Should you and I be afraid of the judgment? Is it like a final exam that students face, the kind where they cram the night before and come to it trembling with fear? There is a judgment that comes before Christ returns--otherwise He could not bring His reward with Him to give every man according as his work has been (Rev. 22:12). And before there can be a resurrection, there must be an "accounting," which is a judgment to determine who is "accounted worthy" to come up in that most glorious of blessings--the first resurrection (Luke 20:35). But can we know anything about when that pre-Advent judgment is to take place? Does the 2300 days prophecy of Daniel 8:14 make any sense?
(1) The Day of Atonement in the Hebrew sanctuary service was an object lesson of that final pre-Advent judgment.
(2) The Lord did not intend that its purpose should be to condemn Israel or the people, but "on that day shall the [high] priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the Lord" (Lev. 16:30).
(3) That precisely is the purpose of the investigative judgment--not to condemn God's people, but to cleanse them so they can meet Jesus in person when He returns.
(4) There is sin, conscious and unconscious, that must be discovered, repented of, "overcome" (Rev. 3:21), so that those who follow the great High Priest in His closing work of Atonement may not be consumed by the brightness of Jesus' coming. That's going to be a serious moment!
(5) The High Priest doesn't want to condemn you; He wants to vindicate you--that's the only judgment He wants to make in your case.
(6) Don't stop Him, don't hinder His on-going work!
(7) The Septuagint translators of Daniel 8:14, 150 years B.C., clearly saw in the 2300 day prophecy a reference to the Day of Atonement; and long before there were any people known as Seventh-day Adventists, Christian scholars saw that 1844 was the terminus of that prophecy.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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