p. 168 | THE JUDGMENT OF THE GREAT DAY

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, March 17, 1885

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 62, No. 11

THE JUDGMENT OF THE GREAT DAY.

(Continued.)

To the foregoing reasons for considering the scape-goat a type of Satan, another may be added; and that is, that Satan is so brought to view in connection with the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary, and is assigned to such a condition, as to furnish a most striking antitype of the ceremony of sending away the goat into the wilderness on the typical day of atonement.

Tracing out in the type the various steps by which the removal of sin was effected, the following acts are conspicuous: 1. The sin of the transgressor was imparted to his victim, in the manner already described; 2. In the shed blood of that victim, the sin, inhering therein, was borne into the sanctuary; 3. On the day of atonement, with the blood of the sin-offering for the people, the high priest removed all their sins from the sanctuary, and laid them on the head of the scape-goat; and 4. The goat was then sent away into a land not inhabited.

And each of these movements in the type finds a corresponding movement in the antitype as follows: 1. The great offering for the world was made on Calvary; 2. The sins of all those who avail themselves of the offer of Christ’s blood by faith in him, are represented in that blood, with which he entered into the sanctuary on high (Heb. 9:12), and are through that transferred to that sanctuary; 3. After Christ, the minister of the true tabernacle (Heb. 8:2), has finished his ministration, and by the atonement has released the sins of his people from the sanctuary, he will lay them upon the head of their author, the antitypical scape-goat, the Devil; and 4. The Devil will then be sent away, loaded with these sins, into a land not inhabited.

In what will this last-named event consist? and do the Scriptures anywhere describe it? If we mistake not, Rev. 20:1–3 brings to view this very scene: “And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years should be fulfilled.”

On the supposition that Satan is the antitype of the ancient scape-goat, the movement here described is exactly such as we might expect to occur in reference to him. Having become satisfied that he is the antitype of this goat, we carefully scan the prophecies pointing out the events in which he is concerned, to see if we can anywhere find an event which would fitly correspond to the sending away of the goat into the wilderness. To find this event we naturally look to the close of the work of cleansing the heavenly sanctuary. We reach a point of time just subsequent to that work, the time when, in the order of the sanctuary work, the scape-goat in the antitype should be sent away with all the sins of pardoned penitents laid upon him, and lo, an angel comes down from heaven, lays hold upon this very being, Satan, binds him, casts him into the bottomless pit, and shuts him up for a thousand years. And as we look upon this scene, we are not able to restrain the thought that here is the sending away of the antitypical scape-goat. With this view of the subject the relation of the scene described in Rev. 20:1–3 to other events, can be clearly shown, and a plain reason be given why it should occur at that very time. But without this view, the narrative here given comes in to all appearance, abruptly, arbitrarily, and aimlessly; for who can tell on any other ground, why just this disposition instead of some other is made of the Devil, and why it is made at this particular time.

This scene occurs, as we have seen, at just the right time to fulfill the antitype; for it is immediately after Christ has finished his work as priest. Secondly, the right agent is employed. The goat anciently was not led away by the high priest, but by the hand of another person. So here it is not Christ, our great High Priest, who casts Satan into the bottomless pit, but an angel; this angel corresponding most fittingly to that “fit man,” who, in the type, led away the goat. Thirdly, Satan is cast into the right place to fulfill the type. Anciently the goat was sent away into a waste wilderness, a land not inhabited. The Devil is cast into what is here called “the bottomless pit;” and this place answers most accurately to the “wilderness” of the type, as will now be made to appear.

