The Divorce Discourse: Luke 16:16-18

By: William Finck ©2007

As recorded in the gospels, Yahshua Christ talked often about different aspects of the law, and the law of divorce was no exception. In Matt. 5:17-48, Yahshua is recorded as having delivered a general sermon on the law, of which divorce is a part and is mentioned at vv. 31-32. Later, in a conversation recorded at both Matt. 19:1-9 and Mark 10:1-12, Yahshua was specifically asked about divorce, and in this case the Old Testament law concerning divorce is referred to, found at Deut. 24:1-4. This law is not found in Leviticus, and surely was not – as Christ infers – added to the kingdom law in Deuteronomy because Yahweh approves of divorce: He certainly does not. Rather, it seems to have been added in order to confront an inevitable reality: disobedience and the hardness of men’s hearts, that unwanted wives may seek a redress if one is needed, and a means to remarry, being legally freed from their former obligations and so not in fear of being charged with adultery once found with another man. The intent here, however, is not to discuss common husband-wife divorce. The proper Christian perspective on that topic is found at 1 Cor. 7: 10-11, where Paul correctly follows Yahshua’s instruction on the matter. Yahshua Christ also mentions His teaching concerning divorce at Luke 16:18, yet the context of His conversation is quite different there and reveals that in this instance, neither was He speaking about common husband-wife divorce.

From the A.V., Luke 16:16-18 reads thusly: “16 The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of Yahweh is preached, and every man presseth into it. 17 And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail. 18 Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.” In order to better understand Yahshua’s statement as recorded at Luke 16:16, let us look at a similar statement which He made, at another time in a different conversation, recorded at Matt. 11:12: “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”

The people of Judaea, those who were Israelites, had been expecting the coming Messiah, as they understood the 70 weeks of Daniel’s prophecy (Dan. 9:24 ff.), evident in the gospels at John 1:41, 4:25 and elsewhere. Yet some decades before Christ’s birth, Herod the Edomite became king of Judaea through murder and bribery, and the Edomites – converted to Judaism circa 130 B.C., along with other Canaanites – gained prominence throughout the Judaean government and the temple priesthood, a story fully evident in the pages of the historians Josephus and Eusebius and elsewhere, and also evident in John chapter 8, Romans 9, 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 and elsewhere in the New Testament. Later, Herod the Edomite king attempted to slay the Christ child, as related in Matthew chapter 2. The Canaanite-Edomite jews, denying the prophets and the word of Yahweh concerning His Christ, are those who would take the kingdom by force (Matt. 11:12), rejecting the rightful ruler (Luke 19:11-27) and slaying the true heir (Luke 20:9-18) in a vain attempt to maintain the kingdom and position they’ve so unrighteously gained (John 11:47 ff.). Here it shall hopefully become evident, that talking about those violent ones who would take the kingdom by force, or those who “presseth into” the kingdom, and then assuring us that the law shall not fail while recalling His teaching concerning divorce, Yahshua Christ was not babbling random statements, fleetingly changing the topic. These statements are indeed all intimately connected.

Yahweh was, and always shall be, married as a husband to the nation – the people – of true Israel. This marriage was initiated at Mount Sinai as recorded at Exodus chapter 19. Here is perhaps the earliest recorded pre-nuptial agreement. That Israel as a nation was and shall remain married to Yahweh their God can be fully demonstrated by a review of some of the prophecies which discuss this very thing.

Hosea finished writing his prophecies several decades before the deportations of the Israelites began, while Jeroboam the son of Joash was king in Israel (2 Kings 14; Hosea 1:1). The events of Hosea’s life as recorded in the first three chapters of his prophecy are representative of Yahweh’s experience with Israel during this period. Israel, an unfaithful wife, would be put away but later forgiven. Once forgiven, Israel would be married to Yahweh forever, for which see Hosea 1: 10-11 and 2:14-23, especially noting v. 19. Hosea 1:10 is quoted by Paul at Romans 9:25-26, and paraphrased by Peter at 1 Pet. 2:9-10, where Peter also alludes to Exod. 19:5-6, connecting Yahweh’s relationship with Israel back to that first ceremony at Mount Sinai. At Hosea 2:19 Yahweh speaks to Israel concerning the future restoration of the nation: “And I will betroth thee unto me for ever ...”, and at 2:20: “I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know Yahweh.” So at this very early time we see Yahweh announce His plans to stay forever married to Israel, despite the nation’s unfaithfulness. This theme continues throughout Hosea’s prophecy.

