THE YEARLY FEASTS OF THE SANCTUARY 2
FALL CEREMONIES - 7th month
THE FEAST OF TRUMPETS
THE DAY OF ATONEMENT
THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES
Now the last part of the ceremonial year represented a work that would take place further on in time, when God would do a great work of judging the dead and cleansing his living people and preparing them for heaven.
The last feasts that would be fulfilled would have to be fulfilled in the time when there was no earthly sanctuary on earth. The last feast would take place at the end of earth's history when God would do a final work to prepare a people to experience what was called the Feast of Tabernacles, or to experience the New Jerusalem.
These feasts started with the feast of trumpets, the warning that God's judgment day was coming symbolically. And then second, the Day of Atonement, or the Day of Judgment. Atonement means at-one-ment, the day when God and man would unify forever, and then the next would be the Feast of Tabernacles. God would then give man eternal life.
The Day of Atonement was also known as the 'Cleansing of the Sanctuary'.
This is a very important service and pointed forward to the Time when God's Judgment of all who had ever claimed to be His people would begin. Later in the prophecies of Daniel, the date when this would begin was told.
"And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." Daniel 8:14
When this is figured out- (see study on Daniel 8,9) it comes to 1844! (457BC-1844 AD) At that time a special work of judging the professed people of God would begin. Jesus would pass into the Most Holy Place of the Heavenly Sanctuary. It is interesting that the Prophetic book of Daniel points out the coming Judgment and most of Revelation is telling about the events surrounding this Judgment. In these two books you see one perfect picture even though they were written centuries apart! And then behind it all, the great object-lesson of the Sanctuary and its services runs through it to tie all together for those that truly seek to understand!
"Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary: who is so great a God as our God?" Psalms 77:13
THE FEAST OF TRUMPETS
Ten days before the Day of Atonement was the Feast of Trumpets.Ten days before the Day of Atonement, the Day of Judgment, the day of sealing, trumpets were blown throughout the entire land of Palestine, throughout hills and valleys, the trumpets were blown and could be heard echoing through the valleys, and from mountaintop to mountaintop. And the people stopped whatever they were doing.
Even the individual who was least concerned about his salvation knew that at that time he had to drop everything, and he had to be sure and have his sacrifices finished and all of his sins confessed and in that sanctuary, and he only had ten days to do this heart-searching work.
The blowing of the trumpet signified God's loud call to repentance. Since this seventh month closes up the year's work in connection with the sanctuary service, and with the harvest, how appropriate for the trumpet to blow that the people should turn their attention more to the things of God, and prepare for the final work. Hence, this is made one of the most sacred days to the Jews.
They also teach that on this day, three sets of books are opened; the Book of Life to examine the good deeds of the people, the Book of Death to examine the evil deeds, and a sort of intermediary book to examine into accounts of those whose cases are to be decided on the Day of Atonement ten days later. The ten days following this Sabbath day are called the Ten Days of Repentance. Even the most careless and indifferent during these days devotes his time to the service of God, and seeks for preparation of heart that when the Day of Atonement arrives he may receive a seal of life for the year to come symbolizing the seal of God's character forever.
The people put everything aside. They knew that this was their last chance on that year to purify their hearts and their lives, and then as that tenth day dawned, they gathered their families around that sanctuary. They were there, all of them were there. This was the most important day in that year. Do you realize that if an Israelite or a non-Israelite that believed in the worship of the True God, failed to be there on that Day of Atonement, that they were cut off from Israel and lost, symbolically lost forever?
FULFILLMENT:
In Prophecy a day equals a year in real time. 10 years before 1844, the preaching of the message of Daniel 8:14 began in real earnest. For centuries, this book had been 'sealed', but now as the time came on for that last great time prophecy to come to its end, all over the world, interest sprang up in the study of the time prophecies of Daniel!
Even though the people first thought that the 'sanctuary' that was to be cleansed was the earth and that the text meant that Jesus was coming back to earth that year, it still had the same effect as the sounding of those trumpets did in ancient Israel. All over the world, people began to turn their attention to the Prophecies and to repent of their sins and seek the Lord.
THE DAY OF ATONEMENT:
On the Great day of Atonement, the only one that was to minister in the sanctuary on that day was the high priest. He would enter the MOST HOLY PLACE of the sanctuary to do a special work.. This was the only time in the year when anyone could enter there. First he had to do a work for himself—
He had to do a special work of purifying himself. If he was impure when he went into that sanctuary, he would die. And so all around the base of his robe the Lord had directed that he was to put pomegranates, and between the pomegranates, bells so that as he walked, they could hear those bells tinkling through the sanctuary, and the people out there holding on by faith to what was being done by the high priest, this last purification that was to take place in their lives by faith, they listened to the tinkling of the bells, and they followed him by faith through his work in the sanctuary. If those bells stopped for very long, they were terrified that their high priest may have perished before the Lord.
