I
am a grace believer and I understand right division and I have a question. What significance was there to the rending of
the temple veil between the holy place and most holy place in the temple at the
death of Christ have? Did it signify the
end of something? Thank you for
considering this question.
Thank you for your question. The rending of the veil is recorded in the books of Matthew, Mark and Luke, but not in the book of John, interestingly enough. We’ll look at the reason why a little later.
This is when the Lord Jesus Christ is
being crucified. Israel has rejected him
as Messiah and they have delivered him to the Romans to be scourged, beaten,
spit upon and ultimately crucified.
Mark 10:34
And they shall mock him,
and shall scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill him: and the
third day he shall rise again.
Mark 15:15
And so Pilate, willing to
content the people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he
had scourged him, to be crucified.
Let’s look at the passage in Matthew 27
in our King James Bible.
Matthew
27:50-51
Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud
voice, yielded up the ghost [he died]. And,
behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom;
and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
Did this signify the end of something? The short answer is yes.
First of all, what is this veil? There was a veil in the tabernacle and then
later in the temple that divided the holy place from the most holy place.
God gave Moses some instructions about the veil when
he brought the people out of Egypt.
Exodus 26:31-34
And thou shalt make a vail of blue,
and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen of cunning work:
with cherubims shall it be made: And thou shalt hang it upon four pillars of shittim wood overlaid
with gold: their hooks shall be of gold, upon the four sockets of silver. And thou shalt hang up the vail
under the taches, that thou mayest bring in thither within the vail the ark of
the testimony: and the vail shall divide unto you between the holy place and
the most holy. And
thou shalt put the mercy seat upon the ark of the testimony in the most holy
place.
The veil divided the
holy place from the most holy place where God was present on the mercy
seat. Blue represents the
heavenlies. Purple represents royalty.
In 2 Chronicles, we see crimson, is
another word for scarlet.
2 Chronicles
3:14
And he made the vail of
blue, and purple, and crimson, and fine linen, and wrought cherubims
thereon.
Scarlet and crimson represent blood.
Joshua 2:18
Behold, when we [Joshua and the Israelites] come into the land, thou [Rahab] shalt bind this line of scarlet
thread in the window which thou didst let us down by: and thou shalt bring
thy father, and thy mother, and thy brethren, and all thy father's household,
home unto thee.
Jesus paid it all;
All to him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson
stain;
He washed it white as
snow.
…and fine twined linen of cunning
work…
Fine linen represents righteousness.
Revelation
19:8
And to her was granted
that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine
linen is the righteousness of saints.
…with cherubims shall it be made
The cherubims represent
the holy presence of Almighty God.
Wherever God is, the cherubim are there.
They are defenders of his holiness.
All these are types and shadows of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What exactly does the
veil represent with regard to the Lord Jesus Christ? I have heard all types of things about that
passage, but quite frankly what it represents is laid out in Hebrews. When you search for the word ‘veil’ in a
concordance, it is mentioned in the Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke, as well as
the book of Hebrews which is an epistle written to and about the nation of
Israel, especially in the future. And
although Hebrews is not an epistle of Paul’s written for, to and about us today,
Hebrews is beneficial to us as it expands on things that we first learn about in
the old testament about the tabernacle and later the temple.
Hebrews
6:19-20
Which hope we [the Hebrew people] have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth
into that within the veil;
Whatever this hope is, it allows them
to enter within the veil by passing through the holy place into the holy of
holies – the very presence of Almighty God.
That is what the veil represents – the division/separation that we saw
in Exodus.
Whither the forerunner is
for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of
Melchisedec.
Remember who was allowed to go behind
the veil – the high priest, and only once a year on the day of atonement.
Numbers 18:7
Therefore thou and thy
sons with thee shall keep your priest's office for everything of the altar, and
within the vail; and ye shall serve: I have given your priest's office unto you
as a service of gift: and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death.
Leviticus
16:2-3
And the Lord said unto Moses, Speak unto Aaron
thy brother, that he come not at all times into the holy place within the vail
before the mercy seat, which is upon the ark; that he die not: for I will
appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat.
Thus shall Aaron come into the holy place: with a young bullock for a
sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering.
Jesus was made a high priest forever,
not after Levi but after the order of Melchisedec; an everlasting high
priest. He liveth forever.
Genesis 14:18
And Melchizedek king of
Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high
God.
Psalm 110:4
The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou
art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.
Almighty God is in the most holy place
and he allows them to go in there. So
what we see in the rending of the temple veil is this entrance into the very
presence of Almighty God through Jesus Christ.
What he accomplished with his death was that the believing Jew, the
remnant of Israel, could now come to God.
According to Hebrews, that veil actually represents his body.
Hebrews
10:19-20
Having therefore,
brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest [most
holy place] by the blood of
Jesus, [When
was his blood shed? When he died on
Calvary’s cross. You asked if the
rending of the veil represented something that was ending; watch this…] By a new and living way, [Not
that old covenant way, but the new way.
Not that dead way, but the new way…] which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil,
that is to say, his flesh;
So the rending of the veil was a
picture of the physical death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. When he died at the ninth hour
of the day (3 p.m.), it was the time of the evening burning of the
incense. So the priest and his
assistants would have been in the holy place to see this happen.
Exodus 30:8
And when Aaron lighteth
the lamps at even, he shall burn incense upon it, a perpetual incense before
the Lord throughout your
generations.
In addition, there were earthquakes and
rocks rent as signs to Israel. The
rending of the veil was a sign to the priest that they had just killed their
Messiah and that the Levitical priesthood was coming to an end.
The veil represents Christ’s flesh
crucified on the cross. The rending of
the veil from top to bottom shows that it was God who did it; no man could do
it. Now there is access to Almighty
God’s presence through the physical, bodily death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But there is also a lot represented
there about what took place in his inner man – in his soul – when God made his
soul an offering for sin.
Isaiah 53:10
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to
grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see
his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
…but, that is a whole other study in
itself.
What
is the end represented by the rending of the veil?
It is the end of the old way of coming
to God through the law. Now there is a
new way of coming to God consecrated for the people of Israel and that is
through Jesus; but specifically through his death. He needed to die in order for them to come
into the holy presence of Almighty God.
Hopefully this
helps!
†††
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