Six Quandaries, Cont.

·        The Quandary of Access, Acceptance and Atonement

Other facets of Ezekiel’s vision conflicting with New Covenant reality also militate against the possibility that the Ezekian worship system is to be implemented at Yeshua’s return as he saw it. These include the problems of millennial access to and acceptance by God, which consummate in the problem of atonement.

o       Access and Acceptance

Early in the vision, Ezekiel is watching an angel as he measures everything in the heavenly temple.  He follows the angel everywhere he goes. However, when it’s time to measure the Holy of Holies, Ezekiel is left outside while the angel enters alone to measure the inner sanctum (41:3-4). This shows Ezekiel does not have access to the holiest of all.

But how can this be so in the millennial temple? For since Yeshua’s sacrifice, the “way to the holiest” has been forever opened once for all (Heb. 9:7-8, 12 w/ 10:19-22). If the millennial temple is to again restrict access to the Holy of Holies, it means right of access to God through Yeshua will be revoked. The rent curtain in Herod’s temple was merely a “temporal blip” in the divine plan to be sewn back up in the Millennium.

Obviously, Messianics can’t believe this. But if not, and Ezekiel’s vision is indeed of the millennial temple, Messianics must allow for change in the Temple’s worship system that later permits access to the Holy of Holies through Yeshua. (Otherwise Yeshua’s death accomplished nothing regarding access to God.) But if this is allowed, they must equally allow for change in the entire system Ezekiel saw up to and including the animal sacrifices—for the sacrificial system is all about access and approach to God.

A like problem occurs in Yahweh’s instructions regarding Gentile access to Him.  From within the temple, Yahweh tells Ezekiel “No foreigner uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh—shall enter My sanctuary” (44:9). How can this be so in the Millennium? For since Yeshua, physical circumcision is no longer an issue in approach to God.

Again the trap appears. Either a) the Ezekian system is not millennial (period); or b) when Yeshua returns, he will be reverting to a race-base circumcision-verified standard of approach to Himself! (Only Messianic Pharisees can believe this, but their position has already been condemned by all the apostles); or c) a post-Ezekian change in access to the millennial temple is effected by Yeshua’s sacrifice (admitting of de facto change to the whole worship system.)  

Kin to the problem of access is the problem of millennial acceptability to God. In 43:27, the Lord tells Ezekiel that it is only upon offering the prescribed sacrifices that he and the people will then be “acceptable” to Yahweh. Yet in the New Covenant, acceptance with God is based only on Christ’s sacrifice (Eph. 1:6 KJV; Rom. 5:11; 14:3; 15:7; also Ac. 10:35).

Unless we are to believe that in the Millennium, acceptability with God through Yeshua is to be revoked in favor of restored acceptability through animal sacrifice, the only other (credible) alternative is to believe that a change in temple service must take place between what Ezekiel sees and the temple’s manifestation in the Millennium.  

o       Atonement

The quandaries of access and acceptance roll up into the quandary of atonement. If Ezekiel’s temple and the sacrificial prophecies prove the Zadokite-Levitical priesthood is to be reconstructively restored, they also prove that atonement of sins is again to be associated with animal sacrifices, either instead of or in addition to the blood of Christ—something a true Messianic believer in Yeshua’s once-for-all-time sacrifice cannot accept.

Let’s be honest. Atonement for sin is the only reason animals are sacrificed in Ezekiel’s system, and—as we showed concerning the first Passover—the atoning effects of Old Covenant sacrifice were real, not symbolic. Some try to evade the atonement quandary by positing that animal sacrifice will be reinstituted for Israel only and that only as a “commemoration” of Yeshua’s death—similar to the way Yeshua instituted communion for the church age.

However Ezekiel’s vision does not tie commemorative effects to these “sin offerings”—besides which such interpretation is regenerative, violating the letter of the purpose of the sacrifices. Yahweh is direct and precise. The sin offerings are clearly stated to make atonement for sin (43:20, 26; 45:15, 17, 20). They are not a commemoration of an offering for sin.

§        The “Split Atonement” Theory

In a last ditch effort to justify millennial return to animal sacrifice, some posit the incoherent idea that men will be “partially” atoned through Christ for “general salvation,” but “partially” atoned for daily sins through animal sacrifices. This is based on an isolated reading of Hebrews 9:7, 25; 10:1-3 that identifies Yeshua’s sacrifice as fulfilling the annual Yom Kippur atonement by the High Priest for the general covering of the nation. The argument is that, since this is the only sacrifice to which Hebrews likens Yeshua’s sacrifice, general national atonement is all Yeshua’s blood covers, not all the other particular kinds of sins for which daily sacrifices were offered and will still be required.

Besides the fact that this view has no way to explain how or why animal sacrifices ever will end (which they must eventually because there is no temple in the New Jerusalem), the simple truth is that there is no such thing as “partial atonement” either in Hebrews or the entire New Testament.  The New Testament tells us that “the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (I Jn. 1:7). This is a statement without exception spoken on the personal (not national) level. And the entire context of Hebrews 9-10 itself makes clear that Yeshua’s sacrifice covers all personal sins, not just the general sin of Israel.

This is amplified by the truth that atonement is tied to access and acceptance, and there can be no such thing as “partial” access to God or “partial” acceptance. Hebrews is written to individuals. One cannot “only sometimes enter” the Holy of Holies. Either we have full access to God in the Holy of Holies through Yeshua, or we have none. Hebrews tells us we may come “boldly” to God at any time of need (4:16; 10:19-22). In Yeshua, there is no such thing as “restricted access.”

Nor exists the concept of “partial acceptance.” Either we are totally acceptable to God through Yeshua or we are not at all acceptable. Partial acceptance is non-acceptance.

Therefore there can be only full atonement, and only one sacrificial means of full divine access, acceptance and atonement, both now and throughout all time. This means that whatever Ezekiel and the other prophets envisioned regarding millennial temple worship and animal sacrifices has been in some way regeneratively altered and can only be explained regeneratively if both their prophecies and Yeshua’s sacrifice are to be held as true.  

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It is here, at the point of the Access-Acceptance-Atonement Quandary, that Messianism’s own belief in Yeshua’s sacrifice utterly destroys its own case for a reconstructed Mosaic millennial temple system based on Ezekiel’s dispensational reference points.

Messianism cannot believe in unhindered access and unconditional acceptance through Yeshua and also believe in a millennial system that restricts that access and acceptance on carnal sacrificial grounds. Judaism can believe in such a system, as can also condemned pharisaic Messianism. But Messianism cannot and remain uncondemned.