Galaxy Three: Why What Is Happening a Billion Light Years Away Right Now Matters to You

"Galaxy Three:

Galaxy Three’s Third Cleansing"

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• French philosopher Paul Ricoeur concluded that the most basic of all human confessions, “reducible to no other,” is this: “I am ; I need from God.” (William Johnsson, Hebrews, 167)

• The Three (katharizo—catharsis) of Hebrews 9:

• #1—Of our  
  • Hebrews 9:14—“How much more will the blood of Christ cleanse our from acts that lead to death.”
  • Psalm 51:1-4, 7
• #2—Of our
  • Psalm 51:2—“Wash away all my and cleanse me from my .”
  • Hebrews 9:22—“The law requires that nearly everything be  with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness [of sin].”
  • 1 John 1:7-9
• #3—Of our
  • Hebrews 9:23—“It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be with these [animal] sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves [to be cleansed] with better sacrifices than these.”
  • Peter O’Brien: “ . . . with better sacrifices than these suggests that the heavenly sanctuary had also become defiled by the sin of the people. Sin affects all creation and extends even to the heavenly world. There is a solidarity between ultimate reality in heaven and its reflection on earth. The earthly cultus is inseparably connected to the situation in heaven. Sin is ‘an objective impediment to genuine access to God,’ and so a decisive cleansing was necessary, a cleansing that was ‘comprehensive in its scope, reaching even to the heavenly things themselves.’” (The Letter to the Hebrews 337)

• We as Seventh-day Adventists find in Israel’s somber Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) liturgy in the earthly sanctuary a striking portrayal of God’s strategy to bring the rebellion of sin to an end in this universe.
• Leviticus 16:29-30/Daniel 8:14
• Leviticus 16:30—“Then, before the LORD, you will be from all your sins.”
• Edward Heppenstall: “The living Christ of the heavenly sanctuary presses upon men the need for a spiritual revival to make them ready to stand in the judgment now proceeding. . . . Christ is not saying that His followers are going to have a bad time in this judgment, that the believer’s chances of making it are not good. Christ has no desire to be an accusing judge but a loving, saving friend. . . . He seeks earnestly to arouse in man the urgency to meet God in the judgment. But it will cost something. The Levitical Day of Atonement called upon Israel to make sure of their standing with God.” (Our High Priest 86-87)
• Great Controversy: “Through the grace of God and [our] own diligent effort [we] must be conquerors in the battle with evil. While the investigative judgment [the Day of Atonement] is going forward in heaven, while the sins of penitent believers are being removed from the sanctuary, there is to be a special work of purification, of of sin, among God’s people upon earth.” (425)
• The cleansing is to be matched by a cleansing .
  • Great Controversy: “It is in this life that we are to separate sin from us, through faith in the atoning blood of Christ. Our precious Saviour invites us to join ourselves to Him, to unite our weakness to His strength, our ignorance to His wisdom, our unworthiness to His merits. . . . It rests with us to co-operate with the agencies which Heaven employs in the work of conforming our characters to the divine model.” (623)

“I will see that you get through.”