The prophet Joel, writing before the deportations of Israel and so at least as early as Hosea, also portrayed Israel as the bride of Yahweh, and Yahweh as the bridegroom, at Joel 2:16-17: “16 Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet. 17 Let the priests, the ministers of Yahweh, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Yahweh, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God?” At Joel 2:26-32 and 3:1-21 the permanency of Yahweh’s relationship with Israel in contrast to the other peoples of the region is illustrated (although it must be noted that Tyre and Sidon were inhabited mostly by Israelites, and “Grecians” at Joel 3:6 is Strong’s #3125, Yevaniy, the descendants of that Javan of Gen. 10:2, who are the Ionian Greeks. Other Greek tribes, namely the Danaans and Dorians, were themselves Israelites). Joel was quoted at length by Peter at Acts 2:17-21, from Joel 2:28-32.

Isaiah wrote his prophecies during the period of the Assyrian invasions and deportations of Israel and most of Judah, which began circa 721 and ended circa 676 B.C. (2 Kings 15-19; 2 Chron. 26-32; Isa. 1:1). Yet even though nearly all of Israel has been carried off by the Assyrians, and Isaiah witnessed it, his prophecies fully assure us that Yahweh shall be married to Israel forever. See Isa. 49:18; 50:1-2; 54:1-17; 55:1-5; 61:1-11 and 62:1-12.

At Isa. 50:1 we find: “Thus saith Yahweh, Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.” Yet later Israel is reassured: “For thy Maker is thine husband; Yahweh of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called. For Yahweh hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God. For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee” (Isa. 54:5-7), and “I will greatly rejoice in Yahweh, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels” (Isa. 61:10). Isaiah chapter 62 then celebrates Yahweh’s renewed marriage to Israel, where we find in part: “For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee ... And they shall call them, The holy people, The redeemed of Yahweh: and thou shalt be called, Sought out, A city not forsaken” (Isa. 62:5, 12). In the very next chapter, from Isa. 63:1, Isaiah prophecies concerning the day of vengeance, and the Edomite jew is revealed to be the focus of the wrath of Yahweh.

When Jeremiah wrote his prophecies, beginning in the days of Josiah King of Judah (2 Kings 22; 2 Chron. 34; Jer. 1:1), all of Israel, except those few left behind in the countryside, and most of Judah had already been taken away by the Assyrians, and only the inhabitants of Jerusalem remained (2 Chron. 32). Yet Jeremiah still addresses Israel, and distinguishes Judah – those of Judah who remained, since Israel with most of Judah were taken away by the Assyrians – and Jeremiah assures us that Israel shall continue in marriage to Yahweh, even though the nation was cast out in punishment, for which see Jer. 2:32 and 3:1-25. Speaking about the transgressions of Israel, Jer. 2:32 states: “Can a maid [virgin] forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number.” At Jer. 3:20 Israel is portrayed as a treacherous wife departing from Yahweh her husband: “Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith Yahweh.” Yet much later in Jeremiah, at 31:31 ff., we are assured that the New Covenant would be made ONLY with those same houses of Israel and Judah. The New Covenant, being a matter of prophecy, can ONLY be intended for those people for whom it was prophesied!

So there is a clear and broad thread throughout the Old Testament prophets which informs us that Israel, the nation, which is the body of the people themselves no matter where they are, is the bride of Yahweh. Israel, that same body of people who had been put off in punishment, will once again be restored as the bride of Yahweh once they are redeemed, and there are absolutely no promises of redemption in the prophets for any other people. Neither can there be since Yahweh had married only Israel! As the Prophet Amos said: “Hear this word that Yahweh hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities” (Amos 3:1-2). This is clear in all of the prophecies which have been discussed above, and no one from any other nation of people could make any just claim of inclusion in this relationship.

