In Parts I and II of this series, we added up the amount of flour accompanying the spring and autumn sacrifices, respectively, according to the mosaic plan. We learned that these provisions of food symbolized periods of time when God’s people would face an acute need for the Holy Spirit. As products of a world that is suffering ever more from the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit, we of all people should realize how great the gift of the Holy Spirit is, and how much we really need it.

The book of Ezekiel contains a blueprint for a temple that was never built on this earth; it is the blueprint for the earthly counterpart to the heavenly sanctuary. With regard to this earthly reflection of the heavenly sanctuary, Ezekiel records amendments to the numbers of sacrifices for the feasts, and the amounts of flour accompanying them. This temple and its services represent the “holy nation” and priesthood of the 144,000. Therefore, the amendments to the sacrifices are especially relevant to the 144,000 at this present point in time.

We have already learned a lot by measuring Ezekiel’s temple. We found that the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary would take 168 years, which corresponds to the first part of the oath of Daniel 12:7 as explained in the Orion presentation. The cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary had to do especially with the judgment of the dead.

The priests did not begin to officiate in the temple until after its cleansing, which means that the sacrificial procedures as amended are put into practice after the seven days of cleansing.

Seven days shall they purge the altar and purify it; and they shall consecrate themselves. And when these days are expired, it shall be, that upon the eighth day, and so forward, the priests shall make your burnt offerings upon the altar, and your peace offerings; and I will accept you, saith the Lord GOD. (Ezekiel 43:26-27)

Today, that is just where we stand in time. Again, we see how the book of Ezekiel is the book for this present time. The 168 years of cleansing are over, and now it is time for the amended sacrificial rules to be put into practice. It is time for the priests (the 144,000) to prepare and officiate.

Anyone who follows Ellen G. White’s counsel to strive to be among the 144,000 should immediately recognize the importance of this subject. Do you know what it means to serve as one of the 144,000? How can one serve if one does not know what one should do in one’s role of service? I pray that as we study the amendments in this article, the Holy Spirit will unfold His plan for you in a personal way.

Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:13)

This study involves a lot of number crunching again. Just as the 51 days and 372 days of Parts I and II pointed to specific time periods, we will again find a number that will give a definite temporal context—this time it will give the context of special periods of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

In approaching this study, we need to leverage the work that has already been done in Parts I and II to calculate the numbers of sacrificial animals. Not every sacrifice was changed in Ezekiel, which means that we need to keep the existing counts in those cases. I will summarize the tables from Parts I and II on the left, and I will show the amended tables on the right.

The first feast that we looked at in Part I was the feast of unleavened bread. The offerings required for this feast are amended in Ezekiel as follows:

And seven days of the feast he shall prepare a burnt offering to the LORD, seven bullocks and seven rams without blemish daily the seven days; and a kid of the goats daily for a sin offering. And he shall prepare a meat offering of an ephah for a bullock, and an ephah for a ram, and an hin of oil for an ephah. (Ezekiel 45:23-24)

Now let’s compare the data with what was found in Part I.

From these changes, we can already see that the total amount of provision is quite a bit greater, and we will soon find that this trend will continue in the fall feasts as well. Could this be another hint to the “greater work” that Jesus spoke of?

This offering is not specifically mentioned in Ezekiel, and therefore the number of animals for it does not change. However, there is a change to the amount of flour that accompanies the animals. We find the new amounts specified as follows:

And in the feasts and in the solemnities the meat offering shall be an ephah to a bullock, and an ephah to a ram, and to the lambs as he is able to give, and an hin of oil to an ephah. (Ezekiel 46:11)

We already saw one ephah per bullock and per ram as we calculated the values for the feast of unleavened bread (and it is given again in 46:5 and 7 in the context of other sacrifices), but this verse now makes a blanket statement to cover all other cases which have not been explicitly mentioned. For example, this blanket statement covers the case of the special wave sheaf offering which was not specifically mentioned in Ezekiel.

