Kings and Priests Before God

Kings and Priests Before God

 In Blog

Throughout the Bible, a recurring, overarching theme is that God has desired to have a people set apart for Himself and called for a holy purpose. When God met with Israel at Mount Sinai, He spoke through Moses the words that defined them as a nation:

“Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:5-6)

Notice that the scripture says, “you shall be a special treasure to Me” and, “you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests…” God was emphasizing that in order to be an effective priesthood, they needed to be set apart and devoted to Him first, above everything and everyone else.

The Role of Priests

What is a priest? From the role of the priests in scripture, we can see that a priest is someone appointed by God to stand between heaven and earth, calling forth and appropriating heaven’s blessing into and among the people of God in the earth. God appointed the priests because He desired to have relationship with His people, which could only happen in the context of holiness and the atonement for the sin of the people before a holy God.

Remarkably, the goal of God’s provision of atonement for the nation, which was given through those appointed from the tribe of Levi as priests, was that all the nation would be able to live close to Him as priests before Him. This first comes to light in the book of Exodus, but we see this concept in both the Old Testament and the New Testament.

During the Protestant Reformation, a key theme advocated for by many Church leaders was the concept of the priesthood of all believers. Up until that time, much like the role of the priests as it was first carried out in ancient Israel, all who were part of the Church had to rely upon the role of the priests to bring them into the presence of God. The Church also relied on the priests to understand the Scriptures, which were read and available only in Latin.

With the Reformation came a shift in the accessibility of the Scriptures in the common language of the people, empowering them to carry out their biblical calling.

The book of First Peter reiterates the theme of a kingdom of priests from Exodus 19 and applies it also to all Gentile believers who have come into the household of faith:

“But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light…” (1 Peter 2:9).

Peter was not only speaking to leaders or to those who had been assigned a specific role as priests, but he was speaking to the whole body of believers, just as God commissioned the whole nation of Israel from the holy mountain. God had appointed them at Sinai as a nation of priests who would bring salvation to the world through the manifestation of God’s covenant.

Kings of One Kingdom

The identity of the people of God as a “royal priesthood” combines the callings of two of the tribes of Israel – the tribe of Levi (the priestly tribe) and the tribe of Judah (the line of kings).

From the beginning, the “kingdom of priests” as defined by God was not a monarchy dominated by the personality of one powerful human being. Rather, God’s Kingdom, from the outset, was corporate and communal in its expression.

From this understanding, we can see that we do not carry out our priestly intercession in the Kingdom of God merely “on a wing and a prayer.” Rather, we have been given the delegated authority to “call those things which are not as though they were” (see Romans 4:17). As believers, we have been appointed to bring heaven’s decrees to the earth, with binding authority.

We have been vested with the authority of the King of kings to bring His desires to pass in the earth through relationship and partnership with Him. We are ambassadors for Him, representing His wishes, heart, and desires. As you pray and intercede in your priestly calling, take up the delegated authority you have received as a king and declare God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven… today!

Photo by Chichi Onyekanne on Unsplash

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Eagles’ Wings. and our affiliates (“we,” “us” or “Eagle’s Wings”) is focused on (1) Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem, (2)Renewing the importance of spiritual community and (3)fostering understanding across cultural divides, through social media, mailings, email, conferences, speaking engagements and related forms of media and other presentations.

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This privacy policy covers personal information, including any information we collect, use and share from you, as described further below. This privacy policy applies to all websites of Eagles’ Wings our products and services, and our mobile applications (collectively, the “Services”). This privacy policy does not cover how our Users may use or share data that they collect using our services.

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INFORMATION WE COLLECT FROM YOU

In the course of your use of the Services, we obtain the following information about you as described below. We collect this data for the purposes described in “How We Use Your Information”.

SIGNING UP FOR SERVICES; USER INFORMATION

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We store this data we collect in a variety of places within our infrastructure, including system log files, back-end databases, and analytics systems.

SOCIAL MEDIA

OTHER SOURCES

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We have a legitimate interest in running a successful and efficient organization and in providing you with Services and useful content, and we use the information we collect, both on its own and combined with any other information we collect about you, for the following purposes:

We also use the information we receive in aggregated and anonymized formats to produce reports on trends and statistics, such as mobile search trends, email open rates by industry, campaign best practices or the number of users that have been exposed to, or clicked on, our websites or evaluated or purchased our products and services.

Payment information that you provide to us, including credit card data, will only be used to facilitate payment for our products and services.

