How Adventists Developed the Sanctuary Doctrine and What It Means

When Adventists talk about “sanctuary doctrine,” they’re referring to the concept that the heavenly sanctuary reveals the plan of salvation—both in our personal walk with Jesus and in the work Jesus continually does as our intercessor in heaven.

The latter concept, known by Adventists as the Investigative Judgment or Pre-Advent Judgment, emerged from the earnest and diligent Bible study of early Advent believers who came out of the Millerite Movement. In the wake of the Great Disappointment of 1844, these Advent believers were looking for answers regarding Miller’s incorrect interpretation of the prophetic “cleansing of the sanctuary” mentioned in Daniel 8.

In their study, they learned that the services of the Israelites’ sanctuary were more than mere rituals. They pointed to the dual roles Jesus would perform as the lamb sacrificed for the sins of the world and as our High Priest and sole intercessor before God the Father.

Every Christian acknowledges Jesus’ role as the sacrificial lamb. But, as the sanctuary service requires both the sacrifice of the lamb and the intercession of a priest, it’s important we understand Jesus’ identity as our High Priest as well.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church believes our doctrine on the sanctuary helps shed light on this topic and what it has to do with the Investigative Judgment and the heavenly sanctuary.

Most importantly, it helps us understand the plan Jesus has, not just to forgive our sins but to restore and grow our relationship with Him.

Let’s unpack this doctrine and understand how it came about by delving into:

• What the sanctuary is
• What sanctuary doctrine is and how it developed in Adventism
• Whether sanctuary doctrine is unique to Adventism
• How the sanctuary doctrine is relevant today

But first, here’s a quick review of the sanctuary itself.

What is the sanctuary?

Photo by Kaushik Panchal on Unsplash

The original sanctuary, as described in Scripture, is God’s dwelling place in heaven (Exodus 15:17; Hebrews 8:2). It’s there that Jesus Christ intercedes on our behalf before God’s throne, or the fullness of God (Hebrews 7:25; 8:1-2).

Often, though, when we think of the sanctuary, we first think of the earthly structure God told the ancient Israelites to build in the Old Testament (Exodus 25:8). However, this structure was really just patterned after the true sanctuary in heaven (Exodus 25:9; Hebrews 8:5).

Instances of counterparts that point to each other exist throughout Scripture (Romans 5:12-15). They are referred to as a “type” and “antitype,” with the “type” being the counterpart that foreshadows, and the “antitype” being the counterpart that is foreshadowed.¹

In this way, the earthly sanctuary is a type that points toward the antitype of the heavenly sanctuary.

It’s kind of like you and your shadow.

Your shadow isn’t really you, but it resembles you and points toward you. In this example, the shadow would be the type pointing to you, the originator or antitype.

Just like shadows, types are only a faint representation of the antitype. The fullness of the type can only be seen in the antitype. Similarly, our shadows provide a form and outline of what we are and what we look like. But who we truly are and what we truly look like can only be observed by seeing and interacting with us.

In the same way, while the Old Testament sanctuary offered the promise of salvation—which was symbolized through the slaughter of lambs and the intercession of mortal priests—the heavenly sanctuary involves the fulfillment of salvation through the death and intercession of Jesus, our High Priest, the Son of God (Hebrews 10:1-22; Hebrews 9:1-28).

What do these sanctuary models tell us about the plan of salvation?

They both tell us it involves:

1) The forgiveness of our sins: In the Old Testament sanctuary, lambs were sacrificed for the sins of Israel. In paying the wages of sin through the death of an innocent creature, they learned how God’s forgiveness works. This pointed to the way Jesus would die on the Cross and suffer sin’s ultimate consequence instead of us, so that we would have the opportunity to accept forgiveness and salvation (Hebrews 9:7-10, 22-23 ).

 

2) The restoration of our relationship with God: In the earthly sanctuary, the sanctuary process did not end with the sacrifice of the lamb. That’s only where it began. From there, the High Priest would continue to symbolically intercede for sinners by bringing the blood of the animal before God.

 

In the same way, because anything with any sin would not survive the presence of the fullness of God, Jesus goes before God the Father in the heavenly sanctuary to intercede for us. His life as a human and death as a sacrifice uniquely qualify Him to be our High Priest (Hebrews 9:7,12, 24-26; Hebrews 4:14-16). So, as Jesus’ sacrifice forgives our sins, His priestly ministry brings us back into communion with God, allowing us to build a relationship. Meanwhile, He is also sanctifying us, restoring our character to reflect His.²

In the four Gospel accounts in the New Testament, we can read about how Jesus fulfilled His role as the sacrificial lamb.

So when did He start His work as our High Priest?

