Continuing:

The question is, “Does the heavenly sanctuary need cleansing?” We [SDA] have come under fire; the reason for this is that the blood of Christ, which He took with Him after the cross, doesn’t defile the sanctuary. We say that, in the earthly sanctuary, the priest or the sinner confessed his sin on the lamb. The lamb was slain and the blood was taken into the sanctuary. The record of the sins was kept in heaven. The problem is that, once a year, the curtain and the sanctuary had to be cleansed. What is it that transfers our sins from the earth to heaven? It is the blood. If the blood of Christ defiles the sanctuary that sounds blasphemous. So we need to deal with the issue. Look at verse seven. This is dealing with what the priest does on the day of atonement:



We as a church take the position that the one goat which was chosen for the Lord represents Christ. The other goat represents Satan. We are unique in this position as a denomination. There are non-Adventist scholars who agree with us, but [as a whole] the other Christians take the position that both the goats represent Christ. So here is where the problem is. Look at verses twenty and twenty-two:



Keep in mind, the priest comes out of the sanctuary, he places his hands on the live goat, and he confesses all the iniquities of the children of Israel:

And all their transgressions and all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: And the goat shall bear upon him all their [i.e., children of Israel] iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness:

If the live goat, which we say is Satan, bears the iniquities of the children of Israel, then aren’t we making Satan our sin bearer? That’s the accusation of the Evangelicals, and it’s also coming from within our church. So we need to settle what the issue is. Does the heavenly sanctuary need cleansing almost two thousand years after the cross? Let’s look at it step by step. Look at verse seven:



What was the condition of those two goats? What were the qualifications of the two goats? Did the goats have to meet certain specifications? They had to be without blemish. One of them or both of them? Both of them had to be without blemish, so that you could interchange the goats. You cast lots and the lot falls on either this goat or the other. So we must be clear that the second goat doesn’t represent Satan as we know him but Lucifer as God created him, because both Christ and Lucifer were spotless.

Look now at the second goat for a moment. What is the name of the second goat in your Bible? In the KJV it is “Scapegoat.” In the original it is “Azazel,” and some of the modern translations will have that word. What does the word “Azazel” mean? In the Hebrew, words have meanings. What does the word mean? We do not know today because the Hebrew language changed in the ninth century and we do not know exactly what it means.

But here is what we have from the best of the scholars. According to the Hebrew scholars (these are not Christian scholars, but Jewish scholars), “Azazel” is the name of the devil. So the Hebrew scholars back us up. We do have not the Hebrew manuscript but we do have the Syriac manuscript, which is one of the oldest manuscripts. The Syriac manuscript for “Azazel” has this phrase “the angel that revolted.” Very interesting and a very reliable manuscript. Most Christian scholars interpret Azazel as the Scapegoat. What does scapegoat mean? If you looked it up in a dictionary, what does it mean? We use it in our English language.

Someone has to take the blame. That is the issue! When you deal with sin in a legal sense, as a transgression of the law, there are three things involved. First there is guilt. Then there is punishment. Then there is responsibility.

We were driving once with the president of our union who is a Swede. We were driving in a Volkswagen in Ethiopia. There was a man walking on the side of the road. We were keeping the speed limit and he turned around and saw his friend. Without looking he just turned on the road. There was no way we could stop him. He turned right into our car and his head hit the windscreen. He died instantly. Of course, the parents of this man took us to court. We had to admit that it was our car that killed him. We couldn’t deny that. The witnesses that saw the whole thing all agreed that this man crossed the road without looking. We killed the man, but who was responsible for his death? He was responsible. Therefore we were set free, even though we were involved in the man’s death.

The thing is this: who is responsible for sin? One of the clear teachings of the Bible is the sovereignty of God. That means that nothing happens in the universe without the permission of God. That’s what it means. God is sovereign. Did God know that Lucifer would sin? Yes. Then why did He create him? That’s one of the big questions.

If God is sovereign, then He has allowed Satan to come in. He has allowed Satan to tempt Adam and Eve. This has created a problem and this was not solved on the cross. Let me give you an illustration. When Adam sinned and God came to visit him, what did he say to God when God asked why did you sin? He said, “This woman, whom You gave....” So upon whom was he putting the blame? On God. Today you will hear it all the time: “If God is love why is He allowing all the sicknesses and problems? If God is love, why is He allowing a drought in America?” These are the kind of questions that have to be solved if the great controversy is to come to an end. [js]

That really is very interesting.

I never said that God is responsible for sin. When God says He creates evil, that doesn't have anything to do with the origin of evil:

Ez. 28:15 Thou [wast] perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.

