p. 10 | The Heavenly High Priest by J. O. Corliss

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Aug 17, 1916

The Heavenly High Priest

By J. O. Corliss

The Atonement — No. 8

The Heavenly High Priest

J. O. CORLISS

In the days of Solomon, king of Israel, the sanctuary services were transferred from the wilderness tabernacle to the temple in Jerusalem. The religious rites continued to be performed there by the Levitical priesthood until the death of Christ, the antitypical Lamb, to whom all those sacrificial offerings pointed. When the blood of Christ was offered for sinners, there was no longer efficacy in the typical services. The priesthood in man’s behalf was not to cease, but was to pass from an earthly to a heavenly priesthood. As the human priesthood and its services were but the shadow of the heavenly to follow (Heb. 8: 5, 6), so the earthly atonement service pointed to an atonement to be effected in heaven.

This is made quite clear by the comment of the apostle in affirming that Christ could not be a priest while on earth, because, until he qualified for that position by his death, resurrection, and appearance in heaven in men’s behalf (Heb. 9: 24), there were heavenly appointed priests who were ordained to offer gifts on earth. Heb. 8: 3, 4. It is also true that during his earthly ministry, when preparing for his heavenly work, Christ directed those who came to him to go and offer gifts before the earthly priests, as the law commanded. Matt. 8: 4.

But just prior to his death, the Saviour made a significant utterance touching the earthly temple service. Looking down upon Jerusalem, the devoted city, from the crest of an adjacent hill, he expressed the sorrowful thoughts filling his mind. That people had scrupulously followed out the typical atonement service which shadowed forth his future work for men, and yet they had ruthlessly rejected him, without whom their services had been rendered in vain. In the sorrow of his godlike heart he cried, “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” Matt. 23: 38.

The fulfilment of this saying was soon realized; for when the divine Sacrifice hung in expiring agony on the cross, his closing breath was a distressed cry, and at that instant the veil of the temple was “rent in twain from the top to the bottom.” Mark 15: 38. This indicated that the two apartments of that sanctuary, hitherto separated by that veil, had become one common room, and the special service rendered in each had now come to an end. The offering of Christ’s blood had become the signal that the priesthood was transferred from the tribe of Levi to the tribe of Judah, and that the Son of God had become high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Heb. 6: 20; 7: 12-17.

After setting forth in the closing part of the seventh chapter of Hebrews the position and work of the Levitical high priest, the apostle opens the eighth chapter in these words: “Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such a high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.” Levitical priests ministered in a sanctuary erected by men, but from this inspired statement it is clear that Christ’s ministry in behalf of men is in a sanctuary erected by God in the heavens. True, that heavenly sanctuary is invisible to mortals, but in order that a true idea of its being and work might be gathered, God himself ordered the earthly sanctuary built after the pattern he showed Moses on the mount. Heb. 8: 5. The earthly sanctuary and its appurtenances, made by men’s hands, were but figures of the true sanctuary in heaven, in which the Lord Jesus ministers in behalf of a human oneness with God. Heb. 9: 24.

The earthly tabernacle, then, which God commanded to be built, really foreshadowed the heavenly, which was shown to Moses when he received commission to build the earthly. It is easy to understand this when one learns that the earthly sanctuary services were inaugurated to propagate faith in the work Christ must do to redeem men. In no other way could they be counted as a shadow of the more substantial work to be done in heaven by the Lord Jesus as the world’s high priest.

Carrying the comparison yet farther regarding the relation of the shadowy earthly services to the heavenly atonement, it may be asked, Did the earthly services have a specific day of each year

set apart for the consummation of the atonement, wherein sins were reviewed in general, and figuratively removed? Then, to have the shadow properly point to the substance, in the real atonement work of Christ there must be a specific time appointed when the sins of all for whom Christ died must be brought by him in remembrance before God, preparatory to their final disposition.

Again, as a high priest was required to minister the atonement of the earthly service, so a high priest is necessary for the heavenly ministration of the real atonement for sin. But this could not be until the true Sacrifice was offered on the cross of Calvary, and this very act was necessary to mark the limitation of those services which were shadowy in their nature. A shadow always reaches to, and ceases when it touches, the substance that casts it in the foreground. Not until Christ died, therefore, and brought to an end the earthly priesthood, could the heavenly service be inaugurated; at least Christ could not become the world’s high priest while the typical priesthood existed.