• Bringing the Holy Place into Right Condition
    The Watchtower—1971 | December 1

    • 3. Where is the center of the theocracy, and what good definition does one Cyclopœdia give of the term “theocracy”?

      3 According to the Sacred Scriptures, the “sanctuary” of God is his temple of worship. It is his “palace,” according to another meaning of the word that the Scriptures use for “temple” (hei·khalʹ, Hebrew). (Mal. 3:1; Ps. 45:15) In it he reigns over his dedicated people. To these he is the God Ruler or Theocrat. It is from there that he exercises theocratic rule or government. It is the center of his theocracy. A good definition for this governmental term “theocracy” is given in M’Clintock and Strong’s Cyclopædia, Volume 10, page 317, which says: “A form of government such as prevailed among the ancient Jews, in which Jehovah, the God of the universe, was directly recognised as their supreme civil ruler, and his laws were taken as the statute-book of the kingdom. This principle is repeatedly laid down in the Mosaic code, and was continually acted upon thereafter.”

      4. What questions therefore arise as to Jehovah’s “holy place” or “sanctuary,” and why should religiously disturbed persons be interested in the answers?

      4 In view of the foregoing, how would the “holy place” or “sanctuary” of Jehovah God need to be “brought into its right condition”? And when would this occur, or when did it occur? This is something that affects true worship, the right religion, and all persons who are upset by all the religious disturbance and confusion and disillusionment of today have good cause for being interested in the answers to these questions.

      5. In the last years of what world power did Daniel get the vision, and under what circumstances?

      5 It is the ancient prophet Daniel who was used to call this matter to our attention. This was as long ago as in the sixth century before our Common Era, or more than twenty-five centuries ago. Daniel was then an exile in Babylon and was in the service of King Nabonidus the father of Belshazzar, who was acting as a coregent. The Babylonian Empire, the Third World Power of Bible history, was then in its last years, for Daniel goes on to tell us: “In the third year of the kingship of Belshazzar the king, there was a vision that appeared to me, even me, Daniel, after the one appearing to me at the start.”​—Dan. 8:1.

      THE “HOLY PLACE” OR “SANCTUARY”

      6. Before being taken into exile, where had Daniel worshiped his God, and did that God lose his real temple by what happened about eleven years later?

      6 Before being taken into exile in the year 617 B.C.E., Daniel had worshiped his God Jehovah in the temple at Jerusalem. But about eleven years later, in 607 B.C.E., King Nebuchadnezzar, the grandfather of Belshazzar, had destroyed the city of Jerusalem and its temple that had been built by King Solomon. That glorious temple was not really the dwelling place of Daniel’s God Jehovah, but was pictorial of it. And so at the destruction of Jerusalem’s temple by the Babylonians in 607 B.C.E., God’s real dwelling place or Palace was not really destroyed.​—1 Ki 8:27; Acts 7:48; 17:24.

      7. What did that temple at Jerusalem picture, and in the Most Holy thereof whose sacrifice was presented?

      7 That earthly temple did not picture or typify the Christian congregation that was established 639 years later in the rebuilt city of Jerusalem, on the day of Pentecost of 33 C.E. No, but it was pictorial or typical of Jehovah’s heavenly temple or palace, in which he reigns supreme above the living cherubs who attend him. As it is beautifully stated in Psalm 99:1, “Jehovah himself has become king. Let the peoples be agitated. He is sitting upon the cherubs. Let the earth quiver.” It was there in the Most Holy of Jehovah’s temple that Jesus Christ presented his sacrifice after ascending to heaven.

      8, 9. (a) Who entered into the Most Holy of the earthly temple, and to do what? (b) What does Hebrews 9:1, 24-28 say regarding the services of Jesus Christ as a spiritual High Priest?

      8 In ancient Jerusalem before its destruction by the Babylonians the Jewish high priest presented the blood of the Atonement Day sacrifices every year on Tishri 10, sprinkling the blood before the golden mercy seat upon which were carved two golden cherubs, above whom the Shekinah light appeared, to represent the invisible presence of Jehovah there. (Ex 25:17-22; Lev. 16:11-17; Num. 7:89; 1 Sam. 4:4; 2 Sam. 6:2) On the other hand, Jesus Christ was not a Levite priest of the family of Aaron and did not enter into the Most Holy of the earthly, mundane temple at Jerusalem. So as regards his service as Jehovah’s spiritual High Priest we read:

      9 “Christ entered, not into a holy place made with hands, which is a copy of the reality, but into heaven itself, now to appear before the person of God for us. . . . But now he has manifested himself once for all time at the conclusion of the systems of things to put sin away through the sacrifice of himself. . . . so also the Christ was offered once for all time to bear the sins of many.”​—Heb. 9:1, 24-28.

      10. When did Jesus enter upon his sacrificial course on earth, and like what ancient priest did he become?

      10 When on earth Jesus laid down his perfect human sacrifice, he entering on this course of self-sacrifice at the time that he was baptized in water by John the Baptist, in 29 C.E. There God’s spirit descended upon Jesus, begetting him to spirit life as a spiritual Son of God. At the same time that spirit anointed him as a spiritual High Priest and a spiritual King who resembled King Melchizedek of the ancient city of Salem.

      11. (a) Into what new relationship did Jesus then enter, and by what was the state in which he was then walking pictured? (b) What then separated him from spirit life in the heavens?

      11 From that time on, John the Baptist spoke of the anointed Jesus as “the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world,” also as “the Son of God.” (John 1:29-51; Matt. 3:13-17) Because of this new spiritual relationship with Jehovah God in heaven Jesus Christ was, as it were, walking in that spiritual state pictured by the first compartment of the temple, called The Holy, even while he was carrying out his sacrificial course on earth. Like the curtain or veil that separated the Holy and the Most Holy of the temple, Jesus’ perfect flesh was the thing that separated him during his human life in the flesh from spirit life in the invisible heavens where God personally is. He passed beyond this “veil” by dying as a human and being raised as a spirit.