Thus, even though the number of sacrificial animals was not changed for the wave sheaf offering, the amount of flour that accompanies it DOES change. Instead of the lambs being accompanied by two tenths of an ephah of flour, they are now accompanied by a quantity “as he is able to give.”

The amount of flour that should accompany each lamb is not specified! What does that mean? It is a freewill offering. It is “as he is able to give.” It is not a hard and fast requirement to give a certain amount of flour for lamb offerings.

This means that in the Ezekiel scheme, the lamb offerings will not contribute to the total amount of flour. Remember, we are on our way to computing the total amount of flour in order to find the duration of time that these provisions are for. Since the lamb offerings will not contribute to the total amount of provisions that the priests could count on, we do not need to concern ourselves with the lambs any further for this study.

(Similarly, goats are always used for sin offerings, which are not accompanied by flour and thus we don’t need to concern ourselves with them either.)

So, with that in mind, I didn’t make a corresponding table for the wave sheaf in Ezekiel’s scheme, recognizing that it wouldn’t contribute to the total anyway.

Finally, we mustn’t forget the new moon feast that is guaranteed to fall during the Omer Sabbaths. The offerings for this feast are amended in Ezekiel as follows:

And in the day of the new moon it shall be a young bullock without blemish, and six lambs, and a ram: they shall be without blemish. And he shall prepare a meat offering, an ephah for a bullock, and an ephah for a ram, and for the lambs according as his hand shall attain unto, and an hin of oil to an ephah. (Ezekiel 46:6-7)

Although we have examined all the mosaic spring sacrifices to find how they are amended in Ezekiel, we should not proceed to the fall feasts before checking to see if there are new spring sacrifices introduced in Ezekiel.

We find these described as follows:

Thus saith the Lord GOD; In the first month, in the first day of the month, thou shalt take a young bullock without blemish, and cleanse the sanctuary: And the priest shall take of the blood of the sin offering, and put it upon the posts of the house, and upon the four corners of the settle of the altar, and upon the posts of the gate of the inner court. And so thou shalt do the seventh day of the month for every one that erreth, and for him that is simple: so shall ye reconcile the house. In the first month, in the fourteenth day of the month, ye shall have the passover, a feast of seven days; unleavened bread shall be eaten. And upon that day shall the prince prepare for himself and for all the people of the land a bullock for a sin offering. (Ezekiel 45:18-22)

Notice that all these offerings are specified as sin offerings, which means that there is no flour to count for them. Thus, we do not need to add any additional amount to our total calculation for these new offerings.

At this point, we can add up the total amount of flour “provisions” for all the amended spring sacrifices:

Remember, this figure is the total provision, but we must find the daily ration amount before we will know how long this provision will last. I would like to save that until after we add up the autumn provisions, but in any case, we already have some clues as to what these spring provisions should mean.

We learned in the earlier parts that the spring feasts were always connected with Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, and thus had to do with substitutionary grace. After we total the autumn provisions and begin to see the big picture, it will become clear how this is true once again. And you will see that grace is not cheap after all.

Now we are ready to amend the autumn sacrifices which were studied in Part II.

First of all, we have the Feast of Trumpets. Whereas the antitype to this feast was met in Miller’s midnight cry, we should seriously think about what meaning the feast of trumpets could have in the context of this present study of Ezekiel. This is the first autumn feast, so it should be a hint as to what we should expect at the beginning of the time period that its “provisions” are for. The offerings for this feast are not changed in Ezekiel, but we still need to re-calculate the flour that accompanies the offerings as we did before:

Next is the Day of Atonement, and again the sacrifices are unchanged in Ezekiel, so only the flour amounts are different. Brother John noted in Part II that sadly most Adventists still have not recognized that the great anti-typical day of atonement has not only a beginning, but also an end. We will learn more about that after we finish totaling the numbers:

The next feast is the Feast of Tabernacles.

