can raise men back from the dead, and thus the men who were the chief priests of God had set themselves against God Himself. These chief priests did not really even believe in God; for if they did they would have praised such a miracle which could have only been done by God. By wanting to kill a man after he was revived from the dead by God, shows truly that these men were not of God, but as Christ told them, their father the devil. These were priests of Satan, and their days were numbered. They wanted to ambush the Chief Cornerstone and were shattered, just as their forefather — Levi — was given the curse that his posterity would be shattered because he sought to murder those who showed their will to follow God.
If one murders those who do what they must to join the religion of Israel, and they are murdered by an original member of that religion, was this member truly a follower of God? Was Levi, seeing those Canaanites exhausted and drained from doing the grueling ritual of circumcision that was demanded of them to convert to his religion, truly following God when he butchered them? Even seeing these Canaanites strive to follow the painful commandment, he still had lodged within his heart cunning and bloodlust. And those “chief priests”, seeing that Lazarus had been brought out of the grave, wanted to cast him back into the grave, and to kill the One who saved him from death. The depths of such evil knew no bounds — being possessed by the same sinister disposition that overtook the soul of their forefather of the priestly clan, Levi. So the parable of Lazarus and the rich man was a response to these priests of Satan.
The rich man cries out to Abraham, to send Lazarus back to earth to go to his father’s house. Caiaphus’s father-in-law was the chief priest Annas. The rich man begs Abraham to send Lazarus back to earth to tell his five brothers about the realities of hell: the chief priest Annas had five sons, who were then the brothers-in-law of Caiaphas. Lazarus was indeed brought back from the dead to tell Caiaphas, Annas his father-in-law and his five brothers-in-law, of the truth of heaven and hell, but they still rejected him. Hence the parable was speaking to them, for though they saw Lazarus back from the dead, they were already in hell. Not only did they reject Lazarus, but they sought to kill him and the Man — a priest of the order of Melchizedek — Who brought him back to life. Not only Annas and Caiaphas were wicked, but all the sons of Annas, and this is what the parable was saying. Who were the five sons of Annas?
The son who we know the most about is Hanan ben Hanan (or Ananus ben Ananus) a Sadducee and former high priest who would serve as one of the initial rebel leaders during the Roman-Judean War. Hanan ben Hanan, alongside Joseph ben Gurion, was a leader over the rebel government of Jerusalem. His biggest enemy would soon no longer be Rome, but the Zealot faction. These were even bigger fanatics than Hanan ben Hanan. They wanted to fight against Rome with even more recklessness, not caring if they were bound to lose; they wanted to pursue the war no matter the costs. Hanan ben Hanan, seeing the writing on the wall, wanted to make some sort of peace with Rome, and this made him the target of the Zealot faction. Hanan ben Hanan began to see the Zealots as worse than the Romans, declaring in a speech to the people of Jerusalem:
“How can we avoid shedding of tears, when we see the Roman donations in our temples, while we withal see those of our own nation taking our spoils, and plundering our glorious metropolis, and slaughtering our men, from which enormities those Romans themselves would have abstained?” (Josephus, War, 4.3.10) He also said of the Zealots in the same speech, “these overthrowers of our liberties deserve to be destroyed” (Ibid). He complained about bigger fanatics than him taking away his freedom, and yet — some time before this chaotic time in Jerusalem — Hanan ben Hanan did not hesitate to overthrow the liberties of Christians; for he murdered St. James the Just, the brother of Jesus (in ancient times cousins were referred to as brothers).
