To me personally the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus is difficult! Much more involved than I had ever realized. Yet it forms of basis of God’s Dwelling among His people year after year! His “Shekinah Glory” Dwelling!

How can that BLESSING be considered lightly?

Here is what the old Bible Expositor C. H. (Charles Henry) Mackintosh said about our Text: “This chapter unfolds some of the weightiest principles of truth which can possibly engage the renewed mind. It presents the doctrine of atonement with uncommon fullness and power. In short, we must rank the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus amongst the most precious and important sections of Inspiration; if indeed it be allowable to make comparisons where all is divine.”

Wow!

And another old writer, S. H. Kellogg agreed: “This ordinance of the day of atonement was perhaps the most important and characteristic in the whole Mosaic legislation. In the law of the offerings, the most distinctive part was the law of the sin-offering; and it was on the great annual day of atonement that the conceptions embodied in the sin-offering obtained their most complete development.”

And Joseph Seiss wrote further, still having Leviticus 16 in mind: “The chapter before us prescribes the most solemn and interesting round of ceremonies contained in the Hebrew ritual. It presents God’s law for the great Day of Atonement—the most impressive day in the Jewish calendar — a day to which all classes looked with peculiar anxiety—a day when they were to lay aside every secular employment and afflict their souls — the day when the high-priest was to go into the Holy of holies, and to make an atonement for all the sins, irreverences, and pollutions of Israel, from himself down to the lowest of the people, for the entire year—a day of solemnities connecting directly with Calvary and the whole redemption work of Christ Jesus.”

Well, we now have two or three witnesses! (Deuteronomy 19:15 … “At the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established.”)

So (here on the Website) having only studied the first few verses of this great “Day of Atonement” Chapter … we will continue to attempt to plumb its depths tomorrow morning, the Lord willing.

Meanwhile I sincerely pray: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law, O Lord.” Psalm 119:18

What typology, what “pointing” to Jesus, Leviticus 16 and that great and holy Festival! Often the old rabbis/teachers called the “Day of Atonement” just “THE DAY!”

I am beginning to understand why!

— Dr. Mike Bagwell

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