All this long time since Jesus went back to heaven, He has prepared people who believe in Him to die so they could come up in the first resurrection. Great work!
They will hear His voice and rise when He returns again. This wonderful work of preparing them to die was what Jesus did in the first apartment (or “office”) of the “heavenly sanctuary.”
But the prophet Daniel was shown that after 2300 years (Daniel 8:14, KJV), Jesus would leave that first apartment (or “office”) and enter the second apartment in the heavenly sanctuary. Then He would start a grand new work—preparing a people to be translated without seeing death at His second coming. We are living in that time today, the time of the cleansing of the sanctuary or the great Day of Atonement.
Of all the people who have died since the time of Abel (the first man who ever died), how can God know who are to be counted “worthy” to come up in that first resurrection? This new work of Jesus in the Most Holy Apartment will answer that question. They will be accounted “worthy to rise from death” and be resurrected (Luke 20:35).
It’s clear in 1 Thessalonians 4: “We who are alive on the day the Lord comes will not go ahead of those who have died. There will be the shout of command, the voice of the commander of the angels, the sound of God’s trumpet, and the Lord Himself will come down from heaven. Those who have died believing in Christ will rise to life first; then we who are living at that time [here’s where we come in to the picture!] will be gathered up along with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord” (verses 15-1 7).
Many people today are saying “Yes!” to the great High Priest, “Please do this special work for us!” They are letting Him take all sin from their hearts, including what they had not known was buried deep down there. When the Holy Spirit tells them about it, they choose to say “Yes!” to Him, and to say “No!” to the sin, no matter what it costs.
This is what “the cleansing of the sanctuary” is about. The record of our sins is there; so when we overcome the sin here, the record there gets cleansed. It’s faster than e-mail. It’s very simple.
While Jesus is doing His final work, He sends the Holy Spirit to each one who believes, and shows each of us the sins that we have not known were there. When we say, “Thank You! I’ll let that sin go, too,” the time will come when He will show God’s people the last sin that is hidden and when they gladly say “Yes!” to the Holy Spirit, then the seal of God can be placed on their foreheads.
Have you ever made a mistake and put something in the microwave oven that was metal, that doesn’t belong there, and then you saw the sparks fly? If we cherish sin in our hearts, then when Jesus comes something like that must happen. That must not be!
We say, “Thank You, Lord, for saving us. Now please hold us by the hand and keep us faithful. And please teach us how we can help others get ready, too. Amen.”