The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 5
The Service
The Service.
* The necessity of a priesthood shows the continuance of the sin nature in man and the existence of death during the millennial reign.
The Kingdom and priesthood under the Mosaic Law was of an unmixed character, the members of its civil and its ecclesiastical orders being all of them subject to death. Not so, however, with the kingdom and its orders in the Age to Come. Its subjects and inheritors are an intermingling of flesh and spirit, until the Kingdom shall be surrendered to the Father at the end, when the people and all their superiors worthy of exaltation shall be all spirits or incorruptible men; and priesthood and priestly service, but not the Royalty, will be done away.
Israel and the nations subjected to them will bring of the flocks and herds of Kedar, and of the rams of Nebaioth, and present them for sin offerings and burnt offerings, and thank offerings at the North gate of the inner court of the temple, and present them to the Levites of Aaron's seed. These, who are not permitted to approach the altar, nor to minister before the Lord in the Temple, will have the charge at the gates of the house "for all the service thereof and for all that shall be done therein." They will, therefore, take charge of the people's gifts, and "they shall slay the burnt offering and the sacrifice for the people, and they shall stand before them to minister unto them," &c—See Zech. xiv. 21,
While the Levites are slaying the sacrifices and passing to and fro in the Inner Court, they are to wear linen garments* that perspiration may not be produced; but they are not to go forth into the outer court with these, but to put them off and lay them in the holy chambers, putting on other garments; and the reason given is "that they shall not sanctify the people in their garments."
* Verses 15, 16 of Ezekiel xliv. apply to the resurrected Saints alone, and are independently paragraphed. The 17th verse must be read to follow the 14th verse, as applicable to the Levitical priesthood.
† The Mosaic ritual in its amended constitution will be the national and Imperial worship of the age to come, to manifest the righteousness of God in ages past to the escaped of the nations, that his gifts and calling are without repentance.
* After the type of the Mosaic Tabernacle and Temple. At their dedication the glory of the Lord filled their precincts, and shined out from between the cherubims.
The dedication of the house, the reconciliation of Israel, and the return of the glory of God to the Temple for the first time since its departure in the reign of Zedekiah being accomplished, the next thing is the celebration of the fulfilment of the Passover, nationally, in the kingdom of God. The reader will remember what the High Priest in the days of Jais flesh said to his brethren upon this subject: "I will not any more eat of this Passover," said he, "until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God."
* A certain for an uncertain number, but indicative of the perfection and fulness or the Name.
The feast of Pentecost, fifty days after the Passover, is Not celebrated in the temple service of the kingdom. It was primarily fulfilled in the events of the fiftieth day after the Crucifixion, and will be secondarily, or nationally, in the latter‡ rain of the Spirit on Israel when restored previously to the building of the Temple by "the man whose name is The Branch." The two wave loaves of that feast, made of fine flour, represented "the First Fruits unto the Lord." The Sons of Zadock being the substance of that representation, as Jesus himself was of the wave sheaf, waved before the Lord by the Aaronic priest on his resurrection-day, the shadow will not be reproduced hereafter in the service, Christ and his brethren the first fruits, being there in person, the representation would cease to be in place.
Neither will there be "a memorial of blowing of trumpets" on the 1st day of the 7th month, as under the Mosaic law. The thing represented by "the memorial" will have been altogether accomplished before the dedication of the Temple to be built by Jesus. It began to be fulfilled by the proclamation of the Gospel of the kingdom by Apostles; and will be wholly completed when the "everlasting gospel" shall be preached by "the angel| flying through the midst of heaven"—Bev. xiv. 6, 7. There can be no type when the thing typified has come to pass in full. It has then answered its purpose, and is abolished.
* By the execution of the written judgments by the Lord Jesus and the Saints after their resurrection and glorification.
† A memorial of Himself as the sin-bearer of the world.
‡ The former rain was the pentecostal and individual.
| The Spirit—messengers to the people of the earth, in their mission as kings and priests for God.
