Follow the Lamb

whithersoever he goeth… Rev. 14:4

John the Baptist came preaching repentance for the “kingdom of heaven is at  hand”, preparing the way for the Messiah.  He preached that  Jesus was the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world.   But notice the 3 steps the Jews took in rejecting Jesus:

(1) “John was sent in the spirit and power of Elijah to prepare the way of Jesus. Those who rejected the testimony of John were not benefited by the teachings of Jesus. (2) Their opposition to the message that foretold His coming placed them where they could not readily receive the strongest evidence that He was the Messiah. Satan led on those who rejected the message of John to go still farther, to reject and crucify Christ. (3) In doing this they placed themselves where they could not receive the blessing on the day of Pentecost, which would have taught them the way into the heavenly sanctuary. The rending of the veil of the temple showed that the Jewish sacrifices and ordinances would no longer be received. The great Sacrifice had been offered and had been accepted, and the Holy Spirit which descended on the day of Pentecost carried the minds of the disciples from the earthly sanctuary to the heavenly, where Jesus had entered by His own blood, to shed upon His disciples the benefits of His atonement. But the Jews were left in total darkness. They lost all the light which they might have had upon the plan of salvation, and still trusted in their useless sacrifices and offerings. The heavenly sanctuary had taken the place of the earthly, yet they had no knowledge of the change. Therefore they could not be benefited by the mediation of Christ in the holy place.  EW 259.1

The  services, sacrifices and rites performed in the sanctuary or temple  had continually pointed to the ultimate Sacrifice, and work of Christ as  High Priest to come.  John’s message was a wake up call to the reality that the services and symbols which for thousands of years had been pointing forward to the Messiah were now meeting  the Reality.  The very One the forms had been pointing forward to year after year had come!  John  was sent to alert the Jews to the fact that they needed to prepare for this change, that what they had been trusting in, their continual services in the temple, were coming to an end; because the Christ the Lamb of God was to be the sacrifice for the sins of the world.  Not only was he “The Sacrifice for sin”,  but was also to take up the position as High Priest after his resurrection, and to minister in the heavenly sanctuary, in all it’s realities until the close of time. He was to perform in heavenly reality those services which he had given the Hebrew people in a miniature form, pointing to his work, so many centuries before.

Could we possibly miss following the Lamb as they did? 

For the modern saga, watch  Worship at Satan's Throne: