THE SANCTUARY by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 23, 1876

THE SANCTUARY.

By Uriah Smith

Forty-first Paper.—The Binding of Satan.

Among the evidences presented last week to show that the scape-goat was a type of Satan, were some extracts from a work entitled, The Redeemer and Redeemed, by Chas. Beecher. It is but just to Mr. B. to remark that while he thinks that Azazel is the name for Satan, he does not regard the goat as representing Satan, but looks upon the ceremony as performed in some sense in reference to Satan. This he thinks implied in the words engraved on the lots which the high priest drew for the goats on the day of atonement; one, La-Yehovah, for Jehovah, the other, La-Azazel, for Azazel, for the devil; and he takes the transaction to signify that subjection of Christ to Satan which is implied in the sentence that the serpent should bruise the heel of the seed of the woman. But as this was done at the crucifixion, it can have no reference to the ceremony of the scape-goat, a ceremony not performed till the work in the sanctuary is finished. And inasmuch as the goat upon which the lot fell for the Lord typified Christ himself, so the goat upon which the lot fell for Azazel would typify Azazel, or Satan himself.

Another reason for considering the scape-goat

a type of Satan is the very striking manner in which the ceremony of sending away the goat into the wilderness harmonizes with the events to transpire in connection with the cleansing of the Heavenly sanctuary, so far as revealed to us in the scriptures of truth.

Thus in the type we see the following acts performed: 1. The sin of the transgressor is imparted to the victim. 2. That sin is borne by the priest in the blood of the offering into the sanctuary. 3. On the day of atonement the priest with the blood of the sin offering for the people removes all these sins from the sanctuary, and lays them upon the head of the scape-goat. 4. The goat is then sent away into a land not inhabited.

Answering to these several events in the type, we have in the antitype the following: 1. The great offering for the world was made on Calvary. 2. The sins of all those who avail themselves of Christ’s shed blood by faith in him, are represented in that blood, with which he entered into the sanctuary on high, Heb. 9:12, and are through that transferred to that sanctuary. 3. After Christ the minister of the true tabernacle, Heb. 8:2, has finished his ministration, and by the atonement has released the sins of his people from the sanctuary, he will lay them upon the head of their author, the antitypical scape-goat, the devil. 4. The devil will then be sent away, loaded with these sins, into a land not inhabited.

And we apprehend that we find a description of this latter event in plain terms in Rev. 20:1-3: “And I saw an angel come down from Heaven having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years should be fulfilled.”

This is just such a movement in reference to Satan as we might expect to occur on the supposition that he is the antitype of the ancient scape-goat. Looking upon him as such antitype, we watch for some transaction which will correspond to the sending away of the goat anciently, loaded with sins, into the waste wilderness. At length we see an angel come from Heaven, lay hold upon him, bind him, and cast him into the bottomless pit for a thousand years; and we involuntarily exclaim, Here it is: this is it.

With this view, the scene described in Rev. 20:1-3 can show its connections and the reason why it occurs. Without this, it comes in abruptly; and who can tell why just this disposition, instead of some other, is at this time made of the devil?

This scene occurs at just the right time to fulfill the antitype; for it is immediately after Christ has finished his work as priest. Secondly, the right agent is employed. The goat anciently was not led away by the high priest, but by the hand of another person. So here it is not Christ, our great High Priest, who casts Satan into the bottomless pit, but an angel; which admirably answers to the type. Thirdly, he is cast into the right place. Anciently, the goat was sent away into a waste wilderness, a land not inhabited. The devil is cast into the bottomless pit, corresponding most fittingly to the former, as we shall see.

This word, bottomless pit, in the original signifies an abyss, bottomless, deep, profound. Its use seems to be to denote any place of darkness, desolation, and death. Thus in Rev. 9:1, 2, it is applied to the barren wastes of the Arabian desert, and in Rom. 10:7, to the grave. In Gen. 1:2, the same word is rendered “deep” in the declaration that “darkness was upon the face of the deep;” and here it must apply to the whole earth in its state of primeval chaos. And we have reason to believe that it means precisely this in Rev. 20:3, when it is made the dreary prison-house of Satan. At this time, let it be borne in mind, the earth is a vast charnel-house of desolation and death. The voice of God has shaken it to its foundations, the islands and mountains have been moved out of their places, the great earthquake has leveled to the earth the mightiest works of man, the seven last plagues have left their withering and blasting foot-prints over all the fair face of nature, the burning glory attending the coming of the Son of man has borne its part in accomplishing the general desolation, the wicked have been given to the slaughter, and their putrefying flesh and bleaching bones lie unburied and unlamented from one end of the earth to the other. Thus is the earth made empty and waste, and turned upside down. Isa. 24:1. Thus is it brought back again to its original state of chaos. See Jer. 4:19-26. And what better term could be used to describe it rolling on in its disorganized condition of darkness and desolation for a thousand years, than the term abyss or bottomless pit, which was used to describe it in the beginning?

Here is a desolate wilderness, or “land not inhabited,” well befitting the great antitypical scape-goat. And what more fitting retribution could at this point overtake the author of all our woe, than that he should, through all these slow-circling thousand years, be confined amid the ruin which his own hands have indirectly wrought, unable to flee from his habitation of woe, or to repair in the least degree its hideous wretchedness.

While Satan is passing his thousand years upon this desolate earth, bound, that is, restrained from carrying forward his nefarious work, the righteous being in Heaven, and the wicked in their graves, and so all being beyond his power, the saints are accomplishing the work of judgment they perform in connection with Christ in Heaven, 1 Cor. 2:2; Rev. 20:4, that is, apportioning to the wicked the punishment due to each one, to be inflicted upon them at the end of the thousand years.

This work being accomplished, the thousand years expire, the wicked dead are raised, Satan is loosed, for he now has something to do, and he goes out to deceive those wicked multitudes that are brought out of their graves. Having gathered them around the holy city, which has then come down out of Heaven, fire descends from God and devours them all, root and branch, Satan and all his followers. Here the wicked receive in their own persons the punishment due to their sins, while Satan suffers under the accumulated load of the sins of all the righteous, which, at the beginning of the thousand years, were laid upon him as the antitypical scape-goat.

U. S.