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The Spirit of Prophecy Volume 4
be placed upon the text, it teaches that the people were not then in
the sanctuary; but they were in the earth. Then it is claimed that it
referred to that part of the earth into which they were to be brought,
namely, Palestine. This is disproved by the second text.
Joshua 24:26
: “And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the
law of God, and took a great stone, and set it up there under an oak,
that was by the sanctuary of the Lord.”
The stone and the oak were in Palestine, but they were by the
sanctuary of the Lord—not in it. And the other text is more restrictive
still, and equally conclusive against the inference to which reference
is herein made.
Psalm 78:54
: “And he brought them [his people] to the border
of his sanctuary, even to this mountain, which his right hand had
purchased.”
The mountain was mount moriah, on which the temple of
solomon was built; yet being brought unto it is called being brought
“to the border of his sanctuary.” Thus these texts do not prove that
the earth is the sanctuary, but rather the reverse.
Jehoshaphat’s prayer gives the true idea of the relation of that
land to the sanctuary: “Art not thou our God, who didst drive out
the inhabitants of this land before thy people Israel, and gavest it
to the seed of Abraham thy friend forever? And they dwelt therein,
and have built thee a sanctuary therein for thy name.”
2 Chronicles
20:7, 8
. This corresponds to the order in
Exodus 25:8
: “And let them
make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them.” In this same
book is given a minute description of the sanctuary, its erection,
and approval by the Lord. The process of cleansing the sanctuary
is described in
Leviticus 16
. When the children of Israel possessed
Canaan, Solomon built a temple, in which was a holy and a most
holy place, and the vessels of the movable sanctuary, which was
made in the desert of Arabia, were transferred to the temple. This
was then the sanctuary,—the dwelling-place of God’s glory upon
the earth. Even a partial knowledge of the teachings of the scriptures
on this subject will justify all that the author has said in reference to
it in pages 260-67.
[499]
Note 6. Page 268.—Almost all Adventists, including Mr. Miller,
did, for a short time after their disappointment in 1844, believe that
the world had received its last warning. They could hardly think oth-