God had nothing to do with that original iniquity. I'm not so simple I can't understand that. God creating evil and killing people is a completely different topic. God gave mankind thorns and thistles:

Gen 3:18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
3:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou [art], and unto dust shalt thou return.



So here we see God creating evil. Thorns are a kind of evil. They hurt us, but we create gloves and we pull the weeds and it keeps us busy. So the result is good. As they say "idle hands are the devil's play things.



Jesus said:

Matt. 6:34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day [is] the evil thereof.

That's the evil God gave us. We have to toil and labor so we can keep busy. That's a part of our redemption according to Ellen White.

Sin can do us alot of evil, too. Sin gets us in over our heads. It curses us. It invites the Devil in. The Devil causes us to curse our Maker. We have to overcome sin if we don't want to be ruled by it. This overcoming takes work. It's toil. You have to fight the Devil, fight against temptation. You have to be willing to die instead rather than to give in and sin.

But "sin" is not necessarily the same thing as "evil". We can call sin evil, because sin causes evil, but it's still not totally accurate. An evil man is someone who doesn't care about God's law. But still, to say that "sin" and "evil" are the same thing, is a little over-simplistic.

And I understand the concept of God taking responsibility for Satan's actions against mankind, (not for his rebellion). I'm not disagreeing with that. Obviously Satan creates evil too. We see the evil Satan brings against Job and Job said it was God doing those things. And look:

Job 6:4 For the arrows of the Almighty [are] within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me.

Job 2:3 ...and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.

God has to take responsibility for that because He was protecting Job and it was because He withdrew His protection that Satan had access to hurt Job.

Here's one thing about God that apparently you don't know: God is agape. That simply means that God is the servant of all. He lives, not for Himself, but His creation. There is no self-seeking...no self-love is God's character...in God's agape. God will not, cannot, force Himself on anyone. Agape can't force...it can't coerce.

Then why did God partially abandon Job? Something in Job's life caused God to step back. There was something Job's life that pushed God away...something where God wasn't needed. Let's see how God works:



A] Because unbelief/sin is chosen

B] God withdraws

C] Trouble results

"My anger [i.e., God’s wrath] shall be aroused against them in that day, and I will forsake them [see B], and I will hide My face from them [see B], and they shall be devoured [see C]. And many evils and troubles shall befall them [see C], so that they will say in that day, 'Have not these evils [see C] come upon us because our God is not among us?' [see B] And I will surely hide My face [see B] in that day because of all the [evil] which they have done [see A], in that [they have turned to other gods] [see A]" (Deuteronomy 31:17, 18).


Job was self-righteous. A self-righteous person really, in the end, doesn't need God in his life. And so Job's sin - the sin of self-righteousness (which is a form of unbelief) caused God to step back. God will not stay where He is not welcome. He needs our permission.

Rob

OK, then what was it in Jesus' life that caused God to take a step back?

Matt. 27:46 ...My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

I think it was, as the very first verse says, that Job was blameless and just, feared God and eschewed evil.

Without those characteristics, would God have done what He did? And without that being true about Job, would Satan have done what he did? I doubt it.

I think that saying there was something wrong with Job's life which caused God to abandon Job, is basically saying the same thing that Job's "friends" said about him.

Is it also possibly saying the same thing about God? It seems to me that it means those kinds of things don't happen to people unless there is some sin in their life. On that view, the sin of Job was self-righteousness. But at the end of the book, isn't God's answer that this is not true-- those bad things did not happen to Job because there was something wrong with Job? In fact, on the contrary, those things happened to Job for the same reason they happened to Christ, because God knew he could trust Job. Job was God's friend. Job knew God and knew that he could trust Him.

What was the purpose of the "day of atonement"?
The purpose was
to point to Christ who "taketh away the sins of the world"
The anti-typical "day of atonement" was the day that Christ made the supreme sactifice on the cross for you and me.
mel

OK, I believe what you say is true, but wasn't the antitypical day of atonement about more than the sacrifice? Slaying the sacrifice, shedding the blood, was only part of the atonement. What else was there?

Doesn't atonement also include the taking of the blood into the inner sanctuary as well as placing the sins of the people onto the goat and then leading it into the wilderness?

2 Cor 5:21 For our sake he [God] made him [Christ] to be sin [as the Son of man] who knew no sin [as the Son of God], so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Again, for the billionth time, Job's "3" friends accused him of having some cherished sin. They didn't know the sin, yet them condemned Job anyway.



Job 32:1 Then these three men ceased answering Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes. 2 But the anger of Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram burned; against Job his anger burned, because he justified himself before God. 3 And his anger burned against his three friends because they had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job.

No, not true. The cross took care of the guilt and punishment for sin. "In Christ" we stand justified unto life, but the cross didn't take care of the "blame for sin".