My wife, raised in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, once described how she was taught the investigative judgment.

"Well," she said, "they tell you that the judgment is going on in heaven right now, and if your name comes up and you’re not perfect but are at the movies, or something like that, then your name is blotted out of books of heaven and you’re lost, irrevocably and forever lost. But you don’t know that you’re lost and you keep trying to be perfect though it’s too late. Your eternal doom is secure."

Wow! How did the good news ever get so good? Though I hate to say it, only Seventh-day Adventists could take something so good and positive—and that’s the work of Christ for us in the Most Holy Place—and turn it into something so deadly.

As Adventists, we believe that since 1844 we have been living in the antitypical Day of Atonement. This means that the earthly Day of Atonement, which came once a year in the Jewish ritual of cleansing the sanctuary, was simply a model, a type, a small prophecy of this true Day of Atonement. In the same way that the animal sacrifices were types, symbols, of the cross, the earthly Day of Atonement was a type, a symbol of the real one, the one inaugurated in 1844 by Christ’s work of judgment in the heavenly sanctuary.

If we are right, and we truly are living in the Day of Atonement, shouldn’t that be good news? After all, what is atonement? Atonement is the work of God in saving us, right? How is atonement achieved? Only by the blood, Christ’s blood, right? The law can’t atone, right? Obedience can’t atone, right? Good works can’t atone, right? Atonement comes only one way, through what Christ has done for us, right?

Shouldn’t, then, any "day" dedicated to atonement, that is, to God’s work of saving us—be good news? Shouldn’t we be rejoicing in the hope of living in the Day of Atonement rather than being distressed about it?

How, then, have Adventists turned the good news into the bad news my wife was taught as a kid?

The answer’s easy: Because Adventists believe in the Ten Commandments, and because the Levitical Day of Atonement centered around the room where the Ten Commandments were kept, the tendency has been to emphasize law more than blood, which goes a long way in explaining why so many Adventists have struggled with the judgment, have seen it as something not only in tension with justification but actually opposed to it.

But think about it: On the Day of Atonement, did the high priest ever enter into the Most Holy Place without blood? Of course not; that would be death, for in the Most Holy Place is the law, and the law only condemns.

And here’s, I think, the crux of the problem: As Adventists, we have taken our people into the Most Holy place (that is, taught them about judgment) without the blood, which means that they would stand naked before the law, and that gives them the assurance of only condemnation and death.

How crucial that when we talk about the Day of Atonement we emphasize blood, because—again—this is Day of Atonement, and only blood atones. Without the blood, it isn’t the Day of Atonement but the day of condemnation.

In the earthly model of the Day of Atonement, everything happened with blood, and not with the law. The mercy seat, which covered the law, was never lifted or removed on the Day of Atonement. According to Leviticus 16, the only thing that happened to the mercy seat on the Day of Atonement was that blood was sprinkled on it (Lev. 16:14, 15). The mercy seat always covered the law. The law, then, never came into view because it is the Day of Atonement, atonement, and blood, not the law, that atones. The blood covers the law. It has to, otherwise there would be only condemnation, not salvation and certainly not atonement.

Yes, the great problem for so many Adventists with the pre-Advent judgment is that it we have taken our people into the Most Holy Place without the blood, and without the blood there’s only the law, and to stand before the law, without the sprinkling of the blood, guarantees condemnation and loss. God alone knows how many thousands, maybe even millions, have left our ranks because of the anti-gospel way the judgment has been taught. If the high priest never went into the Most Holy Place without blood, how dare we?

As the author of this quarterly’s lesson, I wanted, more than anything else, to show the world church that the work of judgment is the same as the work of atonement, the work of Christ in our behalf, a work symbolized in the Day of Atonement ritual by the blood being brought into the Most Holy Place, the blood that atones for our sins and gives us the promise of "no condemnation" (Rom. 8:1)—not now and certainly not in the judgment.

Visit Spectrum’s Message Board for an ongoing discussion of this quarter’s subject, "The Gospel, 1844, and Judgment"

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