The words “bottomless pit” in our English version, are from the single Greek word ἄβυσσος, which signifies “an abyss, bottomless, deep, profound.” It is used in a way to show that it signifies any place of darkness, desolation, and death. Thus in Rev. 9:1, 2, it is applied to the barren wastes of the Arabian desert, and in Rom. 10:7, to the grave. In Gen. 1:2, we have the declaration that “darkness was upon the face of the deep;” and for the word here rendered “deep” the Septuagint uses ἄβυσσος, the same word which is rendered “bottomless pit” in Rev. 20:3. The Hebrew word תהום, from the root הום (to perturb, harass, move, excite, to heave, swell, and be tumultuous), designates a waste, desolate, broken up condition. This is applied to the earth in its original state of chaos, when it was “without form and void.” And let it be borne in mind that the earth is to be reduced again to the same condition, when the same word will apply to it. The prophet Jeremiah, describing the scenes of the last days, and the effect of the convulsions then spread through all nature, says: “I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.” Jer. 4:19–26. When will this be brought about? At the very time when Rev. 20:3 applies; for that immediately follows the coming of Christ as described in Rev. 19:11–21; and when Christ comes, the earth is transformed into a vast charnel house of desolation and death; for the voice of God has then shaken it to its foundations (Heb. 12:26; Joel 3:16; Rev. 16:17); the islands and mountains have been moved out of their places (Rev. 6:14; 16:20); the seven last plagues have left their withering and blasting footprints over all the fair face of nature, and the earthquake and the hail, with which they close, have shaken down, beaten down, and leveled to the earth, the mightiest works of men (Rev. 16); the burning glory attending the coming of the Son of man has borne its part in accomplishing the general desolation (2 Thess. 2:8; 1:7, 8; Jer. 66:15; Ps. 50:3); the wicked have been given to the slaughter, and lie unsepulchered from one end of the earth to the other (Jer. 25:22, 23); and thus the earth is at this time made empty and waste and turned upside down (Isa. 24:1), and thus is brought back again to its original chaotic condition, as described by Jeremiah. And then what better term could be used to describe it rolling on in its disorganized condition of darkness and desolation for a thousand years than the term ἄβυσσος, “abyss,” or “bottomless pit,” that was used to describe it when in the same condition in the beginning?

Here is the place to which we therefore believe the arch-deceiver will be consigned at last under the load of the sins of the righteous, which he incited them, while in the flesh, to commit, but from which they have escaped by repentance and pardon through Jesus Christ. This world will then indeed be a desolate “wilderness,” or “land not inhabited,” well befitting the great antitypical scape-goat. And what more fitting retribution could at this point overtake the author of all our woe, than that he should through all these slow-circling thousand years be confined to the world which he has tried to ruin, amid the desolation which his own hands have indirectly wrought, unable to flee from his habitation of woe or to repair in the least degree its hideous wretchedness?

It may be asked, by way of objection to the view here presented, if Paul does not say that Christ “appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself,” and if this does not show that sins were all put away upon the cross. Paul indeed uses such an expression; but if we allow him to interpret it as he does in other statements which he elsewhere makes, he means simply that Christ by his crucifixion made provision for the taking away of all sin. But sins could not have been put away, as they are by the atonement, on the cross; for millions of those who will be saved were then unborn, and sins cannot be put away in advance—Christ is not the author of the pernicious system of indulgences. But the provision having been made upon the cross, all sins that are confessed and repented of are taken into the provisions of God’s grace, atoned for in the final work of the sanctuary and laid at last upon the head of the scape-goat, and thus put away forever. Under this load of sins the great scape-goat, or Satan himself, will ultimately perish.

Another seeming objection may arise relative to the punishment of these atoned-for sins in the person of Satan. If Satan is punished for the sins of the righteous, are not those sins, it is asked, punished twice, once in the person of Christ when he suffered for sins on the cross, and again in the person of Satan upon whom they are finally laid? The answer comes immediately, that the sins of the righteous are no more punished twice than the sins of the wicked. Christ suffered for all alike—just as much for the sins of those who will finally be lost, as for the sins of those who will be saved. But the lost will at last be punished for their own sins in full measure.