After Hanan ben Hanan inherited the priestly office of his father — Annas, the murderer of Christ — he would then go on to slaughter a relative of Christ, having St. James the Just stoned to death after accusing him of being a breaker of the law. As Josephus recounts:
“But this younger Ananus, who, as we have told you already, took the High Priesthood, was a bold man in his temper, and very insolent. He was also of the sect of the Sadducees: who are very rigid in judging offenders above all the rest of the Jews: as we have already observed. When therefore Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity [to exercise his authority]. Festus was now dead; and Albinus was but upon the road. So he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, whose name was James: and some others; [or, some of his companions.] And when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned.” (Antiquities, 20.9.1)
His father accused Christ of being an enemy of the temple, and had Him crucified, and then Hanan ben Hanan accused Christ’s brother James of being an enemy of the temple, and had him stoned; and now, the Zealots were accusing Hanan ben Hanan of being an enemy of the temple. The Zealots charged that Hanan ben Hanan was going to give the temple away into Roman possession, and declared him worthy of death. The struggle between the Sadducee and the Zealots was a bloody fight between the Levites. Soon, Levite would kill Levite. This was the bloodshed between the priestly clan; this was the shattering of the clerical clan that had gone against the Chief Cornerstone. According to Josephus, the leader of the Zealots was John of Gischala, or Johanan ben Levi (his last name showing his Levite origins). Johanan ben Levi told two other Levites named Zechariah ben Phalek and Eleazar ben Simon “how Ananus and his party, in order to secure their own dominion, had invited the Romans to come to them”. (Josephus, War, 4.4.1).
They were accusing Hanan ben Hanan of inviting the Romans over to secure his possession of the Temple so that his faction would be supreme over the religious office and the Zealots crushed. The chief priests said amongst themselves that if they allowed Christ’s message to spread, than enough of the Jews would follow him and the Romans would take away their religious authority since Christ would have supplanted them:
“So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”” (John 11:47-48)
They accused Christ of trying to take away their power and they said that the Romans would have booted them out of their priestly position. This is what that conflagration of wood and blood, of nails and thorns on the Mount of the Skull, was about. It was about power, keeping their power even if it meant sending a man who was revived from the dead back to the grave. Desirous of the Holy One’s death, they called for the liberation of a murderous rebel — Barabbas — and at this point even Pilate could see that their exhortations for blood was rooted in envy: “For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up.” (Matthew 27:18) In their calls for death, they feigned piety; they hailed a murderer in the name of loyalty; they freed a terrorist and portrayed Christ as a terrorist against their beloved temple which was soon to be rubble, lost to flames and the insanity of zealots.
They cried out “His blood be on us and on our children!” (Luke 27:25) Annas called for this crime, and surely the blood of Christ was on his son, Hanan ben Hanan. God sent Israel prophets, and the Jews killed them; God sent Israel His Son, and He, too, they killed. And the son of the high priest who conspired for His death was struck while the blood of Christ was in his hands. Remember what Christ told the generation of His time: “Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.” (Matthew 23:31) If an evil lingered in that generation because it was the sons of the generation that killed the prophets, then this very evil lingered amongst the sons of those who killed Christ, Who was more than a prophet.
Just as Annas accused Christ of being an enemy of the temple, his son, Hanan ben Hanan was now being accused of being an enemy of the temple. He was now being charged by fellow Levites of trying to seize the temple with the help of the Romans. The Levite leaders of the Zealots — Johanan ben Levi, Zecharias ben Phalek and Zecharias ben Simon — called over their allies, the Arab Jews of Edom (Idumeans, from what is now known as Jordan) to enter Jerusalem and slaughter their enemies.
They wrote a letter to the Arab Jews, telling them that “Ananaus had imposed on the people, and was betraying their metropolis to the Romans” (Josephus, War, 4.4.1). Twenty thousand Arab Jewish warriors travelled to Jerusalem, believing that they were going to go fight the enemies of God. They eventually stormed the city of Jerusalem, and “nor did the Idumeans spare anybody; for as they are naturally a most barbarous and bloody nation”. In the midst of all the chaos, the Arabian Jews “ran through those with their swords who desired them to remember the relation there was between them, and begged of them to have regard to their common temple.” As the people “were driven one upon another in heaps, so were they slain.” The “outer temple was all of it overflowed with blood; and that day, as it came on, saw eight thousand five hundred dead bodies there.” “But the rage of the Idumeans was not satiated by these slaughters; but they now betook themselves to the city, and plundered every house, and slew everyone they met”. After much slaughter, “they sought for the high priests … and as soon as they caught them they slew them, and then standing upon their dead bodies, in way of jest, upbraided Ananus with his kindness to the people”. They took Hanan ben Hanan’s naked body and cast it out, seeing it as “food of dogs and wild beasts.” (Josephus, War, 4.5.1-2). His predecessors called for a zealot rebel against Rome — Barabbas — to be free so that Jesus may be killed. Our minds journey back to the near past, when the Jews were astonished at Peter healing a man who was lame from birth, and Peter declaring to them:
“Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you” (Acts 3:12-14)
They chose a murderous terrorist to live, and accused an innocent man of being a terrorist against the temple to have him be put to death. His full name was Jesus Barabbas, and Barabbas means “son of his father”. So they chose Jesus “son of his father” over Jesus the Son of God. They chose a rebel over the Prince of Peace, and years later got the full dark reality of a rebellion. Barabbas was the microcosm of rebellion, and the full picture of the evils of his spirit of rebellion was now being undergone by that generation that rejected Christ. “But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead.” (Mark 15:11) Caiaphas and Annas wanted Barabbas — who was “among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection” (Mark 15:7) — to be free and Christ killed under the charge that He was an enemy of the temple. And the son of Annas — Hanan ben Hanan — was accused of being an enemy of the temple by those possessed by the same spirit of Barabbas, and was now dead, trampled, and left for the dogs.