Now the first thing that the high priest would have to do on this special Day of Atonement, or the Day of Judgment, was to take extra incense, and take the portable incense burner (The Censer) and fill it with incense so that smoke began to billow out of it. He walked through the Holy Place of the sanctuary, and there with this incense in his hand, adding it to the fire, and the incense burner in the other, he walked up to the curtain that he had not entered all year long, into that room that had that special light.
He went over to the edge of that curtain, and he put his elbow in, pushed it aside, and he put a cloud of smoke in before him to veil him, this veil representing the intercession of Jesus Christ in our behalf. Then he walked into that glorious room, before the Ark of the Covenant that kept the law of God, where the Shekinah light just blazed before him, and he waved that smoke in front of him to protect him, and then he put that incense burner down in the sanctuary.
He turned around now with these gorgeous robes, and his beautiful plate on his chest. He went outside and he took a bull calf, and he offered it as a sacrifice for himself and for his whole family, to purify their lives so that he could perform this last work as a fit representative of Jesus Christ, our high priest. And then again he made his way back in that room, and he had the blood on his fingers in one hand, and the bowl of blood in the other, and he made his way through that curtain.
And now the room was filled with the smoke representing the final intercession of Jesus in these last days in our behalf. He walked up to that Ark, and he walked around the Ark, and for the first time, he turned and he faced the east. And he placed that blood on the Mercy Seat below that glowing Shekinah light, that was the glory of the infinite God. This turning around and facing the east symbolized the end of mediation. If he did not die, it symbolized that God accepted the sacrifice in his behalf, and now he could carry out the work in behalf of the sanctuary and the people.
So he went out and he completely changed his garment. Now he was not allowed to touch his own garments. He had to have his garments taken off for him, and the new garments, a plain, white linen ephod placed on him. His hat, his undergarments and everything. Now he represented that he was not his own man, that he was fulfilling the symbolism of doing the work of Christ, and he was to have no part in that. He represented Jesus alone.
The Two Goats:
There were two goats that had been chosen and were tied just outside the curtain of the sanctuary waiting through all this for their part in this last final symbol of union between God, and man, and the end of sin.
1: The High Priest now in these new white robes, went out and they cast lots over the two goats, one was chosen to be the Lord's goat, and the other goat was the 'scape-goat', the one chosen to represent the devil. His name was called Azazel and even to this day the Hebrews use the name of Azazel to represent the devil. In spiritualism at times, you also find that Satan uses the symbol of the goat, and the name Azazel. (2: refers to the work described above where the priest makes atonement first for himself)
3: First he would take the Lord's goat and he would NOT confess sins over that goat. This goat was a sin offering. It was called a sin offering in the Bible, but no sins were confessed over the animal. But the throat was cut, and the blood was taken, that blood representing the Sinless Life of Christ.
And the first place the priest took this blood was to the court where the blood had been placed upon the horns of the brazen altar symbolizing that their sins had transferred to that. He touched the horns on that alter, representing that the sins of the people were now taken off of the altar and were now carried in this blood representing the sacrifice of Christ, it represented Jesus bearing our sins.
The priest then went into the sanctuary, and he went up to the horns of that little golden altar of incense where the blood had been taken faithfully in throughout the ceremonial year representing the transfer of the confessed sins into the sanctuary, and he touched those horns with this blood of the Lord's goat representing that now these sins that were confessed are borne by Jesus, our Saviour.
Then he went up to the curtain where the blood was sprinkled throughout the ceremonial year, and he took some of this blood and he sprinkled it representing that again the sin that was on record in the sanctuary, was now taken into the blood, and so borne by our Saviour in a final work that he is going to do for mankind.
Those sins represent the sins that are confessed, repented of and forsaken. If anyone retained sins during this last work of Jesus Christ, those sins will stay on them. The work that Jesus is doing at the end of time is to lift the sins that we have confessed and forsaken, to remove them from our lives forever. That's the great wonder of this last work of atonement, that we can have the record of sin removed forever and be as though we had never sinned with no record of those sins!
4: But the work is not over with. While he is carrying all of the sins, the confessed sins of the people symbolically, he makes his way again into that Most Holy room, just choking with the smell of incense and smoke, and walks to that glowing light. He makes his way around the Ark of the Covenant, and he takes this blood now bearing these sins, and he touches the golden mercy seat that sits above the Law of God that rests below that Shekinah. If he does not die, the sacrifice is accepted. And he can bear those sins from the sanctuary.
5: And then he would go out into the court, take the other goat, the goat that represented the devil, Azazel, and the priest would place his hands over the head of that goat. And he would confess all the sins that had come into the sanctuary. And it symbolically represented that the sins that people had confessed had now been removed from their minds, their memories and their lives, and now were transferred to the mind, the memory and the life of the devil.
6: Now that goat was taken by a fit man, a very strong man, out into a wilderness area and there he was left to die. Tradition says he was flung from a precipice and perished.
