“Lift up your heads, you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in” (Psalm 24:7)
Doors. We go in them. We come out of them. We have them to protect us, to separate us, to give us privacy. We put them at the front of our house, on our garage, inside our house, at the back of our house. Some we push open. Some we slide open. Some we lock. Some we leave wide open. Have you ever counted how many doors you have on and in your house? It might surprise you.
God also has doors. John wrote in Revelation 4:1, “before me was a door standing open in heaven.” God has his doors in heaven and on earth. On earth he had them in the Temple. God placed two major barriers in the Temple. One was deep inside. It was called the parochet. It was a large veil that separated the holy place from the holy of holies. Through it only the high priest could enter on the Day or Atonement. But the other barrier consisted of two massive doors of gold. These were called the doors of the hekhal, the holy place. These were the barriers that separated the holy place from the Temple courts. Both these barriers represented the reality that man’s sin separated him from God. They represented the chasm between the sinful and the most holy.
Now, scripture tells us, “When Jesus cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” (Matthew 27:50-51). The barrier between man and God was removed. It was truly a miracle from God. But that veil was only one barrier that was removed. What about the other barrier – those massive golden doors? The doors of the hekhal? Did they not also represent a blockade between man and God? For those to be removed there had to occur a second opening, meaning a second miracle.
The writings of the rabbis tell of that second miracle, and history confirms it. The rabbis record that a strange phenomenon took place in the Temple. The golden doors of the hekhal began to open by themselves. The question is: just when did that miracle happen? The rabbis recorded that it all started about forty years before AD 70. The year Jerusalem was sieged by Rome. That would place the miracle of the golden doors about AD 30. That just so happens to be the same time that Jesus Christ died as the final atonement, to remove the barrier between man and God. Both the miraculous tearing of the veil and the opening of the golden doors meant that the full penalty had been paid, and man had complete access to God once again through Jesus Christ’s atonement.
What is amazing, besides the miracle of the doors is the fact that the rabbis, the ones who nailed Christ on the cross, themselves bore witness to the second barrier being removed at the time of Messiah’s death. The very ones who denied his deity, are the ones who themselves testify to the fact that Jesus Christ’s death removed all veils, doors, and barriers between us and God. Now there is nothing that keeps us from getting to God through our Savior Jesus Christ.
Darlene