Here we are reminded of that parable of Christ against Caiaphas, in which Lazarus was left outside to die, as the rich man ate sumptuously, and in Lazarus’s neglect “the dogs came and licked his sores.” (Luke 16:21). And now Caiaphas’s brother-in-law Hanan ben Hanan (who was amongst the five brothers who Abraham declared as hell-bent) was left outside his temple, licked and chewed on by dogs in the midst of the hellish chaos, in that war torn city, in that hellish metropolis over which the Suffering Servant wept, but had now become pagan Egypt and demonic Sodom. Johanan ben Levi — of the priestly Levitical clan — had the Arab Jews slaughter Hanan ben Hanan, another Levite. The Levites killed one another without mercy; Levi’s sons rejected the Cornerstone, and so it became the Chief Cornerstone, and here Levi killed himself. It did not end with the killing of Hanan ben Hanan.
Another factional war broke out within Jerusalem, between Johanan ben Levi and Eleazar ben Simon (another Levite). Johanan’s gang “slew moreover many of the priests” and stormed the temple with such bloodlust that the blood of the Levites spilt upon the altar: “they went all over the buildings, and reached as far as the altar which was venerable among all men, both Greeks and Barbarians, with their own blood; till the dead bodies of strangers were mingled together with those of their own country, and those of profane persons with those of the priests, and the blood of all sorts of dead carcasses stood in lakes in the holy courts themselves.” (Josephus, War, 5.1.3) The temple became their tomb, because they forgot the true Temple Whom they crucified. Remember the words that Christ spoke as He wept for Jerusalem: “See, your house is left to you desolate.” (Mathew 23:38)
They shed the blood of the Temple — the God-Man — nailed Him onto a cross and mocked him, and now their stony temple was wet with their blood, shed by their own people. With the end of the temple came the end of Levi. Thus when the temple became a smoldering ruin, and the flames waved to its billowing smoke, numerous priests begged for their lives before Titus, and he himself told them that without their temple, their priesthood was no more:
“On the fifth day afterward the priests that were pined with the famine came down; and when they were brought to Titus by the guards, they begged for their lives. But he replied, that “The time of pardon was over, as to them: and that this very holy house, on whose account only they could justly hope to be preserved, was destroyed: and that it was agreeable to their office that priests should perish with the house it self to which they belonged.” So he ordered them to be put to death.” (Wars, 6.1.1)
This was the end of Levi. Christ wept for them, and now they could not even weep in fear of being heard by men possessed by bloodlust. The “terror that was upon the people was so great, that no one had courage enough either to weep openly for the dead man that was related to him, or bury him; but those that were shut up in their own houses, could only shed tears in secret, and durst not even groan without great caution, lest any of their enemies should hear them; for if they did, those that mourned for others soon underwent the same death with those whom they mourned for.” (Josephus, War, 4.5.3). If one were to enter Jerusalem when it was under the Zealot faction, one would have witnessed “the houses that have been depopulated by their rapacious hands, with those wives and families that are in black, mourning for their slaughtered relations; as also you may hear their groans and lamentations all the city over; for there is nobody but hath tasted of the incursions of these profane wretches” (Josephus, War, 4.4.3) The madness, the unquenchable thirst for blood, for cruelty, for domination, the evil that pervaded the city like a foreboding fog — all of these things because Israel rejected the Son of the owner of the vineyard, like those wicked tenants in the parable. Reading of this horror, our minds are brought to that warning of Christ as He carried His cross in the grueling journey up to Mount Golgotha:
“Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?” (Luke 23:28-31).
