'Jeremiah 33:20-21 clarifies that God's promise is conditional; "If you can break My covenant with the day and My covenant with the night so that day and night cease to come at their regular time, 21 then also My covenant with My servant David may be broken so that he will not have a son reigning on his throne, and the Levitical priests will not be My ministers."
"He then says that despite this condition--broken again and again by the Israelites"
"Once again I point out that Jer. 33:17-20's promise of an eternal line of Levites is conditional, and argue that the fact of a second priest in the order of Melchizedek, Jesus Christ, proves the breaking of the conditions set for the Levites' 'eternal lineage'--"when there is a change of the priesthood, there must be a change of law as well"--Christ replaced the Levites, just as the New replaced the Old Covenant."
I apologize for coming in late but I have been following this debate and I see you assert that the covenant with the day and night has been broken repeatedly and therefore God's covenant with the house of David and the house of Levi has been broken. Would you be so kind as to point out where that covenant has been broken?
T-G can answer for himself, but the book of Hebrews makes it clear that the old covenant was temporary.
"'For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.' In that He says, "A new covenant," He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away." (Heb. 8)
"But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance." (Heb. 9)
"For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, But a body You have prepared for Me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure." (Heb. 10)
God's plan, according to the prophets and the writer of Hebrews, was always to institute a greater covenant by the work of Messiah. The Levites, the physical tabernacle, the animal blood sacrifices were temporary. There is a distinct linkage between the three. Levites serve no purpose without the sacrificial system. That is even clear from Jeremiah:
"For thus says the Lord: 'David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel; nor shall the priests, the Levites, lack a man to offer burnt offerings before Me, to kindle grain offerings, and to sacrifice continually.'"
"Levites to bring a burnt offering."
Now, obviously some need to twist the word of the prophecy to say that "never lack" doesn't really mean never. The need to account for the time in which we live. There are no Levites. There are no sacrifices and burnt offerings. So never has to be interpreted to mean.
So either God is being deceptive in meaning the physical priestood and physical throne of David, or He means to communicate that there would be a greater than David who would be a Priest and King, who would sit on the heavenly throne, of with the earthly throne was but a pattern, offering a true sacrifice, of whch the earthly was but a pattern.
Nowhere in Hebrews or the rest of the NT is there even the slightest hint of a future, reconstituted earthly priesthood and animal sacrifices. The idea that we are in a temporary "break in action" is absolutely unfounded and totally speculative. It is a pure refusal to read the OT in the light on the NT. It is the spirit of antichrist, because it denies a recognition of the finished work of Messiah, to which all the OT sacrificial system pointed. He is our greater High Priest. Not other is necessary.