THE HOPE OF ISRAEL - The Preterist Archive

118 The Hope of Israel: What Is It?
For what war-
very weak effort of the imagination.
rant have we for
supposing that God would require
any memorial of those sacrifices in which, even in the
time when they were needed, He had had no pleasure?
And how preposterous is the idea that He would require
the slaughter of innumerable creatures merely
to revive the memory of those other defective sacrifices
which could never take away sins! Surely they
who advance this idea have forgotten the Scripture,
which they all apply to the Millennium, and which
says, "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy
mountain" (Isa. 11:9).
But the passage itself completely refutes this idea;
for it plainly declares that the sacrifices there specified
were not at all for a remembrance or a memorial,
but were for the very different purposes of sin offerings,
trespass offerings, peace offerings, etc. ;
also for
cleansing the house, making reconciliation both for the
princes of Israel and for the people, and the like. All
the five offerings of the levitical system are mentioned
by name (40:39, 42:13, 43:27; 45:17; 46:20); and
provision is made for sprinkling the blood of the sin
offering upon the corners of the altar, upon the posts
of the house and court in order to cleanse them (43 :20 ;
45:18, 19). In a word the sacrifices are the levitical
sacrifices, and they are expressly declared to be for
the identical purposes thereof. Hence it is impossible
to locate this temple, as an actual structure (apart
from the spiritual signification thereof), in any other
era than that of the law.
THE PURPOSE OF THE VISION
What then was the immediate purpose of this vision?
We think this question admits of a simple answer in