Sanctuary Studies, Sabbath Justice, Page 3

March 4, 2009August 10, 2017

Too Many 2300 Days Knowing, Vegemeat Eating Legalists?

While listening to much of the discourse in the sermons from many preachers one can come to a few interesting conclusions. First, vegetarianism must somehow be related to a meanspirtedness. In addition, this meanspirited vegetarianism must be rampant in the church. Why would I make this assumption? Well because often in the illustrations it is the vegetarian who is the foil. He is the one that is upsetting the equilibrium and hurting the new Christians who are seeking to follow God but have not grown to the full stature of Christ. Now certainly there is a place for this type of rhetoric. There are some who use vegetarianism as some sort of “get out of hell” card when it was never meant for that kind of thing. However, my problem is that the proper purpose of vegetarianism is hardly ever spoken of. When you hear about it, it is usually the obviously problematic person in the story that the preacher is speaking of.

Sanctuary and Vegetarianism? Anti Christian?

The same again with the knowledge of the 2300 days. There are some preachers who never even refer to the 2300 days or the sanctuary message except when saying that a knowledge of it is not necessary for some reason. They may preach that you need to know Jesus more than you know the Sanctuary. OK, I can go along with that to a certain extent, but doesn’t the Sanctuary tell us something about who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing? (but i Digress)…The same preacher may preach a story about the person who studies the Sanctuary doesn’t have the Love of God. Certainly there are those types of people. But when you never balance this rhetoric with either a proper presentation of the Sanctuary (demonstrating the unavoidable description of Jesus) or a proper role for the doctrine in the Christian life, then we end up with a distorted view that seems to think that these doctrines are almost problematic for Christian living.

Never Placing the Doctrines in Proper Context

Certainly many of these preachers are not saying that explicitly. Many of these preachers don’t even mean that at all. However if you only speak of the Sanctuary within the context of the hypocrite and the unloving foil and you never place the Sanctuary in the proper context of a loving Christian experience, then you are in essence teaching that the Sanctuary is a useless appendage. The same with other doctrines and vegetarianism.

Certainly there are some preachers who go to the opposite extreme, and there are some who place all of the doctrines in the context of Biblical Christ-centered Christianity. But in much of the discourse there is a strong undercurrent that seems to imly that the Sanctuary, vegetarianism, and other things that we have been called to teach are actually problematic. In short, if the Sanctuary is not a Christ-centered doctrine, then we either must start teaching it correctly, or openly toss it out, but we cannot continue to badmouth the very doctrines that were given to us to help us understand our purpose in these last days.

December 29, 2008August 10, 2017

Help from our High Priest

When one finds oneself in the depths of a temptation that is almost overpowering. And the enemy assails you, you ask Jesus for help. However when you ask Jesus for help you do it with a few things firmly in mind. First you ask for help knowing that Jesus Understands the plight of your soul for Jesus decided to place himself in the depths of human woe. It would have been an infinite humiliation for Jesus to come as Adam in the garden, but Jesus decided to take on the seed of Abraham so that he could be a merciful and faithful high priest. (Hebrews 2:16-17).

Second you ask for help knowing that Jesus can help you in the problem you are dealing with. But more than taking on the seed of Abraham, Jesus was tempted in all points like as we are yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). We can say with all assurance that Jesus Understand not just by omniscience, but by experience the depths of temptation for he was tempted and therefore he can be merciful and faithful (Hebrews 2:18).

So when temptation assails us, we can go to Jesus and call out to him. And when we call on Jesus, we can know we have a faithful and merciful High Priest listening. And that High Priest knows exactly how much strength is needed to overcome the temptation. That High Priest knows exactly how much grace we need. And thus we can boldy come to the throne of grace to obtain the mercy (Hebrews 4:16) that our brother (Jesus is not ashamed to call us Brethren Hebrews 2:11) will give us. And then after God gives us the grace that is needed to overcome, then Jesus puts on a little more extra grace for where sin abounds, grace much more abounds (Romans 5:20). And then we can sing the song with James Cleveland “Victory Shall be Mine.”

December 16, 2008August 10, 2017

Sanctuary Message Pitfalls

A few years ago, an elder presented a series of studies on the Sanctuary to a church that I was visiting. In this particular presentation, the elder attempted to provide a synopsis of the Sanctuary message. In that presentation the elder decided to take a “celestial geography” approach to the Sanctuary message and went on and on about each piece of the sanctuary.

The elder described the table of shewbread and said that it represented Jesus as the bread of life. He continued and described the 7 branched candlestick and noted that Jesus was the light of the world. He finally talked about about the ark of the covenant and decided to ask the people if it represented Jesus’ or the Father’s throne. Finally, a middle aged woman asked a simple question, “What does this have to do with my salvation?” The elder never answered the question. He simply kept talking about arcane facts related to the pieces of the Sanctuary.

Just the Furniture

Most don’t even begin to look at the subject, but many of those that do fall into one of a few traps. That elder fell into one of the common pitfalls that make the Sanctuary message irrelevant. Please note, the elder attempted to be “Christ-centered” in that the arcane facts were about Christ, but the message was not connected to humanity in any real way. The elder never tried to answer the question “so what.” And then when the woman asked him “so what” he acted like he never even considered the question. Even if you are talking about Christ, you may even consider it to be “Christ Centered,” but if it has no importance to daily living it becomes something that may be interesting to my head, but irrelevant for my feet or how I walk….

This is not to say that architecture is irrelevant, however I do question using a presentation on celestial architecture when you are attempting to introduce people to the essentials of that message.

Calculation Only?

Another pitfall that seeks to separate the Sanctuary message from human living is the one that makes it only about a mathematical calculation. There are some preachers who only talk about the sanctuary in terms of mathematics and thus people lose the connection to daily living. I do not wish to diminish the calculation, but simply going to Daniel 7 to demonstrate that the judgment takes place after 1798, and then moving to Daniel 8-9 to find a starting and ending point for the judgment still leaves us questioning “so what.”

Judgment Only

Another component that is common is to only teach the judgment. And this judgment takes one of two forms. One is a scary “your name may come up tonight” kind of idea. Here the judgment is something you better be ready or else. Another approach is for the judgment to be an innocuous declaration of our salvation that we should spend no time worrying about. In the innocuous version we have an irrelevant appendage that does nothing for the gospel and in the other we have a fearful “get ready” command without any added help in the getting ready. In both cases we have the help missing.

Cleansing the Missing Component

While it was a strong component of our teaching by the pioneers, we have lost the cleansing aspect that was in the type and described in Leviticus 16:30. We have lost the cleansing on earth that is to correspond with the cleansing in the heavens.

Here is relevance. Now some would argue that it is not Biblical. Some may argue that it is not true, but no one will argue that it is irrelevant like the toothless declaration that you are saved only judgment or the mathematical calculation alone.

Conclusion

In short, the Sanctuary Message must be Christ centered, for that is the only place for power, in addition it must retain this connection to humanity, this cleansing of the world in preparation for the second advent of Jesus Christ. The Great High Priest in heaven is seeking to forgive and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness, it is our job to work with Jesus in this great work.