Finally, for Shemini Atzeret, the Last Great Day of the feast, we have no new sacrifice counts and only need to re-calculate the flour amounts:

Adding the totals for the autumn feasts, we have:

Now remember how closely connected the spring and autumn feasts are in Ezekiel. For the seven days of the Feast of Tabernacles, it literally says “do the same” as for the seven days of the feast of unleavened bread. What we are dealing with is 106 ephahs for spring and 104 ephahs for autumn, for a total of 210 ephahs of provision.

How many days will this provision last? Once again, we need to know the amount of the daily ration:

Thou shalt daily prepare a burnt offering unto the LORD of a lamb of the first year without blemish: thou shalt prepare it every morning. And thou shalt prepare a meat offering for it every morning, the sixth part of an ephah, and the third part of an hin of oil, to temper with the fine flour; a meat offering continually by a perpetual ordinance unto the LORD. Thus shall they prepare the lamb, and the meat offering, and the oil, every morning for a continual burnt offering. (Ezekiel 46:13-15)

Each day, the priests needed one sixth of an ephah for the meat offering, which means that one ephah would last six days. Now we can calculate the total number of days that the provisions will last:

210 ephahs × 6 days per ephah = 1260 days

Where do we know this number from? The timelines of Daniel, of course!

And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever that it shall be for a time, times, and an half; and when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished. (Daniel 12:7)

We recognized this period long ago as the time of the judgment of the living, as explained in The 1260 Days article, starting on May 6, 2012 and running up to and including October 17, 2015 for a total of 1260 days. What are the implications of the 1260 days showing up here in the new calculations of the Holy Spirit provisions in Ezekiel? It certainly makes sense that a special portion of the Holy Spirit is needed during the judgment of the living, but is there more to it?

Remember, we have spring provisions and autumn provisions. If we compute them separately, we get the following durations:

106 ephahs × 6 days per ephah = 636 days, and

104 ephahs × 6 days per ephah = 624 days, for

636 + 624 = 1260 days

Thus, the sacrificial schedule in Ezekiel delineates two distinct phases of the judgment of the living: the early rain phase (corresponding to the spring sacrifices), and the latter rain phase (corresponding to the autumn sacrifices). Counting out the 636 and 624 days, we find that the last day of the early phase is January 31, 2014, while of course the next day, February 1, marks the beginning of the latter phase.

Timeline 1 - Two Phases of the Judgment of the Living

Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God: for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month. (Joel 2:23)

What do these phases mean? We will explore the happenings of these two phases in more detail in other articles, but for now it is important to understand that the first spring or early rain phase was the preparatory phase during which the Lord worked in our small group in a wonderful but subtle way. We did not see miraculous manifestations or unmistakable evidence of divine guidance. We studied and moved forward in faith with only a few “token” signs to confirm our faith. We saw “tokens” ranging from the great movements of the popes to a “little” storm here on our farm, with everything in between. Ellen G. White prophesied that it would be just like this:

It is true that in the time of the end, when God’s work in the earth is closing, the earnest efforts put forth by consecrated believers under the guidance of the Holy Spirit are to be accompanied by special tokens of divine favor. Under the figure of the early and the latter rain, that falls in Eastern lands at seedtime and harvest, the Hebrew prophets foretold the bestowal of spiritual grace in extraordinary measure upon God’s church. The outpouring of the Spirit in the days of the apostles was the beginning of the early, or former, rain, and glorious was the result. To the end of time the presence of the Spirit is to abide with the true church. {AA 54.2}

Notice how Ellen G. White was careful to let us know that the early rain only BEGAN in the days of the apostles, but that it would come again at the end of time. This passage has never had a clearer fulfillment than today. (Remember that there are multiple levels of application here; it is not my intent to re-define what the early or latter rain mean in general.)

The second phase must therefore show characteristics of the latter rain. The latter rain should be more abundant than the former rain, which means that this second phase should be accompanied not just by token signs, but by weighty events.

For those who have watched or read Brother John’s January 31 sermon, you have an idea what kinds of events I am talking about.