The Christadelphian, January 1878, Dr. Thomas’s Daughter

“The High Priest of Israel - Dr. Thomas’s Teaching on the Subject”

By Dr Thomas’s Daughter.

The apostle Paul, in his letter to the Hebrews, says: “Consider the apostle and high priest of our profession, Christ Jesus. . . Every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins; who can have compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out of the way, for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity. And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people so for himself, to offer for sins. And no man taketh this honour unto himself but he that is called of God, as was Aaron. So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest, but he (glorified Him) that said unto him, Thou art my Son; to-day have I begotten thee. He saith also, in another place, Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedek.”—(Heb. 5:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.) Here the apostle draws a comparison between the high priest under the law and “our great High Priest who is passed into the heavens—Jesus, the Son of God.” The expositions which have been given us, also, on the subject, sustain this line of analogy, harmonizing the “patterns of things in the heavens” with the apostle’s teaching concerning the “heavenly things themselves.” “Aaron was a type of Christ in his family and official relations, though not of his order.”—(Eureka, vol. II. 28.) The pattern shows us the very intimate relationship between the victim, the altar and the priest. Paul also shows the unity between them (Heb. 9.): “Christ being come, an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands . . .; not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, he entered once into the holy place.” . . . “For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered himself to God,” &c. “We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle.”—(Heb. 13:10.)

“The Word made flesh was at once the victim, the altar and the priest. The Eternal Spirit-word was the high priestly offerer of his own flesh, whose character was without spot, holy, harmless, undefiled and separated from sinners; ‘who knew no sin, yet whose nature was in all points like ours.”—(Eureka, vol II. 224.)

In exhibiting the complete assimilation of the three symbols, Moses commanded the priests to eat the sin-offering in the holy place. Part was appointed to be burnt with fire upon the altar and part to be eaten in the holy place. The apostle Peter enlightens us as to the signification of this in the 2nd chapter of his 1st epistle, saying: “Who his own-self bare our sins in his own body on the tree . . . by whose stripes ye were healed.” The prophet Isaiah also referring to this sympathetic unity says: “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,” which is also referred to by Matthew, saying: “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet: himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses.”

In the burning of part upon the altar, we see indicated the furnace of affliction and suffering of the flesh, ending in the closing scene of agony upon the cross. Then we see an offering made by the Spirit’s fire unto the Lord.

The Spirit, speaking prophetically through the Psalmist, refers to the sufferings thus: “My days are consumed like smoke and my bones are buried as an hearth. For my life is spent with grief and my years with sighing.”—(Psalm 102.; 31.) “The Spirit-word made his soul thus an offering for sin (Isaiah 53:10) and, by it sanctified the altar-body on the tree. It was now an altar most holy, and all that touch it are holy; and without touching it, none are holy.”—(Eureka, vol. II, 224.)