The Zealots brought civil war and butchery not just to Jerusalem, but throughout Judea, slaughtering those had no interest to fight against Rome. “There were besides disorders and civil wars in every city; and all those that were at quiet with the Romans turned their hands one against another. There was also a bitter contest between those that were fond of war, and those that were desirous of peace.” Revolution, slaughter and thievery abounded, as Josephus recounted: “everyone associated with those of his own opinion, and began already to stand in opposition one to another; so that seditions arose everywhere, while those that were for innovations, and were desirous of war, by their youth and boldness, were too hard for the aged and the prudent man; and, in the first place, all the people of every place betook themselves to rapine; after which they got together in bodies, in order to rob the people of the country, insomuch that for the barbarity and iniquity those of the same nation did not way differ from the Romans; nay, it seemed to be a much lighter thing to be ruined by the Romans than by themselves.” (Josephus, War, 4.3.2) Murder was done in the open and was seen as the mark of courage: “for they did not measure their courage by their rapines and plundering only, but proceeded as far as murdering men, and this not in the nighttime or privately, or with regard to ordinary men, but did it openly in the daytime” (War, 4.3.4).
ST. PAUL, THE BEGINNING OF THE JEWISH WAR,
AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE
And how did this nightmare begin? It spawned out of tribalism, out of hatred for foreigners. The governor of the temple, Eleazar ben Ananias — a Levite — told the priests to do no sacrifices for non-Jews. As Josephus explained:
“And at this time it was that some of those that principally excited the people to go to war, made an assault upon a certain fortress called Masada. They took it by treachery, and slew the Romans that were there, and put others of their own party to keep it. At the same time Eleazar, the son of Ananias the high-priest, a very bold youth, who was at that time governor of the temple, persuaded those that officiated in the divine service to receive no gift or sacrifice for any foreigner. And this was the true beginning of our war with the Romans; for they rejected the sacrifice of Cæsar on this account: and when many of the high-priests and principal men besought them not to omit the sacrifice, which it was customary for them to offer for their princes, they would not be prevailed upon.” (War, 2.17.2)
This Eleazar was the son of Ananias, the very high priest who tried Paul under the charge that he was bringing in foreigners into the temple (like father like son):
“the Jews from Asia, seeing him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd and laid hands on him, crying out, “Men of Israel, help! This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere against the people and the law and this place. Moreover, he even brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.” (Acts 21:27-28)
When Paul stood trial under the Jewish establishment, “the high priest Ananias commanded those who stood by him to strike him on the mouth. Then Paul said to him, “God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall!” (Acts 23:2-3)
Paul was arrested, tried and persecuted by Ananias under the charge that he was bringing in Greeks (foreigners) into the temple. Fast forward to the beginning of the Jewish revolt against Rome: Ananias is still alive, and his son — Eleazar — is the governor of the temple, and this Eleazar decrees that no sacrifice should be done for a foreigner (including the Caesar, which was an act of war). The war commences, and the temple is destroyed. They hated Paul, crying out that he was bringing in foreigners into the temple. Ananias struck him; and his son — in his hatred for foreigners, declared that no sacrifice could be made for a foreigner. And it was this hatred of foreigners — the very hatred they had when they persecuted Paul — that led to the destruction of the temple they revered so much.
Levi butchered the Canaanites of Shechem because he did not want those foreigners to come to the tent of his religion — even though they had been circumcised. A descendant of Levi — Ananias — wanted to kill Paul under the charge that he had brought foreigners into the Temple. And the son of Ananias — Eleazar — declared that no sacrifice should be done on behalf of a foreigner (including the Caesar), sparking the war which would destroy the temple. Here lies the evil of the Jews: the refusal to remove the divide between themselves and the foreigner, even if the foreigner is more than willing to be on the right path.
Paul strived to bring the Light to the gentiles, to “reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.” (Ephesians 2:16) But the Jews did not want to end the hostility, and when they just thought that Paul was bringing in foreigners to the temple, they wished him dead. And when they desired to revolt, they wanted to block foreigners from entering and sacrificing in the temple, and this was to their demise. Levi killed those innocent Canaanite converts, not wanting them to enter the tent of Shem, not wanting them to sacrifice, and a curse was laid on his priestly descendants, a curse that was fulfilled when they declared a prohibition of sacrifices for foreigners, angering the Caesar who destroyed the temple. Here lies the wickedness of Judah.