Because the work of the earthly sanctuary points to the work of the heavenly sanctuary, we can find our answer by looking at the work of high priests in the Old Testament.

A brief overview of the ancient Israelite sanctuary

God directed Moses and the people of Israel to build a sanctuary in the wilderness, which became the basis for Solomon’s magnificent temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings 5-7). God had a couple of purposes in mind with this object lesson.

First and foremost, He wanted His people to be able to feel close to Him (Exodus 25:8). Sin separates us from God, but the sanctuary symbolizes how He removes that separation to be with us.

Second, He wanted to illustrate the plan of salvation.

The Israelites were spiritually “young” when the sanctuary model was given to them. During their slavery to the Egyptians, they lost a lot of the knowledge and practice of their faith. So even after they were liberated, they were slow to understand how God worked and were hesitant to trust in His care. Many of them doubted and disobeyed God at nearly every opportunity, but He was patient with them. He found ways to teach the Israelites on their level of understanding.

When they lacked trust, He taught them to depend on Him for “manna” to eat (Exodus 16). To emphasize that His law of love is unchanging, He wrote the Ten Commandments in stone (Exodus 20). To help them understand that He is always present, He gave them a physical representation of His presence by a cloud pillar during the day and a pillar of fire at night (Exodus 13:21-22).

In the same way, God taught the Israelites about the plan of salvation by example—through the services conducted at each section of the sanctuary.

The sanctuary had three different sections to it: the courtyard, the Holy Place, and the Most Holy Place.

In the courtyard, there was:

• The Altar of Burnt Offering: This was where the Israelites sacrificed animals to receive forgiveness for sins. This represents how sinners accept Jesus’ sacrifice for their sins to receive forgiveness.³
• The Laver: This was where priests would cleanse themselves after they had sprinkled the blood of the sacrificed animal. This was done to purify their bodies of sin, a symbolic act that prepared them to enter into the Holy Place. In the plan of salvation, this step represents baptism, as it is also a symbol of washing away the old, sinful life and receiving a new, pure one.⁴

Once the priests finished washing, they would enter the tent of the sanctuary, coming into an outer room known as the Holy Place.

In the Holy Place, there was:

• The Table of Shewbread: This was a table with 12 pieces of bread (symbolizing the 12 tribes of Israel) that the priest regularly replaced with fresh loaves. In the plan of salvation, this bread represents God and His word as what truly nourishes us (which is confirmed by Jesus Himself in Matthew 4:4).⁵
• The Lampstand: The priest also tended to this 7-pronged candelabra, keeping it lit at all times. The candles’ light represents the good Jesus can do through us, and the oil used to fuel the flame represents the Holy Spirit, who empowers us to do Christ’s work.⁶
• The Altar of Incense: This is where the priest would burn incense to the Lord to fill the sanctuary with sweet fragrance (Exodus 30:7-8). In the plan of salvation, this represents the way our prayers ascend to God (Revelation 5:8).⁷

All of these symbolize how we can grow closer to God, so the things in the Holy Place symbolically prepared the Old Testament priests to enter God’s presence in the Most Holy Place, which was separated from the Holy Place by a heavy curtain.

It contained only one article of furniture—The Ark of the Covenant, where God’s presence resided (Leviticus 16:1-2). This section of the sanctuary, though, was reserved for the high priest, who only entered there once a year, during a feast called the Day of Atonement. On this day, the high priest made a special sacrifice on behalf of all the Israelites.

Why?

All through the year, the priests performed the daily sacrifices that represented Jesus’ sacrifice for us as the Lamb of God (Hebrews 9:6-7; John 1:29). They took the blood of the animal sacrifices, carried it into the Holy Place of the sanctuary, and sprinkled it there (Leviticus 4:35).

The result was a sanctuary full of sin.

It needed to be cleansed, and this was the purpose of the Day of Atonement. Here’s how Leviticus describes it:

“Atonement will be made for you on this day to cleanse you, and you will be clean from all your sins before the Lord…. The priest who is anointed and ordained to serve as high priest in place of his father will make atonement. He will put on the linen garments, the holy garments, and make atonement for the most holy place. He will make atonement for the tent of meeting and the altar and will make atonement for the priests and all the people of the assembly. This is to be a permanent statute for you, to make atonement for the Israelites once a year because of all their sins” (Leviticus 16:30, 32-34, CSB).

The high priest would carry the blood of a special sacrifice into the Most Holy Place and sprinkle the blood there. When he finished the ritual, the sanctuary and God’s people were symbolically clean of all sin.