Considering Aaron, then, in his official capacity as a type, we are also justified in regarding his official garments as typical of something concerning the Christ. So Dr. Thomas writes: “Aaron and his priests, in their service, vestments and relations to the Deity and Israel, submitted to the eyes of observers a shadowy representation of things pertaining to Jesus and his brethren, the saints—Christ personal and Christ mystical. The law, in all its details, was a pattern, a system of figurative righteousness, which represented a system of real righteousness. When Jesus was about to be immersed by John, he said, ‘Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness,’ and what was becoming for him is deemed so by the Spirit for all who would become constituents of the Holy Square of Twelve. Paul says Deity condemned sin in the flesh of His Son, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.—(Rom. 8:3, 4.) This was a most remarkable development, that the prophets and priests under the law could not fulfil its righteousness. The high priest might put on the ephod, decorated with its sparkling jewels, and be thus invested with a holiness and brightness and perfection, which, when put off and suspended in the wardrobe, left him in all the unholiness, dulness and imperfection of the natural man. A man whose righteousness is in his dress fulfils not the righteousness of the Deity represented by the dress. This can only be fulfilled by those who walk after the Spirit. . . These, who were never under the Mosaic law, do what the priests and prophets could not do. By their intelligent obedience to the law of faith, they show the work of the Mosaic law written in their hearts, whereby they do the things contained in the law, and so fulfil its righteousness. Now, the ephod, with its four-square of precious stones, represented the (mystical) body of the Anointed. “By one Spirit we all into one body were immersed, whether we be Jews or Gentiles” . . . and all into one Spirit have been made to drink, for the body is not one member but many.”—(1 Cor. 12:13, 14.) For the development of this body, the Deity set forth Jesus as a propitiatory or mercy-seat in his blood. He was of the curiously-wrought texture of the ephod in common with all those who should become his brethren.” “My body,” said the Spirit in David, “was not hid from Thee, when I was made in the hiding-place and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.”—(Psalm 139:15.) “The ephod was of the same material and workmanship as the vail, with the addition of gold, and the vail, we know from the teaching of Paul, Heb. 10:20, represented the flesh. The inworking of gold thread, in addition to the blue, purple and scarlet and fine-twined linen of the vail, indicated purity of the flesh after trial: “when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” As the gold wire has been turned and interwoven with the blue, the purple and the scarlet and fine linen of the vail, as far as the Lord Jesus is concerned, the ephod is perfected; but in relation to his brethren, the gold is in their moral texture only as a principle—a tried faith. But when by Spirit of Holiness they are quickened, a gold thread of incorruption, as it were, will be interwoven throughout all their material substance, and they will be like Jesus, immortal.”—(Eureka, vol. II., 317, 18.)

In the vision of the Son of Man, exhibited to the apostle John, “He was clothed with a garment down to the foot with a zone of gold encircling his breast.”—(Vol. 1, 171.) We read in Lev. 16. that on the day of atonement, when the high priest went alone into the most holy place, he wore the holy linen garments only “girded with the linen girdle.” “This,” (i.e., the girdle) “was made of gold, blue, purple, scarlet and fine-twined linen, but the robe of the ephod was all of blue.”

Turning to vol. I., 171, we find further remarks concerning the signification of these colours. “These articles represented principles afterwards to be incarnated in the High Priest after the order of Melchisedec. Aaron wore the representation upon his person; Jesus bore them in himself. The gold represents the wisdom of a tried and precious faith; blue, a cleansing principle; purple, the element of flesh; scarlet, the sin thereof; and fine twined linen, righteousness. Those principles were embodied in Jesus, as holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners, as to character; yet (he was) the likeness of sin’s flesh in whom sin was condemned, when crucified, as to nature, and the purifier unto righteousness of those who become the righteousness of Deity in and through him. The gold and fine-twined linen were embroidered through all the blue, purple and scarlet of the curious breast-band. So in the case of Jesus, though “made sin for us, he knew no sin,” yet was he tempted in all points as we are, but without transgression; wisdom and righteousness were intertwined in all his words and actions, according to the type.—(Ex. 28:2–21; Rom. 8:3; 2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 2:14; 4:15; Col. 2:17; 1 Pet. 2:24.)

When Jesus and his brethren shall all have attained to the divine nature, even as Jesus hath already, the gold and the linen of the girdle will alone remain. The blue, purple and scarlet make no part of the garments for glory and for beauty of the Son of Man, as beheld by John; because what John saw pertains not to the sufferings but to the glory of the Christ, the anointed body. In regard to the girdle, Daniel tells us that the spirit-man symbolised to him, was “girded with fine gold of Uphaz.” The Mosaic “patterns of things in the heavens” were all of gold, or of precious woods, overlaid with gold. Gold was chosen as the most precious of all known metals to represent the most precious of heavenly things before the Eternal Spirit, namely “faith perfected by trial,” which is much more precious than gold that perisheth, though it be tried by fire.”—(1 Pet. 1:7.) The fine-linen robe of righteousness is girded about the saints by the golden girdle of a tried faith.”—(Eureka. vol. I. 171–2.)

