We're going to continue our Sanctuary Study, but first I want to make something clear, I'm not a Seventh-Day Adventist.
Yes, I believe in the Seventh-Day Sabbath, and various other things they believe but I am not one, but that won't keep me from being able to discern the truth they might have from the falsehoods with the Holy Spirit's guidance.
I'm also not saying that all Seventh-Day Adventists are bad, individually only the Lord knows the heart.
With all that in mind let's continue with the Thought Papers of William Grotheer to guide us, but once again, believe nothing but your Bible! Check everything!
1989 Special 2 -- Light From the Throne -- Part 2 --
This first quarter of 1989, the Sabbath School lessons for the Adult Division center on the book of Leviticus. Written by two conservative Seventh-day Adventist scholars, there was cause for hope that some of the previously questionable conclusions regarding the sanctuary service might be corrected. However, this is not the case.
In Lesson 4, January 28, near the close of Section I, subtitled - "Sins of Ignorance" - the traditional explanation is found as to what was transferred to the sanctuary. The first sentence of the note reads - "Priest transfers sin to the sanctuary:" This error should be transparent.
It was blood only that the priest took into the sanctuary for sin and fingerprinted on the Altar of Incense, and sprinkled before the veil.
Now the blood is the life. It is the blood that maketh atonement. (Lev. 17:11)
If, therefore, it is sin, then sin makes the atonement.
No, a thousand times no!
The blood is the record that the penalty has been paid, and the sinner forgiven.
Further thought reveals why sin is not transferred to the sanctuary.
It is already recorded at the moment of transgression. The whole ceremony of Leviticus 4 has to do with sins of ignorance, not on God's part, but on the sinner's part. When the sinner was convicted, a prescribed ritual was performed.
Why then double record sin? This is not what the sinner needs. He needs the assurance of forgiveness and that the penalty for his sin as recorded has been paid.
We nullify a key lesson of Leviticus 4, when we assume that it is teaching the transfer of sin to the sanctuary. There was a transfer of sin, but it was the transfer to the sacrifice.
It was the recognition that a sin had been committed; the transfer of that guilt through the substitute required; and the assurance of forgiveness which is taught in the law of the sin offering.
I repeat, while the animal became sin through transfer and was destroyed when the blood was taken within the sanctuary, it was the blood, the life, indicating that the penalty for sin had been paid that was recorded.
The other method to get sin into the sanctuary as noted by the authors of the Sabbath School lessons was, that the priest who ate of the victim in the case of a ruler or common person's sin, ministered in the daily services offering incense, thereby "symbolically transferred" the sin "to the sanctuary."
(Teacher's Quarterly, p. 54)
Transfer is accomplished in the type by the symbolic laying on of the hand.
Where is such a record in the type for the transfer of sin to the sanctuary when the priest ate of the sacrifice?
In fact, even in the services on the Day of Atonement, the bullock which was offered as a sin offering for Aaron and his house, never had a hand laid upon its head. (Lev. 16:6)
There is further evidence from the Day of Atonement ritual that sin was not transferred to the sanctuary, but had been previously recorded. During the year, no blood was ever taken into the Most Holy Place.
The closest the blood, denoting that the penalty had been paid, ever came to the Most Holy Place, was that blood which was sprinkled before the veil separating the two apartments.
On the Day of Atonement, when the cleansing ritual did bring blood into the Most Holy Place, it was stated that it was being done "because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins." (Lev. 16:16)
If for sake of argument, we should grant that the record of blood was a record of sin, and not a record of the penalty paid for sin, then how did the transgressions and sins get into the Most Holy Place when no such blood over which confessions were made ever entered there?
What we have failed to realize is that the sanctuary services in type are an adjunct to the Reality of the Heavenly Sanctuary explaining how an individual in covenant relationship with God can escape the finality of the judgment.
We refuse to face up to the meaning of Jesus' promise in John 5:24. This verse does not destroy the sanctuary doctrine as some have sought to do with it; but rather it does focus on an area of teaching which needs to be corrected and brought into line with the true revelation of the sanctuary model. This issue of the Commentary will seek to do just that, as well as the issue to follow.
