Two days after launching Apollo 13, one of the two oxygen tanks onboard exploded on April 13, 1970. The other oxygen tank was punctured, causing the entire oxygen supply to be lost within a few hours. The contact to Mission Control on Earth was lost because the power went out. The rocket engine could no longer be used.
At the time of the blast, Apollo 13 was on its voyage to the moon. The lunar lander, Aquarius, was still attached, and the astronauts managed to make use of it to supply for electricity, water and oxygen.
Within a few minutes, the contact with Earth was restored because the radio-transmission antenna was not damaged. Commander Jim Lovell then spoke the historic words: "Houston, we have a problem".
Houston's greatest desire was to bring the men home. All leaves were cancelled, all experts were in Mission Control, giving all to help solve the problem. The greatest desire of captain Lovell and his men was to come home. They had to, but how could their problem be solved?
The first thing they did was save as much energy as possible. Fuel is needed to speed up or change course, and they didn't have enough to do both.
So, they decided to travel further to the moon and to use the gravity of the moon to steer and thus change course. The moon lander's engine was used to slow down, and the four lunar lander's rockets were used to make small course corrections so that the bend around the moon could be as sharp as possible. One slight miscalculation and they would be thrown out into space.
Everything was done to make the mission succeed, and four days later, on April 17, they landed safely in the Pacific Ocean.
Picture another scenario, Genesis 2:1, 15-17 and Genesis 3:6-8, 14-15.
What God had hoped would not happen, happened. Man disobeyed. He had been given freedom of choice and abused that freedom — he wanted something that was not his to have — God's place. Everything that could go wrong went wrong that day. He was irreverent to his Father and Creator; he blamed his wife, and she blamed the snake; they were ashamed for they experienced the nakedness of sin.
Consequently, they were expelled from the Garden. The gates were guarded, for God did not want them to eat from the tree of life and become immortal sinners.
Perpetual Evil?
There's nothing worse than a serial killer that doesn't die. Just look at the serial killer Satan who has been causing terror on this Earth for almost 6,000 years now. He's living his evil's heart out! Jesus calls him a man hunter from the beginning in John 8:44.
It was obvious that Adam and Eve could not solve their problem.
In Heaven, all leaves were cancelled to bring them Home again. Through the Bible, promise upon promise is given, assuring us that we will have access again to the tree of life. Every Christian must know the Three Great Promises by heart, Genesis 3:15, John 3:16 and Galatians 3:16. The Plan in a nutshell – type and anti-type in three small, easy to remember verses.
How Would Heaven Bring Man Home?
Jesus says in John 17:3 that knowing God and His intentions for us, is having eternal life. It means having purpose, hope, knowledge, eternal life, love.
And mercy? Is mercy part of the Plan?
What is mercy? Undeserved favor.
Why favor? Favor is when deserved punishment for wrongdoing is not administered.
What is the Biblical word for wrongdoing? Sinning.
How do we know what's wrong? Because God gave laws that tell us what is wrong.
Which laws? Well, it all comes down to the Ten Commandments.
Do you know the two fundamental principles of fair judiciary and justice?
(1) No law, no violation, no crime, no fine, no punishment.
(2) No law, no mercy needed.
So, if you seek mercy with abolished laws, you will be searching in vain. No administration, business, Church or government can be fair without fixed rules, which everyone adheres to – we call them laws.
So, we know we're sinners, right?
Question, how do we make things right with God? Can we make it things right with God? How do we solve our problem? How does God deal with sin and the sinner?
We privileged SDA's have one Fundamental Belief with which everything that we teach starts. FB 24. And from that doctrine, we understand a lot, if only we would look around and see (cf. Matthew 13:16). Like Asaph did.
Asaph
Who was Asaph? In 1 Chronicles 16:37, we read about him - So he [that's David] left there before the ark of the covenant of the LORD Asaph and his brethren, to minister before the ark continually, as every day's work required.
Was Asaph a priest? No. He was a Levite on special assignment. Asaph was appointed the head of the musicians. He was in the temple every day. One could not get any closer to God than he. He played the cymbal, an instrument that was used to mark the time and meter for singers or other musicians.
But Asaph wanted to be outside where he thought all the fun was. Making music every day and singing sacred songs, how boring can life be! ?
He wrote Psalm 73 for those who want to have a pure and clean heart.
He begins with, "But as for me," i.e. As far as I am concerned - my feet were almost gone; my steps had well-nigh slipped."
He says “I had almost fallen; my feet were in a slippery way. I wanted to get away from Church; I didn't like it at all. People outside seem to have a nicer life. Why would I want a clean heart? See how well my worldly friends fare. That's what I want for myself too!“ (paraphrased).
But one day he discovered that the sanctuary around him was more than ceremonies. He understood God's intention with His people. He understood that life out there has a terrible end for some. In verse 20, he says, they wake up in a scary dream, of which the terror continues when they're awake.
Asaph said, “but now I understand what You mean. I've been a big fool.”
In the last verse, he ends up with, "But as for me," as far as I'm concerned, it is good for me to draw close to You! I trust Your ways, and I will tell the whole world about it.”