On several occasions Yahshua Christ referred to His followers – all chosen Israelites except (and for good reason) the Canaanite Judas Iscariot – as the “children of the bridechamber”, for which see Matt. 9:15 and Mark 2:19, and for a separate occasion Luke 5:34. John’s gospel records the words of John the Baptist, which make quite a similar illustration: “He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled” (John 3:29). If Yahshua is the bridegroom, then according to the prophets as cited above He must be Yahweh in the flesh having come to redeem the cast-off Israelites – not the Edomites in Jerusalem. For that is what the prophets have set forth!

Paul explains this very thing to the Corinthians, who were Dorian Greeks and descended from the ancient Israelites (cf. 1 Cor. 10:1-11), where he tells them: “... I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2), which is exactly what Paul did: find “lost” Israelites and bring the good message of redemption to them. Compare this statement by Paul to Isa. 62:5, quoted above. The Dorian Greeks were not Israelites of the Assyrian deportations, but rather had migrated out of Palestine by the 12th century B.C., when they took the Peloponnesus from the Danaan Greeks. The Danaans, also Israelites, had left the main body of Israel much sooner, being a part of the tribe of Dan who left before the Exodus, leaving from Egypt and settling in the Peloponnesus.

When Paul wrote to the Romans, he was also writing to “lost” Israelites. Statements by Paul such as those at 1:18-32 and 4:1-25, along with others, fully demonstrate as much. The Romans, by all accounts having come from the Trojans, were of the Zerah branch of Judah, who also left Palestine at a very early time. At Romans chapter 7, Paul explains the relationship of Israel to Yahweh under the law: “1 Are you ignorant, brethren (I speak to those who know the law,) that the law lords over the man for as long a time as he should live? 2 For a woman married to a living husband is bound by law; but if the husband should die, she is discharged from the law of the husband: 3 so then as the husband is living, she would be labeled an adulteress if she were found with another man; but if the husband should die, she is free from the law, she is not an adulteress being found with another man. 4 Consequently, my brethren, you also are put to death in the law through the body of Christ; for you to be found with another, who from the dead was raised in order that we should bear fruit for Yahweh” (my own translation).

Israel, being married to Yahweh, committed adultery in the worship of false gods, which also involved the following of alien customs, obedience to alien laws, and committing of other acts which violated Yahweh’s law – such as fornication. Under the law this made Israel, put out of the house of the husband (the Assyrians and Babylonian deportations), liable for death, since death was the penalty for adultery (Lev. 20:10; Deut. 22:22).

Yet Yahweh had promised not to make an end of Israel, but – contrary to His own law – to take Israel back. This creates a dilemma indeed, since under the law a husband cannot take back an adulterous wife (Deut. 24:4). The Israelites – all who left Palestine and most of those who were deported – had been worshipping pagan idols and false gods and living in sin for centuries. Therefore the only way in which Yahweh could satisfy the letter of the law was to die! For this reason was Yahweh manifested in the flesh, above all others: that He may die in order to satisfy the law – His own law which He authored – and thereby, once the law was fulfilled and Israel freed from it (Rom. 7:1-2 above), the resurrected Christ – Yahweh in the flesh – could then have Israel for a wife! Therefore at Rev. 19:6-10 we have the marriage of the Lamb (Yahshua Christ) to the wife, who is then shown at Rev. 21:9-12 to be none other than the twelve tribes of Israel inhabiting a new Jerusalem!

