Atonement from Heaven

When the seventh trumpet blows, heaven opens and the ark of the covenant appears (Revelation 11:19). We’re in the Most Holy Place. Before the ark-throne are two heavenly signs – a laboring woman and a dragon. It’s Zechariah 3, with Satan and the priest Joshua before the throne, Satan accusing.

Zechariah 3 is a Day of Atonement episode: The temple is not yet built, so normal Atonement rites cannot be carried out. Yahweh breaks through the impasse by declaring Joshua clean. A clean priest can consecrate a clean house. 

Revelation 11:19 also initiates a day of atonement sequence. Once the sanctuary is opened, angels go in and out of heaven (14:11, 17). An angel comes from the golden altar of incense (11:18). The heavenly temple fills with smoke (15:5-8), a double allusion to the dedication ceremonies of the tabernacle and temple (Exodus 40; 1 Kings 8) and to the day of atonement, when the high priest entered the Most Holy Place enveloped in the smoke of incense (Leviticus 8). The double allusion makes sense, since the Day of Atonement purified the sanctuary, performing an annual rededication of Yahweh’s house. Out of the smoke of the temple angels come with chalices of blood that they sprinkle seven times on the earth (15:6-8; 16:1-21), replicating the sevenfold sprinkling of the day of atonement.

There are some disanalogies with Yom Kippur. The blood that is sprinkled doesn’t come from a goat, but from harvested people, from the saints. There is a scapegoat, a goat that is cast out, the harlot city; but, again, it’s a human scapegoat. And the blood isn’t sprinkled where we expect it to be sprinkled, in the heavenly sanctuary, toward the ark. Instead, it’s brought from the heavenly sanctuary to earth, targeted at the great city. The blood doesn’t purify; it destroys.

Though it doesn’t answer all the questions, one part of the answer must be that the New Testament gives us a double enactment of the day of atonement. Hebrews makes clear that Jesus’ death fulfills the atonement rite: He is the High Priest who brings His own blood into the heavenly temple to purify it once-for-all. Heaven is purified by the cross and ascension. But that leaves the earthly sanctuary to be purified, and so the atonement turns “inside-out,” blood of saints brought out of the heavenly sanctuary to be poured out on the throne of the beast, the harlot city, the great city that drinks martyr blood. That atonement purifies the earthly temple by destroying it and making it new, as the temple-city descends from heaven.