Some have cited Jeremiah (17:1) as proof that sin was transferred to the sanctuary. I, too, have so used this text in times past. Sensing that such a use of this text violates the meaning of the ritual of the sin offering in Leviticus, I checked the context in which Jeremiah was writing. The verse in Jeremiah reads:
"The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of the heart, and upon the horns of your altars."
The next verse introduces "the Asherim" (KJV - "groves") which were worshiped by the green trees on the high hills. The connection between the idolatrous worship or the "hills" and the blood placed on the horns of the altars of the temple must be related to the prophecy of the verses that follow. God would give these "high places for sin" to the spoiler (ver. 3), and Judah herself would serve their enemies in a strange land because what they did provoked the anger of the Lord (ver. 4).
The sin that came upon the altars was a sin so engraved upon their hearts that it could not be erased. Keil and Delitzsch comment as follows:
"It was because the altars and the images of the false gods had entwined themselves as closely about their hearts as their children, so that they brought the sin of their idolatry along with their sacrifices to the altars of Jahveh. The offerings which they bring, in this state of mind, to the Lord are defiled by idolatry and carry their sins to the altar, so that, in the blood which is sprinkled on its horns, the sins of the offerers are poured out on the altar. Hence it appears unmistakably that ver. 1 does not deal with the consciousness of sin as not yet cancelled or forgiven, but with the sin of idolatry, which, ineradically implanted in the hearts of the people and indelibly recorded before God on the horns of the altar, calls down God's wrath in punishment as announced in vers. 3 and 4." (Vol. 8, p. 278)
To cherish the sin for which we ask forgiveness and for which we present the Substitute is duplicity and makes of "the blood of the covenant ... an unholy thing."
The sin of the heart is retained while outwardly confessing its surrender.
This is hypocrisy which God hates.
In the typical service, this stage acting brought sin upon the altars of the sanctuary which God did not intend should be done.
A second error occurs in this same section of the Quarterly.
It states - "In the case of the sin offering for a fellow priest, or for the whole congregation" the blood was taken into the first apartment of the sanctuary. The authors failed to see, and the editors did not catch, that the offering for the priest wherein the blood was taken into the sanctuary, only pertained to the High Priest when he in his official capacity had sinned causing the whole congregation to transgress.
The text reads - "If the anointed priest shall sin so as to bring guilt on the people, then let him offer for his sin ... a young bullock." (Lev. 4:3 ARV)
As an individual sinner, the priest was included in the category of a ruler. See Numbers 3:32, where the same Hebrew word translated "ruler" in Levitucus 4 is there translated, "chief."
We suggest a careful study of all the material which is presented in this Commentary comparing Scripture with Scripture.
**
If you've read this far and feel a little overwhelmed, don't worry it's normal. We really do need to study. Study and understand, not just read and forget, not just read and let it go as something we don't need to really know.
It might not be easy, it might not be *exciting*, but it is important.
Some might counter that it's just semantics and who cares who believes what, but God does care.
Remember a counterfiet is no good if it doesn't mimic almost perfectly the real thing. Being deceived by something that is almost the real thing will leave you saying.. Lord, Lord didn't I do this and that in your name... and the Lord is going to say get away from Him, He never knew you.
Matthew {7:21} Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shallenter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the willof my Father which is in heaven. {7:22} Many will say tome in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thyname? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thyname done many wonderful works? {7:23} And then will Iprofess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, yethat work iniquity.
People are going to fully and truly believe they are doing God's work, but they won't be and the deception seeps in when we turn our backs on the truth, on learning, on delving deeply and wresting scripture against scripture to gain understanding. If you want a flippant, feel good, all play no work walk with God you can have one, I don't want that. I want to understand all I can understand.
It's important to know that details can matter. The tiniest detail can reveal a counterfiet.
No sin enters the Sanctuary.The blood that enters is the sacrifice made for the sinner.
God cannot abide sin. Sin separates from God the two can never be joined. God forgives sin through the sacrifice of His Son, He doesn't condone it.
May we all seek a much closer walk with Christ, a better understanding so that Christ will know us through and through.
In our Savior's all merciful name, by His grace...
Amen.
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