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Sanctuary: God’s Dwelling Place in Israel
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daily and the yearly service—and an apartment of the tabernacle
was devoted to each.
At His ascension, Christ appeared in the presence of God to
plead His blood for repentant believers. To symbolize this, the priest
in the daily ministration sprinkled the blood of the sacrifice in the
holy place on the sinner’s behalf.
Though the blood of Christ was to release the repentant sinner
from the condemnation of the law, it was not to conceal the sin,
which would stand on record in the sanctuary until the final atone-
ment. So in the symbolic services of the sanctuary, the blood of the
sin offering removed the sin from the repenting person, but it stayed
in the sanctuary until the Day of Atonement.
In the great day of final award, the dead will be “judged accord-
ing to their works, by the things which were written in the books”
(
Revelation 20:12
). Then the sins of all the truly repentant ones will
be blotted from the books of heaven. Thus the sanctuary will be
freed, or cleansed, from the record of sin. In the symbolic service
this great work of blotting out of sins was represented by the services
of the Day of Atonement, the cleansing of the earthly sanctuary by
removing the sins that had polluted it.
In the final atonement the sins of the truly penitent are to be
blotted from the records of heaven, no more to be remembered or
come into mind. So in the symbolic service they were carried away
into the wilderness, separated from the congregation forever.
Since Satan is the one responsible for all the sins that caused
the death of the Son of God, justice demands that Satan suffer the
final punishment. Christ’s work to redeem men and women and to
purify the universe from sin will be closed by placing these sins on
Satan, who will bear the final penalty. So in the earthly service, the
yearly cycle of services was closed by purifying the sanctuary and
confessing the sins on the head of the scapegoat.
So in the services of the tabernacle, each day the people were
taught the great truths of Christ’s death and ministry, and once each
year, their thoughts were carried into the future, to the closing events
of the great controversy between Christ and Satan, and the final
purifying of the universe from sin and sinners.
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