But when the household of the Lord Jesus shall all be reconciled, their judgment or acceptance still remains to be pronounced, and the secondary reconciliation for the nation of Israel effected. These particulars* of the Mosaic typical atonement are yet unaccomplished. Some of us who believe the Gospel of the Kingdom are looking for him. We are anxiously waiting for him to come out of the Most Holy Place that we may be clothed with salvation, and enter the Kingdom with him. "After death the judgment. Judgment on the Members† of the King's household and judgment on the Nations.
* The hidden wisdom of the types and shadows of the Sinaitic law must be searched out to find their antitypical relation to the Christ and His brethren—the Just one (Zadok) and his sons.
† Gal. vi. 8: He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption: he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. Therefore we must rise in our flesh and blood bodies out of the grave for judgment first, and then for recompense, according to works in the truth. So Peter ii., in allusion to this Day of Judgment, says of the cursed children, "They shall utterly perish in their own corruption." And Jude mentions Enoch to the like effect.
Will the dead in the Christ—will we the living in Him—be accepted, or shall we not? That remains to be seen. Who but God's High Priest can toll, for He only knows whose Names are written in the Book of Life.
Until He come out of the Most Holy, the consummation of the reconciliation of the faithful dead, the living believers, and the Twelve Tribes will be in abeyance. But when he appears in His Kingdom, the first will rise, the next he changed, and reconciliation made for the whole House of Israel as above described in the purging and purifying the Altar, and the reconciling of the house, in the first seven days of the 1st month. When this is accomplished, the Mosaic representative atonement will be lost in the substance. There Will be no More Remembrance of Sins Once a Year—Heb. ix. 28. Therefore the atonement of the loth day of the 7th month forms no part of the annual service of the Temple in the age to come.
The Mosaic feast of Tabernacles was "the greatest of the Feasts." It was celebrated during seven days, beginning on the 15th of the 7th month of the ecclesiastical year, which is the first of the civil year, which in its Antitype is "the acceptable year of the Lord" This year of civil or national acceptance under the New Covenant begins with the 1st day of the month, when the temple, altar, inner court, and nation, are reconciled by Messiah the Prince.
This year of civil or national acceptance being under the New Covenant, the Feast of Tabernacles represents, like the "Mosaic feasts," the knowledge and the truth first in relation to Christ's household, and, secondly, in relation to his nation, the Twelve Tribes. The members of his household are "strangers before the Lord, and sojourners; their days on earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding." Like Israel, as it were, during the interregnum, they "sojourn in Meshech and dwell in the tents of Kedah;" passing the time of their sojourning there, rejoicing in few and trembling. But when their Elder Brother, the High Priest of the Covenant, shall come out from the Royal presence to bless them, they will be pilgrims no longer, but permanent dwellers in their page 49 Father's house, partakers of the joy—Jno. xiv. 3. They will have passed through the signification of the Feast, and have attained perfection.
The feast of Tabernacles was the celebration of the Ingathering of the harvest. As a type this had a twofold signification, viz., the Ingathering of the Royal Household of the Kingdom when the Chirist "shall gather his wheat into his garner" at their resurrection, and the ingathering of the Twelve Tribes, when at that crisis they shall be gathered from the utmost part of heaven, and replanted in their own land. They now sojourn literally in Meshech, and dwell in the tents of Kedar, but when the Kingdom is restored to them under the New Covenant, they will dwell in their own habitations, and the nations will come up to Jerusalem to worship their King, and occupy the booths. But the Antitype of the feast, which is "a feast of fat things for all nations," is not fully completed until the wheat harvest of the Age to come shall be entirely ingathered at its expiration, when "death shall be swallowed up in victory," and the earth shall be under the curse no longer—Cor. xv. 23-28. The feast of Tabernacles, therefore, continues to be celebrated in the Temple Service, for this temple is "the holy of the tabernacles of the most High;" wherefore its posts and walls will be adorned with palm-trees, the branches of which, with those of other goodly trees, the Israelites carried on the first day of the feast, as the emblem of the joy that awaits the nation, when it shall have obtained the victory over all its enemies on the establishment of the kingdom of God. Therefore "in the 7th month, on the 15th day of the month, shall the Prince do the like in the feast of the seven days, according to the sin-offering, &c."—Ezek. xlv. 25; Lev. xxiii.; 2ech. xiv.