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As further described below, we will only share certain personal information with:

SHARING WITHIN Eagles’ Wings

We share personal information with other members of the organization to allow communication with you on offers of interest.  If you are located in a jurisdiction where such sharing requires your permission, we will only do so with your consent.

SHARING WITH THIRD PARTY SERVICE PROVIDERS AND VENDORS

When we share personal information with certain third-party vendors, including marketing, data services and advertising partners, that information includes your name, email address and other information enabling partners to:

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All users authorized by you to have access to your account can view personal information stored in the account. A primary account holder can view personal information saved in subaccounts to which they have authorized access. We share information about authorized users only for legitimate purposes consistent with this privacy policy, including servicing your account and marketing products and services to you.

LEGAL PROCESS

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MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS FROM US

EMAIL

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To manage the information we receive about you from a social networking site or other third parties (if applicable), you will need to follow the instructions from that party for updating your information and changing your privacy settings, where available. The information we collect is covered by this privacy policy and the information the third party collects is subject to such third party’s privacy practices. Privacy choices you have made on any third party site will not apply to our use of the information we have collected directly through our Services.

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YOUR RIGHTS

Where the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679, or GDPR, applies, in certain circumstances and subject to data processing agreements, you have rights in relation to the personal information we hold about you. We set out below an outline of those rights and how to exercise those rights. Please note that we will require you to verify your identity before responding to any requests to exercise your rights by providing details only known to the account holder. Please note that for each of the rights below we may have valid legal reasons to refuse your request, in such instances we will let you know if that is the case.

ACCESS

You have the right to know whether we process personal information about you, and if we do, to access data we hold about you and certain information about how we use it and who we share it with.

PORTABILITY

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CORRECTION

You have the right to require us to correct any personal information held about you that is inaccurate and have incomplete data completed. Where you request correction, please explain in detail why you believe the personal information we hold about you to be inaccurate or incomplete so that we can assess whether a correction is required. Please note that while we assess whether the personal information we hold about you is inaccurate or incomplete, you may exercise your right to restrict our processing of the applicable data as described below.

ERASURE

You may request that we erase the personal information we hold about you in the following circumstances:

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RESTRICTION OF PROCESSING TO STORAGE ONLY

You have a right to require us to stop processing the personal information we hold about you other than for storage purposes in the following circumstances:

You have objected to us processing personal information we hold about you on the basis of our legitimate interest and you wish us to stop processing the personal information while we determine whether there is an overriding interest in us retaining such personal information.

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You have the right to object to our processing of data about you and we will consider your request. Please provide us with detail as to your reasoning so that we can assess whether there is a compelling overriding interest in us continuing to process such data or we need to process it in relation to legal claims.

You also have the right, at any time, to object to our processing of data about you in order to send you marketing, including where we build profiles for such purposes and we will stop processing the data for that purpose.

WITHDRAWAL OF CONSENT

Where you have provided your consent to us processing your personal data, you can withdraw your consent at any time by emailing [email protected].

THIRD PARTY LINKS & INFORMATION COLLECTION AND USE BY OUR USERS

Some of our Services provide links to other websites. Because we do not control the information policies or practices of these third-party sites, you should review their privacy policies to learn about how they collect and use personal information.

You may also log in to some of our Services using sign-in services such as, but not limited to, Facebook Connect or an Open ID provider. These services will authenticate your identity and provide you with the option to share certain personal information with us, such as your name and email address to pre-populate our sign up form. For example, if you take advantage of certain of our social media features, such as the Facebook Like button, and widgets, such as the “Share This” button or interactive mini-programs that run on our site, the applicable social networking sites may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our websites, and may set a cookie to enable it to function properly.

DATA TRANSFER

In order for us to provide the Services to you, your personal information will be transferred to, and stored at/processed in the United States.

You can contact the Eagles’ Wings [email protected] for further information

COMPLAINTS

In the event that you wish to make a complaint about how we process your personal information, please contact our office and we will try to deal with your request.

Eagles’ Wings
PO Box 450
Clarence, New York 14031

Telephone: (716) – 759 –1058
Fax: (716) 759– 01731

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NOTIFICATION OF CHANGES

We reserve the right to modify this privacy policy at any time, so please review it frequently. If we decide to change this privacy policy in any material way, we will notify you here, by email, or by means of a notice on www.eagleswings.org or the website of the Eagles’ Wings’ product or service you use prior to the change becoming effective. In all cases, your continued use of any Services constitutes acceptance to any such changes.