From Levi to Ananias to Eleazar, the evil was passed down. They sought to protect the temple from foreigners, only for their hatred of foreigners to lead to the destruction of the very edifice they were so bent on preserving. After Eleazar expressed his desire that no foreigners could have a sacrifice done on their behalf, his father — Ananias — got together with the chief priests and the Pharisees to discuss what to do, because they knew that what Eleazar did meant war with Rome. So they brought the people to the gate of the inner temple (where the priests made the sacrifices) and told them “that they did now irritate the Romans to take up arms against them, and invited them to make war upon them, and brought up novel rules of strange divine worship, and determined to run the hazard of having their city condemned for impiety, while they would not allow any foreigner but Jews only, either to sacrifice or to worship therein.” (Josephus, War, 2.17.3)
While Ananias was wise enough to see the destructiveness of his son Eleazar’s actions, is this not what Ananias persecuted St. Paul for? A mob cried out that Paul had brought foreigners — non-Jews — into the temple, and Ananias wanted Paul put to death. And now Ananias’s son, Eleazar, actually worked to prevent foreigners from entering the temple (including the Caesar) and Ananias was now against this tribalist action because it meant the Roman sacking of Jerusalem. What he went against his son for, he did himself against Paul. Soon, numerous of the sicarii (terrorists who killed for revolution) “set fire to the house of Ananias the high priest” (War, 2.17.6), a sign that his death was near. A Zealot leader named Manahem rose up. He was the son of Judas the Galilean, the founder of the Zealot movement. Manahem set his eyes on Ananias — the high priest who had Paul struck and wanted him killed — and desired to kill him for not supporting the rebellion against Rome. Ananias knew this and hid himself in an aqueduct, but he “was caught where had concealed himself” and put to death by the Zealots (Josephus, War, 2.17.9). Did he remember what Paul told him after he had him struck? “God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall!” (Acts 23:3)
The curse lived on years after the saint was struck, and here the curse was fulfilled, just as the curse of Levi was fulfilled after the Jews blocked foreigners from sacrificing in the temple.
THE MESSIAH
When St. Paul was inside the temple praying, Christ visited him and commanded him to leave Jerusalem, since the Jews were going to reject Christ, and told Paul that He will send him to preach to the gentiles:
“When I had returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance and saw him saying to me, ‘Make haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me.’ And I said, ‘Lord, they themselves know that in one synagogue after another I imprisoned and beat those who believed in you. And when the blood of Stephen your witness was being shed, I myself was standing by and approving and watching over the garments of those who killed him.’ And he said to me, ‘Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’” (Acts 22:17-21)
The place where the Jews did not want to see foreigners — and wanted to kill those who would bring gentiles into it — Christ was demanding Paul to leave, and sent him to speak to foreigners. And what was the message of Paul? That in Christ there was no hostile divide between Jew and non-Jew:
“Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.” (Ephesians 2:11-16)
Paul was striving to end the hostility between Jew and Gentile, declaring: “There is neither Jew nor Greek” (Galatians 3:28). But the high priests — those sons of Levi — did not want to end hostilities; like their father Levi when he butchered the Canaanites who had converted to his religion, they held an enmity towards the gentile. In fact the Jews were aspiring to annihilate all non-Jews in a great apocalyptic war. We can see this in the War Scroll which read:
“In the first year they shall fight against Mesopotamia, in the second against the sons of Lud, in the third they shall fight against the rest of the sons of Aram: Uz, Hul, Togar, and Mesha, who are beyond the Euphrates. In the fourth and fifth they shall fight against the sons of Arpachshad, in the sixth and seventh they shall fight against all the sons of Assyria and Persia and the easterners up to the Great Desert. In the eighth year they shall fight against the sons of Elam, in the ninth year they shall fight against the sons of Ishmael and Keturah, and during the following ten years the war shall be divided against all the sons of Ham according to [their] c[lans and] their [terri]tories. During the remaining ten years the war shall be divided against all [sons of Japhe]th according to their territories.”