The whole trouble arises, we apprehend, from a mistaken view of the position and work of Christ, our substitute. The idea which the query proposes is that Christ in his own person suffered all punishment, that is, the aggregate amount of physical pain, which all the saved would have suffered had they been lost. But, having suffered for all, as the Scriptures assure us he did, did he not, on this view, suffer the aggregate amount of physical pain which will be endured by all the lost as well? If not, we have the most ultra Calvinism to swallow; and in either case those who believe in the eternal misery of the lost have an insurmountable problem with which to grapple. Is not this rather the truth, that Christ appeared before the law as an innocent victim, to meet in behalf of others the sentence, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” The offering was voluntary, and therefore involved no injustice; it was from so exalted a position that God could accept it as an equivalent for the injured majesty of his law; and it was of such infinite worth as to be equivalent in value to the life of every member of the human family from first to last taken all together, so that the law could without dishonor to itself release its claims from all those who would accept this precious sacrifice as their substitute, even if all the world should do so.

But we have learned from the type that the removal of sin from the penitent by the death of a substituted victim, did not cancel the sin itself, only transferred it to some other object. The forgiveness, or removal, of the sin was relative not absolute; that is, as related to the sinner, it was forgiven, it no longer stood against his account; the sin itself was considered as still in existence, transferred to the sanctuary, and to be disposed of by other services yet to follow. Christ has done for us in fact what the ancient offering of animals did for the sinner in figure; that is, he has provided a medium in his own blood through which sin’s guilt may be removed from us, and transferred to some other party. Thus we can be saved; but sins yet remain to be destroyed in some other way.

Let us now consider upon whom the sins of the pardoned sinner, after leaving him in the process of their removal, would naturally lodge. Sin did not originate with mankind. Human beings in this world were not the authors of this evil, nor its foster-fathers. But they were seduced into sin by the temptation of another. And this we apprehend to be the difference between the condition of men and that of evil angels. With the latter, sin had its origin; and an outbreak unprovoked and causeless could have no forgiveness. It would endanger the peace of the universe to take sides in favor of those with whom such a course of sin originated. But with the former class, with men, the case was far different; they were seduced into sin by another party; hence their offense could be condoned, and provision be made for their restoration.

The practice of sin may therefore be fitly compared to a partnership business. In this business Satan is the senior partner; the sinner, the junior. The sinner having been brought into that relationship by deception and seduction, is granted the privilege, under certain conditions, of leaving the company, and retiring from the business with all its assets and its tremendous prospective liabilities. Upon whom, then, will these obligations fall? Upon the only remaining member of the firm, the instigator of the whole business, the senior partner, Satan. If the sinner chooses to maintain his partnership in that illegitimate business, he can do so and receive in his own person at last the terrible retribution that every sin must suffer when it is purged out of existence by the fire of the last day.

And this is what we are taught by the doctrine of the

scape-goat. The penitent goes free, while Satan bears the sins he has incited him to commit, back upon his own head, to answer therefor in the settlement which he at last must meet.

And it must strike every one as right and consistent that this should be the case. The sinner has been led into sin, but he repents. Yet standing behind the overt act, there is one who is the primary author and instigator of all, the inciting agent in every deed. And when the transgressor awakes to the true nature of his course, and sees the enormity of his crimes, and seeks to put away his sins, what can be more fitting than that they should fall back upon the head of him who first gave birth to sin, and who has fostered the growth of every branch from the baleful root. In this the decision of every right-minded intelligence must be that God’s throne is clear, that Satan receives no more than his just deserts. The antitypical scape-goat having thus received the load of sins from which the righteous have been set free, and being confined to this desolate earth a thousand years, is reserved to the day of perdition at the end of that period. This long cycle of time at length expires, and then appears the lake of fire prepared for the Devil and his angels. Into this vortex they are plunged, and all the wicked in the earth with them are committed to the same doom. Thus all the sins ever committed are punished, and all the persons of wicked human beings, evil angels, and Satan the father of all, perish wholly and forever. Then the scape-goat has come to his end, and never is remembrance made of sin any more.

(To be continued.)