TIMELY THEMES FOR STUDY.
By Uriah Smith
Times like the present require careful thought and clear discernment in more particulars than one. Nature is convulsed, and shows signs of age and decrepitude in all her frame. Professed Christianity has fallen to a low grade. The love of many has waxed cold. Times are perilous. The nations are angry. The best principles of civil government are repudiated. And a world-wide vortex of war from the greed and passions of men, in addition to the devastations of famine and plague, seems to be opening before the inhabitants of the earth. All these things are the alarming symptoms of the last stages of collapse in which the world is to fall before it passes away. In glancing at the situation, and beholding the elements of disturbance and confusion everywhere present, and so many directions to which attention is attracted, one is in danger of becoming unsettled and bewildered in regard to the best course for him to pursue. But it will do us good to remember that there is no confusion nor distraction in heaven. There is One there who is, and ever will be, the master of the situation, through all the wild chaos in which human history will at last be buried. Upon this Being, to whom is committed all power in heaven and earth, under all circumstances the mind can rest with all assurance and quiet. The Captain of our salvation never knows a feeling of confusion or frustration. And he invites us to let the principles he holds in control, govern our hearts and minds. “Look unto me,” he says, “and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” Isa. 45:22. And the apostle also exhorts, “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.” Heb. 12:2. While our environments on earth are calculated to absorb our attention, let us remember that we have relationships to things in the heavens that are more vital still to our eternal interests, of which we should never lose sight. The work of our great High Priest above should be before the mind, as an ever-living subject of contemplation and study. And that subject which makes this specifically plain, and clothes it with emphasis, should not be displaced to such an extent as to divert the mind for a moment from a sense of our higher interests and obligations. No subject brings to view the Saviour in all his offices—his peculiar work, in its nature, philosophy, and results; its chronology and progress; and how we are related to it, and affected by it—like the subject of the sanctuary. This study is important because it reveals many things, which, without it, the world does not and can not know. For instance, there is no other way of knowing that we are now in the day of judgment; that we have entered upon that great day which God has appointed, “in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.” That man is the man Christ Jesus; and when God raised him from the dead, it was an assurance to all men that there is a day appointed in which the judgment of the world will begin. We have already entered upon that day; and a little more than half a hundred years of it, even now, are in the past. Its issue is to be the decision of the case of every candidate for immortality that has ever lived; and that is not far from the opening of that work which has already begun; for “in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God [the indiscriminate call of the gospel to the world] should be finished,” and the probation of all men would come to an end. In the same proportion as we are interested in the work of Christ, as priest, we must be interested in the place where he performs that work. We may say, in a general way, to be sure, that it is heaven; but that is not sufficient; for important conclusions are to be drawn from the particular locality in which the work is done, at special epochs of its progress. These conclusions can be derived from the subject of the sanctuary, and from no other source. An equal interest attaches to the nature of this work, and the modus operandi by which it is carried out. The Bible teaching on the subject of the sanctuary is like the rays of a search-light focused upon these points. The prominence given to it in the inspired record, and the particulars revealed concerning it, show the importance attached to it in the divine mind. We are told just what, and where, the sanctuary is. There are many earnest students of prophecy, who, by looking at a wrong object for the sanctuary, are weakened in their grasp of prophetic themes, are confused in their utterances, are obliged to discard some prophetic declarations, and are held to wrong conclusions, which make their views of the future cloudy and indistinct. They look to the earth or the land of Canaan as the sanctuary to be cleansed, and that by fire at the second coming of Christ; or to the church as the sanctuary in which the High Priest makes his offerings. But none of these things are the sanctuary; and the cleansing of the sanctuary is not accomplished by fire, but by that which alone secures “remission,” which is the blood of Christ. Heb. 9:22. And the church acts no part corresponding to the service for which the sanctuary was ordained. To make his work on earth more centralized than it had been, the Lord gave Moses the pattern of a building to be erected as his dwelling place, that, as he said, “I may dwell among them.” Ex. 25:8. This was the sanctuary. This, embodied afterward in the temple, was the visible sanctuary among men, till the crucifixion of Christ. This was a type, and was to continue through the time of types and shadows. Then types gave place to antitypes, and the real and true sanctuary in heaven took the place of the figure and shadow, which had long existed on the earth. This sanctuary in heaven is introduced by Paul, speaking upon this very subject, in Heb. 8:1–4. The services of this heavenly temple had not been formally inaugurated while the former was in force. “The Holy Ghost this signifying,” says Paul, “that the way into the holiest of all [Greek, plural, holy places; that is, the true holy places] was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing which was a figure for the time then present,” Heb. 9:8. This dwelling place of Christ on high, where he now presents his intercessions for lost men, is the place where the work will end. This is the one to be cleansed; and the closing work there will be intimately interwoven with the experience of the last, or remnant, church on earth. We now have before us what the sanctuary is, and where it is. To the question, When? the answer is, that in its most important aspects, it is now. When the work connected with it is, as now, about to close, the issues to be there decided make it an all-important center of consideration and study. To the questions, Was there a sanctuary before it was visibly inaugurated by Moses? and if so, what? reference may be made, for answer, to Jer. 17:12. “A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary.” From this it would appear that when God saw fit to embody in more specific form the process of the work of grace for men, he chose the place of his own throne as the spot in which to erect the heavenly temple; and this which was to be the true tabernacle, when Christ should actually enter upon his work as priest and mediator for the world, was the “pattern” that God gave to Moses, from which to erect the tabernacle that he caused to be built in the wilderness. Heb. 8:5. If we inquire why this arrangement was instituted, the answer is that it was