What did Asaph Understand?
In Psalm 77:13, he gives the answer. He says: Your way, Your intention, Your rescue plan, how You restore us in glory, O God, can only be found in Your sanctuary. What You meant in Genesis 3:15, I see that every day in Your sanctuary.
Right there, he learned what all God's 21st-century children must learn.
He discovered that God's sanctuary is not about sacrifices because God does not need our sacrifices. God wants our honor, our obedience. In Psalm 50:23, he says,
"Whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me: and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God."
Asaph discovered what God's greatest desire is, and He understood God's Plan of salvation. Asaph composed 13 Psalms. Psalms 73-83 and Psalm 50. And they all, piece by piece, picture God in His sanctuary, God's desire and God's solution to our problem. Beautiful Psalms.
We Adventists talk a lot about laws. But what is written in the law? How readest thou?
"Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat (i.e. food), or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of [the] sabbaths [days]; which are a shadow of things to come; but the body [is] of Christ" (Colossians 2:16,17, KJV).
Many Sunday-worship Christians fill in: No seventh-day Sabbaths anymore. What they miss to see is that there are three inserted words in the standard translations. Two are problematic. In the original Greek, it does not say the Sabbath days. There is only one articled sabbath. That's 'the Sabbath of the Lord', the Sabbath of the 4th commandment.
What is the text saying? Paul declares verse 16 in verse 17. He is talking of things which are a shadow – and clear understanding sees that he is referring to sanctuary images with prescriptions for eating, drinking or not eating and drinking, feast days, new month's days, ceremonial sabbaths, with their specified convocations and partial rests. Which are shadows, he says.
Would you agree that without an object, without a body, you have no shadow? So, if you walk down the street at noon, and you see no shadow, you have a problem. And if you walk alone and you look aside and see two shadows, you have an even bigger problem.
So, if the sanctuary images are a shadow, what is the body of the sanctuary? Paul enlightens us in the second part of verse 17: Christ is the object, the body, the meaning and the centre of what happened in the sanctuary. The Greek says literally – He is the embodiment. He gives substance to all the shadows of the Old Testament. He is the reality.
The sanctuary is God's kindergarten object lesson of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. After God tried it in all sorts of ways, He said, "Do you know what? I will come to live in the midst of you. I will personally come down to show you what I mean, or you guys won't make it. He designed for them to daily, rehearse the lesson of forgiveness; the yearly feast days reminded them of the course the Plan would take, and one day every year they rehearsed the lesson of reconciliation.
When Jesus said that He did not come to abolish things but to fulfil, He meant that he came to give a body to shadows; to the daily sacrifices and the cycle of annual feasts and celebrations, to which the Jews had to abide to obtain mercy. We now obtain mercy from the real thing.
It is simply impossible to understand God's rescue plan without studying the tabernacle. Everything we need to know about the Christ, we find portrayed in the sanctuary of Israel.
Satan does his utmost to keep us away from studying these shadows. He has deceived the whole Christian world not to study it. It is nailed to the cross, they say; it has been abolished, they say. And often they abuse this text passage for that, seeing shadows where they are not. Others are introducing shadows of holydays, denying the Object.
We SDA's ought to understand like no other, what this all means, because our doctrine on the sanctuary is at the heart of our Adventist identity. If you don't understand the sanctuary doctrine, you won't have a complete understanding of what makes us Adventists a separate people and why every claim we make is 100% true. Remnant; those who keep the commandments and have the faith of Jesus; Sabbath of the fourth commandment; the way we proclaim through Communion the death, resurrection and second coming of the Lord, sleep death, from which we will awake as He did as the embodiment of the First Fruit festival (1 Corinthians 15:20); why we don't celebrate the Jewish feasts and celebrations, as some would want us to; the millennium of desolation on Earth, holding Azazel in chains; the Great Controversy between Christ and Satan; the ultimate Victory and the New Jerusalem.
We understand the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation, the books Romans, Hebrews, Galatians better than other Christians do, because those are full of sanctuary typology that we understand.
All these unique belief that we Adventists extract from our understanding of God's illustrative book of the sanctuary.
If you understand the sanctuary, you will not be fooled by all kinds of nonsense that people tell about Jesus or lured into shadowy rituals which have no substance. If you understand the sanctuary, you will understand why Daniel fainted and was sick to his stomach in Daniel 8:27, because you will understand the weight of the blasphemy of the little horn antichrist.
Knowing that in our Sabbath School we will study Daniel in the first quarter of 2020, take some time to download the marvelous book by Stephen S. Haskell, The Cross and Its Shadow, and study this vital doctrine. Your eyes will be opened to the beautiful Plan to bring us Home again.
So, I challenge you, reader, go and search them out. And, let's discuss them through your comments. God's grace to us is that we see!
Ingrid Wijngaarde is a member of the Constitution and Bylaws Committee in Netherlands Union of Churches Conference. She is a member of Groningen SDA Church, and a senior policy advisor for the Dutch government.