The Temple of God in Heaven by Stephen Nelson Haskell

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Jul 7, 1904

The Temple of God in Heaven

By Stephen Nelson Haskell

“The temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament.” Rev. 11: 19. Three facts are here stated:—

1. There is a temple in heaven. To this fact there is an abundance of other testimony in the Scriptures. “The Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord’s throne is in heaven.” Ps. 11: 4. “The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all.” Ps. 103: 19. “He hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary; from heaven did the Lord behold the earth.” Ps. 102: 19. “A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary,” Jer. 17: 12. “Of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an 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.” Heb. 8: 1, 2.

2. In the earthly sanctuary there were two apartments. In the second was “the golden censer, and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold.” Heb. 9: 4. In the ark were placed the two tables of stone. They were called “tables of testimony.” Ex. 31: 18. The cover of the ark was the mercy-seat. Here were two cherubim, one on either end, and above the mercy-seat, between the cherubim, was the Shekinah, representing God in heaven.

3. At a particular time, under the sounding of the seventh trumpet, “the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testimony.” The prophet does not say, “I saw,” but “there was seen.” Who saw?—Those living at this particular time. After the passing of the time in 1844, there was, by many of those who were looking for the Lord, a searching of the Scriptures as never before, to ascertain wherein lay their mistake. The more they searched, the more convinced they were that there was no mistake in the reckoning of the prophetic periods, the twenty-three hundred years that ended in 1844. Their enemies acknowledged this to be their strongest point. The date of their starting-point, 457 B. C., was established by more than twenty eclipses. So they turned their attention to the subject of the sanctuary. They had reasoned that the sanctuary was this earth, and the cleansing of it would be by fire when the Lord came. And so with this view, they made Dan. 8: 14 read, “Unto two thousand three hundred days, then the Lord will come.”

Imagine their surprise when they found the term “sanctuary” occurring one hundred and forty-seven times in the Bible, and in no single instance was it applied to this earth or to the church. The church is to be the habitation of God through the Spirit, and individuals are the spiritual temple of the Lord. But the personal God of the Bible dwells in heaven, between the cherubim. Ps. 99: 1. His throne consists of real angels possessing backs, wings, and hands. Ezekiel 1; Ps. 18: 10. “All thy commandments are righteousness.” Ps. 119: 172. “Righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne.” Ps. 97: 2. Under the throne of Jehovah in the heavenly sanctuary are the ten commandments.

When those looking for Christ to come saw that there was a heavenly sanctuary, and that there was an open door in the most holy place in the heavenly sanctuary, they also saw that the law could no more be changed than could the character of God, and that the ten commandments were an outward expression of his character. That led them to look for Scriptural authority for the observance of the first day of the week as the Sabbath. In this they were as much disappointed as in their idea of the sanctuary. They read, “In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week” (Matt. 28: 1), and that the Sabbath “was past” when the first day came. Mark 16: 1, 2. They also found that the disciples returned from the tomb, and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment (Luke 23: 56), and then came, upon the first day of the week, to do the work they refrained from doing on the Sabbath day. Luke 24: 1.

Upon further investigation of this subject they found that the cleansing of the sanctuary, in the Mosaic law, was by the blood of animals (Leviticus 16); also that the sanctuary in heaven was to be cleansed by better blood than that of animals, even by the precious blood of Christ. Heb. 9: 22-24. The cleansing was to rid the sanctuary of the confessed sins of those who had broken God’s law, for sin is the transgression of the law. 1 John 3: 4. All this led them up to the observance of the Bible Sabbath.

Worshiping the Beast

The most solemn warning in the Bible is contained in the message of Rev. 14: 9-12. It warns against worshiping the beast and his image. The beast-worship is substituting other commandments for the commandments of God. The last work of Christ is to make a final disposition of sin, Satan, and sinners. To say that God does not exist as a person in heaven would be to deny the atonement, and remove the foundation principle of the gospel of Jesus

Christ. It makes the Bible a myth, and substitutes, in its stead, heathen philosophy, even the religion of Egypt, and adopts the serpent’s reasoning in the garden of Eden. God had said, “Thou shalt surely die.” Satan said, “Thou shalt not surely die.” This does away with the literal interpretation of the Word of God.

A careful study of the sanctuary question, which reveals the work of our High Priest in the heavenly courts, and the keeping of God’s commandments and the faith of Jesus (Rev. 14: 12), is our only safety from the delusions of Satan in the last days.—S. N. Haskell, in Southern Watchman.