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Ministers must marry a virgin: Difference between revisions
→What the Bible teaches
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This requirement which William Branham laid on ministers of the Gospel was simply another example of his legalistic approach to the Gospel. | This requirement which William Branham laid on ministers of the Gospel was simply another example of his legalistic approach to the Gospel. | ||
==Restrictions on the marriage of priests in the Old Testament== | |||
There were regulations forbidding priests to marry a harlot or a divorced woman, or, in the case of the high priest, any but an Israelitish virgin<ref>Lewis Spence et al., “Celibacy,” in Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings, John A. Selbie, and Louis H. Gray (Edinburgh; New York: T. & T. Clark; Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908–1926), 272.</ref>. Leviticus 21:7–14 states: | |||
:''They shall not take a woman who is profaned by harlotry, nor shall they take a woman divorced from her husband; for he is holy to his God. 8 You shall consecrate him, therefore, for he offers the food of your God; he shall be holy to you; for I the LORD, who sanctifies you, am holy. 9 Also the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by harlotry, she profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire. | |||
:''‘The priest who is the highest among his brothers, on whose head the anointing oil has been poured and who has been consecrated to wear the garments, shall not uncover his head nor tear his clothes; 11 nor shall he approach any dead person, nor defile himself even for his father or his mother; 12 nor shall he go out of the sanctuary nor profane the sanctuary of his God, for the consecration of the anointing oil of his God is on him; I am the LORD. 13 He shall take a wife in her virginity. 14 A widow, or a divorced woman, or one who is profaned by harlotry, these he may not take; but rather he is to marry a virgin of his own people, 15 so that he will not profane his offspring among his people; for I am the LORD who sanctifies him.’ ”<ref>New American Standard Bible, 1995 Edition: Paragraph Version (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Le 21:7–15.</reF> | |||
=Quotes of William Branham= | =Quotes of William Branham= | ||