The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 430

ended, the ministration in the second apartment began. When in the
typical service the high priest left the holy on the Day of Atonement, he
went in before God to present the blood of the sin offering in behalf of
all Israel who truly repented of their sins. So Christ had only completed
one part of His work as our intercessor, to enter upon another portion of
the work, and He still pleaded His blood before the Father in behalf of
sinners.
This subject was not understood by Adventists in 1844. After the
passing of the time when the Saviour was expected, they still believed
His coming to be near; they held that they had reached an important crisis
and that the work of Christ as man’s intercessor before God had ceased.
It appeared to them to be taught in the Bible that man’s probation would
close a short time before the actual coming of the Lord in the clouds
of heaven. This seemed evident from those scriptures which point to
a time when men will seek, knock, and cry at the door of mercy, and
it will not be opened. And it was a question with them whether the
date to which they had looked for the coming of Christ might not rather
mark the beginning of this period which was immediately to precede His
coming. Having given the warning of the judgment near, they felt that
their work for the world was done, and they lost their burden of soul
for the salvation of sinners, while the bold and blasphemous scoffing of
the ungodly seemed to them another evidence that the Spirit of God had
been withdrawn from the rejecters of His mercy. All this confirmed them
in the belief that probation had ended, or, as they then expressed it, “the
door of mercy was shut.”
But clearer light came with the investigation of the sanctuary
question. They now saw that they were correct in believing that the
end of the 2300 days in 1844 marked an important crisis. But while
it was true that that door of hope and mercy by which men had for
eighteen hundred years found access to God, was closed, another door
was opened,

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