"Your way, O God, is in the sanctuary."  Psalm 77:13.

God had a problem. How can He save man, show mercy, and still be a just God? The answer is in the sanctuary service. "The wages of sin is death" and "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Without God’s plan of salvation, as brought to view in the sanctuary service, our sins would have doomed us. The sanctuary service teaches us a part of the plan of salvation Satan does not want us to understand. Romans 3:23  and 6:23.

Christ’s death on the cross is one part of the sanctuary service. In the sanctuary service Christ is both the lamb and the priest: the lamb that died and the priest who ministered the blood of the innocent lamb. Christ is both (a) the sacrifice and (b) our Priest. Others often teach us about Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, but they seldom teach us of His work today as our High Priest. Both are essential to salvation. When your clothes get dirty, take them to the laundry. Sin makes us "dirty." The sanctuary is God’s laundry for sin.

First, we learn of the earthly sanctuary built by Moses. Second we learn of the "true tabernacle." The Lord built the sanctuary of the new covenant. "The Lord built it, and not man." Hebrews 8:1, 2. " Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed."

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In other words, "after two thousand and three hundred days God will cleanse the sanctuary." Daniel 8:14. God would cleanse His sanctuary in 2300 prophetic days, 2300 actual years. (The year-day prophetic principle, see the Appendix)

Paul teaches us that the new-covenant sanctuary in heaven needed to be "purified" or cleansed. It is God who purifies His sanctuary. It is God who cleanses it.

"The law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood , and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. It was necessary then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these." Hebrews 9:22, 23.

What is happening in Heaven?

How can we understand what is happening in the sanctuary in heaven? We cannot see what is happening there. However, we can read about the sanctuary on earth from the biblical records. The sanctuary on earth was an "example and shadow of heavenly things." Hebrews 8:5, KJV.

There were two divisions; One division occurred daily. The second division occurred once a year. Day by day the sinner transferred his sins from himself to an innocent sacrifice, by confessing his sins over the head of the innocent lamb, symbolic of Christ. He then killed the innocent lamb. The priest took some of the lamb’s blood and sprinkled it in the first room of the sanctuary. This represented the symbolic transfer of the sinner’s sins to the first room of the sanctuary. Leviticus 3 and 4.

The Temple, Sanctuary, (Symbolically)  Is God's Laundry

  How Were Sinners Saved Before the Cross?

Were people saved before Christ died, as some teach, by keeping God's law?  Has that changed and now we are saved by the death of Christ on the cross? No!

The plan of salvation has always been the same.   Salvation has always been through the death of Christ. The sinner before Christ died on the cross, was saved as a result of what Christ would do in the future. Page 108 The sinner foresaw the death of Christ in each lamb that was killed.  The innocent lamb died in the sinner's place.  This represented the fact that Christ would come and die in the sinner's place. Before Christ died, God's children lived by the promise that He would come and die for them.  After Christ died on the cross, we look back at what He did and find salvation in what He did.  Now we live by the promise that He did come and die for us.  In both cases we are all saved by the  same sacrifice, the sacrifice of Christ.   How Were Sinners Saved Before Jesus died on the Cross? (1) I am sinful and guilty and deserving of death.  I have sinned, I have broken God’s Ten Commandment law. (2) I confess my sin over the head of a lamb.  This transfers my sin to the lamb. I no longer have that sin. Now the lamb has my sin. "The wages of sin is death," so the lamb must die. Day by day a substitute (innocent lamb) died in the sinner’s place. (3) I, the guilty sinner, kill the innocent lamb (representing the future death of Jesus) with a knife.  After killing the lamb, the sin is symbolically, in the animal’s blood. The Priest takes blood from the Lamb. Now the Priest has my sin. (4) He enters the holy apartment of the sanctuary and sprinkles blood before the veil (behind the veil are the Ten Commandments I have disobeyed). Where is my sin? I do not have the sin I confessed. It is now in the sanctuary. (5) Before Christ’s death on the cross, this act would symbolically transfer my sins from me to the earthly sanctuary. (6) After Christ’s death on the cross, when I confess my sins, they are in fact transferred to His great original sanctuary in heaven. Day by day, through confession, I send my sin into the sanctuary. Confession of Sin to Jesus does not cancel the sin. Confession transfers the sin from me to Christ who transfers them to the heavenly sanctuary.  God does not remove, cancel, or blot out sin until the day of atonement.  In the earthly sanctuary the day of atonement came once a year. In the new-covenant sanctuary in heaven this work began in 1844. (7) On the day of atonement, the high priest would take the blood of an offering, representing Christ’s sacrifice, and sprinkle it over the mercy seat. The mercy seat was the top of the ark. Beneath the mercy seat, within the ark, were the Ten Commandments. He would, then, take the sins from the sanctuary. (8) The high priest would then confess them over the head of the live goat, representing Satan. The goat was led away. The goat wandered until he died, and the sins were then considered forever gone from God’s children. Page 109 They did not kill the goat that represented Satan, as a sacrifice. It had nothing to do with the actual plan of salvation. God is just, and He will make Satan ultimately responsible for all the sin he has tempted people to commit. God will blot out Satan’s life in the final destruction of sin and sinners. What can we learn from the earthly sanctuary about what is happening in the heavenly sanctuary where Jesus now is? What can we learn from this example and shadow of heavenly things?

First Division: Sins to the Sanctuary

Second Division:  Sins from the Sanctuary

For eighteen centuries God took all sins, confessed through Christ, from the sinner and transferred them to the first apartment (First Division of Christ's work) of the sanctuary. Nevertheless, the sins of all people remained upon the record books. Before Christ's work for the salvation of men is completed, there is a work of the atonement for the removal of sin from the sanctuary (Second Division of Christ's work). In 1844 our High Priest entered  the second apartment, the most holy, to begin the last division of his solemn work--to cleanse the sanctuary.

(1) When we confess our sins, Christ transfers them to the new covenant sanctuary in heaven.

(2) The actual cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary is the removal, or blotting out, of the sins that God has recorded in the books of heaven. Revelation 22:12.

The prophecy "unto 2300 days then shall the sanctuary be cleansed" was preached worldwide before 1844. At that time in history, people thought the earth was the sanctuary. They thought that the cleansing of the sanctuary would be the cleansing of the world by fire at the second coming of Christ. Jesus, however, did not come to earth, cleansing it with fire in 1844. Instead, He came to the second part of His sanctuary to begin the second part of His work. He began the work of judgment in the most holy apartment of the heavenly sanctuary, in preparation for His return to Planet Earth.