We are thus instructed to regard the “holy garments” of the high priest under the law, as representing things pertaining to the character and nature of Christ, both personal and mystical. This conclusion seems to be most fully drawn from the testimony. That the blue of the robe of the ephod “represents a cleansing principle” in the body of Christ, seems plainly indicated in the preparation which was used for the purification of sin.—(Num. 19:6.) “And the priest shall take cedar-wood and scarlet and hyssop, and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer. And for an unclean person they shall take of the ashes of the burnt heifer of purification for sin, and running water shall be put thereto in a vessel; and a clean person shall take hyssop and dip it into the water and sprinkle it upon the tent,” &c.

Hyssop is said to “bear a blossom of an azure colour, and like an ear of corn.” God commanded the Hebrews to take a bunch of hyssop and dip it into the blood of the Paschal lamb, and strike the lintel and door-posts of their houses. Thus, the blue and the scarlet and the wood, as there applied, in the institution of the passover, correspond to the hyssop and scarlet and cedar wood, mingled with the ashes of the burnt heifer. And all corresponding to the blue, scarlet and purple of the ephod and the vail and the girdle. This “cleansing principle,” we readily perceive, dwelt largely in the Christ, both as a physical and spiritual power: “And there went virtue out of him and he healed them all.”—(Luke 6:19.)

The fine linen is the righteousness of saints.—(Rev. 19:9.) In passing from the holy to the most holy place, the garments of the high priest changed; the fine linen only appeared. When the period of sacrifice and sin-offering, suffering, affliction and trial, appertaining to the brazen altar had been completed in the person of Jesus, the dove-like fidelity and innocence of his inner life were rewarded by a change of the physical nature. He was “raised from the dead by the glory of the Father.”—(Rom. 6:4.) “Not unclothed but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life” (2 Cor. 5:4), that the Spirit’s glory, which had been concealed by the vail, might radiate throughout the whole physical form “As the living embroidered ephod, he stands in the presence of the Father, with the names of the holy nation engraven on his heart. He is set forth for all as an ephod to be put upon all who would enter the divine presence, that they die not.”—(Eureka, vol. II., 318.) Those things which had been seen by the natural eye were then hidden from view. The invisible holds the outer sight. The under side of the double breastplate is not yet brought forth in brilliant settings of gold. But when the “great High Priest” shall appear in his glory, in the glory of his Father, the twelve foundations of the heavenly Jerusalem will also be manifested—a breastplate then most glorious, “garnished with all manner of precious stones.” First, appearing the “breastplate of judgment,” destined to shine forth with the Urim and Thummim “as the light and fulness of the body of Christ. When the judgment is over and the kingdom established, and the time is come for them to rest from their labours, then they will no longer draw in their splendour, but shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”—(Matt. 13:43.) “The Urim and Thummim will be, as Moses testifies, ‘of the Holy Man,’ who will then be their high priest after the order of Melchisedec. He will not need to wear on his breast such Urim and Thummim as Aaron wore. The lights and fulnesses will be of himself, he being Deity incarnately manifested; “for it pleased the Father that in him should all the fulness dwell.”—(Col. 1:19.) Eureka, vol. II. “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” “And he measured the wall thereof—an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel.”—(Rev. 21:17, 23.) This grand development of Urim and Thummim will far exceed in glory and beauty anything that the human imagination can conceive of, of which the Mosaic pattern was but a shadowy miniature. “If that which is done away with was glorious much more that which remaineth is glorious.—(2 Cor. 3:2.)

“He shall bring forth judgment to truth.”—(Isaiah 42:3.) This will he do when coming from the presence of Deity, in the most holy, he will impart the judgments of Yahweh to the house of Israel; first to his own household, then to his brethren according to the flesh. Another work of sacrifice and burnt offering being accomplished in connection with the breastplate of judgment and the glorious head of the body, will then fulfil the antitype of both Aaron and Moses, and come out to bless the people, and the glory of Yahweh shall appear. Thus, the High Priest and his sons (i.e., his brethren) will have been fully consecrated for the work appointed unto them, upon the “set thrones, even the thrones of the house of David.” “For the law made men high priests, which had infirmity, but the word of the oath, which was since the law, maketh the Son, who is consecrated for evermore.”—(Heb. 7:28.)