Now the reason for Yahshua’s statement at Luke 16:16-18 may already be manifest. If Yahshua Christ, husband of the nation – the people – of Israel, accepts any non-Israelite or any bastard (a person of mixed race) into His Kingdom THEN HE COMMITS ADULTERY! For that reason He came ONLY to His Covenant People (“I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel” Matt. 15:24). All of the nations (not the misleading Latin term “gentiles”) to whom Paul brought the gospel were indeed the descendants of the ancient Israelites, and Paul certainly knew it. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he made it clear to them that the covenant could not be added to (3:15) and that it was made with only certain of Abraham’s descendants (3:16-17), but that they were indeed descended from Isaac and were children of the promise (4:1-30). The Galatians of Paul’s time were Kelts mixed with Greeks. The Kelts, along with the Scythians, were Israelites of the Assyrian deportations. Paul explained to the Ephesians that Yahweh had broken down the wall between them and Himself (Eph. 2:14). That wall was the laws concerning marriage, divorce and adultery which prevented Yahweh from communing with Israel until He affected their redemption. For this same reason Paul spoke to the Colossians about alienation and reconciliation: “21 And you at one time being alienated and odious in thought by wicked deeds, 22 yet now He has reconciled with the body of His flesh through that death, to present you holy and blameless and void of offense before Him” (Col. 1:21-22, my own translation). All of this is fully coherent with the statements of the prophets. For Daniel assures us that “... the kingdom shall not be left to other people ...” (Dan. 2:44), and Ezekiel tells us that “... I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more. 30 Thus shall they know that I Yahweh their God am with them, and that they, even the house of Israel, are my people, saith Yahweh God. 31 And ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men [adam, Strong’s #120], and I am your God, saith Yahweh God” (Ezek. 34:29-31). Ezekiel also says: “My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And the heathen shall know that I Yahweh do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore” (Ezek. 37:27-28). Surely Yahshua Christ shall not betroth Himself to non-Israelite, non-Adamic heathens. Now Ezekiel, a contemporary of Jeremiah, wrote long after most of Israel and Judah had been taken away by the Assyrians. He himself wrote from captivity in Babylon (cf. Ezek. 1:1-3), being one of the ten thousand first taken by the Babylonians (2 Kings 24; Ezek. 19).

All of the prophets and the New Testament consistently show the universalists and dispensationalists to be nothing but liars. Once one understands the husband-wife relationship of Yahweh to ancient Israel – which God Himself went so far as to experience death in order to preserve – and the relationship of the risen Christ with the White Christian nations of today which had actually descended from those ancient Israelites, it is fully evident that Luke 16:16-18 stands as a warning to the universalists. By embracing the alien, non-Israelite peoples, the universalists are in essence accusing Yahshua Christ of adultery! Thou shalt not commit adultery (Exod. 20:14; Deut. 5:18)! The penalty for adultery under the law is death (Lev. 20:10; Deut. 22:22). Yet when a witness is found to be testifying falsely, the false witness is made to suffer the penalty instead, as described in the law at Deut. 19:16-19. Where does that leave the universalists, who make such false statements? All those so-called Christian “pastors” and “evangelists” who go around proclaiming to non-Whites and those of mixed races that they may somehow be Christians, that “Jesus” loves them, and that they may have fellowship with Israel are falsely accusing Yahshua Christ of committing adultery! Hence the penalty for universalism is death, and universalists condemn themselves!

Once one learns that the ancient Roman and Greek, and the Keltic and Saxon nations of Europe, along with the Scandinavians, Parthians, and other related people all descended from the ancient Israelites, one can see that the history of the spread of Christianity is fully consistent with the utterances of the prophets concerning Israel. Today it is manifest in this that the Kingdom of Yahweh is the White European nations: no other nations are suffering massive immigrations of aliens into their borders, in a situation where the common citizens of those nations have no choice or say in the matter! These are those who “presseth into” the Kingdom of Yahweh (Luke 16:16).

The Edomite-jews have, for the most part, usurped control of all of the White nations of the west, which is readily evident today. The vast wealth which they have accumulated through their anti-Christian money-lending practices, along with every other foul profession in which they have been engaged for millennia, have enabled them to do that. Just as they usurped control of ancient Judaea, in these days today have the violent ones taken the Kingdom by force – in the wars of Europe in recent centuries, up to and including the Bolshevik revolution and both World Wars, and in the promotion of so many wicked and anti-Christian philosophies, deceiving the sheep. It is the bad-fig-jewish controlled governments, media outlets, and foundations which have orchestrated the flood of aliens into the White nations, while at the same time promoting “diversity” and “multi-culturalism”, all with the cooperation of both the “conservative” capitalist and the “liberal” communist factions in all of the major organized political parties of the so-called “democracies”. Scripture is being fulfilled before our very eyes, if  only we would open them! Yet we White Europeans, true Biblical Israel, do have an assurance: Yahshua Christ our Redeemer shall not commit adultery! And so neither should we, by despicably embracing any alien foul beast who happens to have made his way into our lands.