The Jews were awaiting for this war in which they would exterminate all non-Jews. It is no wonder that Paul wrote this of the Jews:
“They are enemies of the whole human race because they try to keep us from telling people who are not Jewish how they can be saved.” (1 Thessalonians 2:15)
Paul was in the temple praying, and Christ told him to leave Jerusalem, because He had destined him to bring the good news to the rest of the sons of Noah. “Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles.” (Acts 22:21) Christ commanded him to leave the temple and its city because, in Christ’s words, the Jews “will not accept your testimony about me” (Acts 22:18). Does this not reflect what Isaiah wrote of the Messiah (the suffering servant), that He would die and lament to God of how He failed to bring the Jews back to Him? But God tells His servant that its not a big deal to just get the Jewish people to come to Him, because He destined Him to bring salvation to the whole earth:
And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
But I said, “I have labored in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my right is with the Lord,
and my recompense with my God.”
And now the Lord says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him; and that Israel might be gathered to him— for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord, and my God has become my strength—he says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:3-6)
Isaiah is giving us insight on what happened after the Crucifixion, after the death of the Messiah, that Christ lamented to His Father in Heaven, that the children of Israel had rejected Him. But the Father tells the Son that He will be a light to all nations, to all the sons of Noah and not just to the Jews. Thus why He chose Paul, to be “a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.” (Acts 9:15)
The Message was to be a light to the nations; hence why the annals of mankind’s story radiates with the triumph of Christianity, with martyrs and ascetics, warriors and knights, heroes and conquerers who — in the Cross — conquered the forces of darkness. From Constantine vanquishing the pagans in the Battle of Milvian Bridge — with his warriors holding shields with the Cross engraved upon them — to Cortez toppling the murderous Aztec empire — Christ conquered through His sheepfold, for upon Mount Golgotha, when blood and water poured forth from His pierced rib — signifying the union between Israel and all nations — a cosmic war began between good and evil, and henceforth the tabernacle of light has been striving against darkness. Blood and water gushed out from His pierced side, and in His death, the divide between Jew and gentile was torn down, “both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.” (Ephesians 2:16) But the Jews did not see this.
Rather, in their eyes, they saw a criminal being rightly punished. This, too, is echoed in the prophecy of Isaiah when he speaks of the suffering servant: “we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.” (Isaiah 53:4) The Jews who called for Christ’s death saw Him as a criminal, a terrorist against the temple, an enemy of God, and thus they saw His crucifixion as God’s punishment. Hence why Caiaphas declared to the Sanhedrin: “He has blasphemed! What further need do we have of witnesses? See, you have now heard the blasphemy; what do you think?” They answered, “He deserves death!” (Matthew 25:65-66) These were the same high priests — Caiaphas and Annas — who saw Lazarus back from the dead, and yet they not only wanted to put Lazarus back in the grave, but they wanted to murder the One Who saved him from the grave. St. Peter told a man who was crippled from birth, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” (Acts 3:7) St. Peter, for this miracle, was brought to a council to face the high priests, “Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family.” (Acts 4:6) The sons of Levi stood before Peter; and as Levi did not want those Canaanites to enter God’s tent, so these sons of Levi did not the lame to walk nor the dead to be brought back to life. “By what power or by what name did you do this?” asked these Levites to whom Peter replied:
“Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.” (Acts 4:6-11)
Levi butchered the Canaanites of Shechem, and Levi was then shattered on the Chief Cornerstone Whose priestly order was that of a Canaanite king — Melchizedek. When that high priest of the order of Melchizedek was on earth, He told the sons of Levi that their end was nigh, and so they sought to kill Him. Christ was “despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53)
The entire priesthood of Israel came from the line of Levi, a murderer and sadist who was cursed by his own father who prophesied that the whole Levitical tribe will be scattered. And now the zealots of Israel today want to build a third temple. But where are the Levites? They were scattered. The Levites laid their hands on the Chief Cornerstone, and were shattered. Shattered by the Romans when they burned their temple to the ground; shattered by their own people when Jew butchered Jew. They were replaced by a new priesthood, that of Melchizedek, a king of the Canaanites, a people butchered by Levi when they entered the faith of God.
For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah, and in connection with that tribe Moses said nothing about priests. This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life. For it is witnessed of him,
“You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 7:14-17)
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