Adventists believe that this event also points to another crucial event in Bible prophecy—the Investigative Judgment that Jesus performs in heaven as our High Priest before He returns in His Second Coming (more on this later). Like the earthly model, this judgment will result in a complete cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary so that Jesus can return and bring His followers to heaven (1 Timothy 2:5).

Let’s take a closer look at how these teachings developed in the Adventist Church.

What is the sanctuary doctrine, and how did it develop in Adventism?

As mentioned, the doctrine of the sanctuary sums up what the Bible tells us about how the earthly sanctuary mirrors the heavenly one within the plan of salvation. It helps us understand the investigative judgment that occurs before Jesus’ Second Coming by examining the prophetic significance of the Day of Atonement and Jesus’ role as High Priest.

This doctrine is foundational to the theology of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, so much so that it’s one of our fundamental beliefs.⁸

To understand how it all started, let’s take a trip back to 1844—a time when sincere Christians from many different denominations thought Jesus would return on October 22nd.

Millerites and the cleansing of the sanctuary

“Courtesy of the Ellen G. White Estate, Inc.”

The sanctuary doctrine has its roots in the aftermath of the Great Disappointment of 1844. The Millerites, followers of William Miller, had concluded Jesus would return on October 22 of that year. Their conclusions came from Daniel 8:14, which says “the sanctuary shall be cleansed” after a prophetic time period (NKJV).

The Millerites, based on popular prophetic interpretations of their time, had assumed that the sanctuary refers to the earth and that it would be cleansed by fire when Jesus returned.⁹

They were bitterly disappointed when He didn’t come.

But some Millerites didn’t lose hope. They instead went back to studying the Bible to find out where they’d gotten it wrong. Two of those people were Hiram Edson and his friend, Owen R. L. Crosier. When they set out to visit some friends one day who needed some encouragement in the faith, Edson suddenly stopped as they walked through a field.

Right there, the Holy Spirit impressed on him an epiphany that the cleansing of the sanctuary in Daniel 8:14 was not about Jesus coming to the earth. Instead, Jesus had entered the Most Holy Place of the heavenly sanctuary in 1844.¹⁰

Encouraged by this, Edson, Crosier, and another friend, Dr. F. B. Hahn, devoted even more effort into Bible study about the sanctuary. They confirmed that 1844 was a special date—just not the date of Jesus’ second advent.

It was the end of one thing and the beginning of another.

The key is in the interpretation of the word “sanctuary” used in Daniel 8.

Studying to understand the Great Disappointment

When early Adventists realized that Daniel 8:14 wasn’t referring to Jesus’ return, they decided to study what “the cleansing of the sanctuary” really meant.

As we pointed out, the Millerites had thought “sanctuary” referred to the earth. And by interpreting the sanctuary as the earth, the only logical explanation for that phrase was Jesus’ return. He’d come back, take His followers to heaven, and cleanse the earth with fire.

After the Great Disappointment, though, Edson and Crosier reviewed these verses and others. What they learned changed their thinking. The cleansing of the sanctuary in Daniel’s vision refers to the cleansing of the heavenly temple.

Just as the priests in ancient Israel symbolically brought the people’s sins into the sanctuary throughout the year, the heavenly sanctuary contains the record of sins forgiven by Jesus’ death on the Cross (Jeremiah 17:1; Malachi 3:16; Revelation 20:12).

Here’s how the apostle Paul describes it in the New Testament:

“According to the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. Therefore, it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves to be purified with better sacrifices than these [animal sacrifices]” (Hebrews 9:22–23, CSB).

Jesus, our great High Priest, opens the records of human history and looks over the life of each person. He looks at their heart’s intent—not just their actions—and judges whether they truly believed and accepted Him.

Dr. Angel Rodriguez, an associate director of the Biblical Research Institute, describes it this way:

“The investigative judgment signifies that human decisions and actions have a cosmic
impact. What we are, think, and do is preserved indelibly in the heavenly records.

 

This, far from being a source of stress and fear, should be the very foundation of joy.

 

What we do, what we become is not lost in the vastness of time and space but is preserved within God’s sanctuary. Every good deed, every prayer, every word of encouragement, every expression of love, is preserved as a witness to the manifold wisdom of God, who is able to transform sinful human beings into new and holy creatures.

 

Of course, sin is also recorded there. Human weaknesses, rebellions, errors, and failures are preserved there. But because Christ is the believer’s advocate, forgiveness is available and is granted to those who approach God through Him. During the investigative judgment, sins will not be counted against those who remained in a covenant relationship with Christ, because they were charged to Him on the cross. Then those sins will be blotted out, to be remembered no more. The Christlike character of the believer will be fixed for eternity.”¹¹

This judgment, what we call the Investigative Judgment, began in 1844. And it’s still continuing today.