to be the grand center around which the worship of God should revolve, and every act of devotion point; because it is the habitation of God, and there he placed the transcript of his will, the ten commandments; and there on the mercy-seat, the cover of the ark, is the focal point in the work of redemption, where “mercy and truth are met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Ps. 85:10. Here reposes the law that shows what sin is, what claims the law presses upon the creature; and here is presented the blood that hides from the law the sins, on account of which it holds the transgressor under condemnation, or would, if they could be seen. But then, so far as the sinner’s record is concerned, they are blotted out. Let no one overlook the bearing of this subject on the question of the perpetuity of that law which is the standard of righteousness, and which was enshrined in the ark in the most holy place. This reveals to us the immutability and perpetuity of that sacred document, beyond the possibility of any question. The connection of the law with the gospel is clearly shown; for the law reposes beneath the mercy-seat, where mercy is provided by the gospel for the infringements of that law. It shows the law as the foundation of God’s throne, as over it were the cherubim, and the shekinah, or visible glory of his presence. It touches, in vital contact, everything in the plan of salvation, and has to do with every individual who comes within the range of Christ’s redeeming work. Its bearing upon the prophecies is seen in that it is one of the two prophecies that bring into their specifications a definite day for the occurrence of events: “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed;” the days ending Oct. 22, 1844. The other instance is that prophecy which shows that the sixth trumpet ceased sounding Aug. 11, 1840. And the study of this subject also shows that any attempt to reapply the prophecies so as to set any definite time for the Lord to come, or the work to end, is a sad departure from the true principles of interpretation; for we are brought by the time of the sanctuary down this side of the ending of the longest prophetic period in the Bible, and are introduced into an indefinite period of patient waiting (“Here is the patience of the saints.” Rev. 14:12), which will reach to the coming of the Lord, without any additional time movement. This subject explains the disappointment of 1844; the parable of the wedding garment (Matthew 22); the parable of the wheat and tares (Matthew 13); the ten virgins (Matthew 25); the “coming suddenly” of Mark 13:36; the Laodicean message of Rev. 3:14–22; the latter rain, or refreshing (Acts 3:19); and how the decision of character which fixes every man’s destiny, whether he is to be holy or filthy, saved or lost,—a decision which must be made before the Lord appears,—can be made, and will be made, before that day, so that the sentence can be carried out “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” when the Lord comes to reward every man according to his works, at the last trump. 1 Cor. 15:52; Rev. 22:11. In this prophecy we can note more definitely than in any other the steps that take us down to the end. Our dearest interests center in the sanctuary; for there is the only advocate to plead our cause. If we accept his mediation on the conditions offered, all is well; if we reject it, all is lost. The court is now in session, and from its decisions there can be no appeal. Prominent epochs, sufficient to arrest attention, appear all along the way, in the history of the sanctuary: (1) When it was first erected; (2) when it gave place to the temple; (3) when the typical dispensation closed, and the heavenly sanctuary took the place of the earthly; (4) when the twenty-three hundred days ended in 1844, and the ministration was changed from the holy to the most holy place. Then Rev. 11:19 and Dan. 7:9, 10, 13, 14, were fulfilled; then the seventh trumpet began to sound; then by faith the ark of God was discerned in the heavenly temple, and the prophetic Sabbath reform began its work among men; then the mystery of God began to be finished, the atonement to be made, the sanctuary to be cleansed; then the books were opened (Dan. 7:10), and the awe-inspiring ceremonies of the judgment hour began. All parts of the Advent message for to-day, with all its reforms, center in this subject. As the spokes of a wheel center in the hub, so the sanctuary is the center and citadel of the present truth. Since the books were opened, and the examination of life records begun, more than half a century, as already noticed, has passed. Some seem to think that this is too long a time for our great High Priest to be in the most holy place, making the atonement, or cleansing the sanctuary; and they begin to waver in faith and patience. Beware! remember that the work covers the entire human family; and the decisions are for eternity. Are fifty years too long a time for this work? would a hundred be? And God is not limited for time. He “is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” And he will keep the books open, we507may be sure, till every one has accepted Christ who would accept him if opportunity were indefinitely continued. After that, further continuance would be useless, and the work will stop by the very self-developments of the wicked themselves. And the way the world is going, how long can it be before that point will be reached? The natural order of this work would be, and doubtless is, to begin with the human family, at the opening of the world’s history, and take up the generations of the dead, beginning with Abel, the first to die, but whose sentence is already anticipated in Heb. 11:4, then pass down through successive generations, in consecutive order, till we reach our own day, and the living, who of course come last into the judgment. The record and the parties are for a moment contemporary. But when we reach this point, with the hundreds of millions engaged in the work (Dan. 7:10; Rev. 5:11; Heb. 12:22), how long will it take to examine the cases of the little remnant of living Christians? And this will be a period of extreme consecration and devotion on the part of the church. But a solemn inquiry is, What point has this work now reached? Has it come to the time of Noah, Abraham, Job, Moses, or Daniel? Has it come to the days of the apostles, or early Christians? the Dark Ages? the Waldenses? the Reformation? the time of Luther and the Wesleys? the great proclamation of the Advent movement, or the rise of the third message?—We know not. But we do know that it is stealing swiftly and silently upon a world intoxicated with pleasure, and dreaming of peace and safety. And what is our attitude? Are we watching and preparing? And here we can not withhold a glance at a few steps beyond. We see sins loaded upon the head of the great originator of sin; after that, the lake of fire prepared for him and his angels. In these all-reducing flames the controversy ends with the extinction of sin and all its agents, root and branch. But this is not a loss of any of God’s handiworks. It is the loss and destruction of nothing but that which is evil. Then he who sits upon the throne says, “Behold, I make all things new.” A new order of things begins, free from every evil element, destitute of no good thing. The righteous dwell there. Not a wicked thought, nor word, nor action, desire or purpose, in all that multitude! No limit to the joy! and no end to the time! U. S.