We can’t see it or feel it, but in heaven, Jesus is performing this work (Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14). And thankfully, this judgment doesn’t have to create fear in our hearts because Jesus is our intercessor whose blood covers our sins (1 John 2:1; Hebrews 10:10-14).

Learn why we believe this judgment began in 1844.

What Adventists did with these discoveries

The sanctuary doctrine was important to Adventists because it helped them understand why Jesus hadn’t returned in 1844, and it expanded their understanding of God’s plan to end sin. It showed them that we are living in the time of judgment before Jesus returns.

When the early Advent believers came to these conclusions, Crosier and another Adventist began publishing their findings. They wanted to inform and encourage other Advent believers who were struggling with what happened at the Great Disappointment.

More early Adventist leaders, such as Joseph Bates, studied these ideas on their own and came to the same conclusions.¹²

Adventists began to see how the sanctuary pointed to God’s beautiful plan of salvation and connected many teachings in the Bible, such as the crucifixion, Christ’s ministry in the sanctuary, the Second Coming, the judgment, and the Ten Commandments (which are contained inside the Ark of the Covenant).

But is the Adventist church the only one that teaches the sanctuary doctrine?

Is the sanctuary doctrine unique to Adventism?

“Courtesy of the Ellen G. White Estate, Inc.”

The ancient Israelite sanctuary is familiar to many Christian denominations, though the specific sanctuary doctrine we’ve explained here is unique to Adventism. The doctrine stems from the Bible studies of early Adventists as they earnestly sought to understand the Great Disappointment. As God blessed and guided their study, they began to put the pieces together, and it eventually became one of our fundamental beliefs.

Later, Ellen G. White—a young woman whom Adventists believe had the spiritual gift of prophecy—received insights from God that helped confirm what the Advent believers had found in the Bible.

One of the visions coincided with what Edson and Crosier had discovered: that Jesus moved from the Holy Place to the Most Holy Place in 1844.¹³ In another vision in 1847, she saw more detail of the sanctuary in heaven.¹⁴

She wrote about this incredible vision:

“After viewing the glory of the holy, Jesus raised the second veil and I passed into the holy of holies. In the holiest I saw an ark; on the top and sides of it was purest gold. On each end of the ark was a lovely cherub, with its wings spread out over it…. Jesus stood by the ark, and as the saints’ prayers came up to Him, the incense in the censer would smoke, and He would offer up their prayers with the smoke of the incense to His Father.”¹⁵

This vision put together the pieces of her other visions about the sanctuary. The Holy Spirit worked through her spiritual gift to reassure the Adventists that they had, indeed, come to the right conclusions in their study.

So the sanctuary doctrine was incredibly relevant to Adventists as they sought to unravel the Great Disappointment. But does it have anything to do with us today?

How is the sanctuary doctrine relevant to Christians today?

The sanctuary on earth wasn’t only a lesson book for the ancient Israelites. It still helps us understand God’s plan to save us from sin and shows us what Jesus is doing for us even today.

The sanctuary is entwined with Bible prophecy, showing us that Jesus is in heaven as our intercessor right now, helping us and strengthening us. He’s also doing a special work of cleansing the records of our sin in real time, and then He’ll come back for us at His Second Coming and end sin, evil, and suffering once and for all.

Above all, the sanctuary encourages us that God wants to be with us and is doing everything possible to make that happen—through the sacrifice of Jesus and His work of intercession and judgment.

He is bridging the gap that sin created between us and Him. That way, we can one day live with Him forever in a world of peace and joy.

1. “Antitype,” Bible Gateway. [↵]
2. Hebrews 10:10,14,19-22; John 14:6; Hebrews 2:11. [↵]
3. “What Adventists Believe About Christ’s Ministry in the Heavenly Sanctuary,” General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. [↵]
4. Ibid. [↵]
5. “Shewbread,” Britannica. [↵]
6. “Symbolism Behind the Golden Lampstand of the Wilderness Tabernacle,” LearnReligions. [↵]
7. Psalm 141:1-2; Revelation 5:8; Revelation 8:3-4 [↵]
8. Ibid. [↵]
9. Holbrook, Frank B., Doctrine of the Sanctuary: A Historical Survey, p. 9. [↵]
10. “The Advent Movement Beyond the Great Disappointment,” Lineage. [↵]
11. Rodríguez, Ángel Manuel, “The Sanctuary and Its Cleansing,” Adventist Biblical Research, p.18. [↵]
12. “The Advent Movement.” [↵]
13. White, Ellen, Early Writings, p. 54-56. [↵]
14. Coon, Roger W., The Great Visions of Ellen G. White, p. 41. [↵]
15. White, Ellen, Early Writings, p. 32. [↵]

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