The Adventist Church, by way of their prophetess—Ellen G. White—teach that the tearing of the veil while Jesus was on the cross (Matthew 27:50-51, Mark 15:38, Luke 23:45) represented a change of location in the priesthood work. That the earthly temple had been replaced with the heavenly temple. Scripture doesn’t say this nor teach it.
Hebrews 9:1-9 tells us that the veil is what separated the holy from the most holy place. Only the High Priest could enter behind that veil once a year on the day of atonement (Leviticus 16, Exodus 30:10; Hebrews 9:7). The veil represented a barrier of separation between God and man due to sin (Isaiah 59:1-2). The tearing of the veil represented that Jesus’s sacrifice was sufficient to atone for sins—and that the way into the presence of God for all—both Jews and Gentiles alike—was now open (Hebrews 9:7-9; 10:19-21).
The veil was also symbolic of Jesus himself, as all of the Sanctuary imagery was. Jesus said He is the door one enters to God (John 10:9-10, 14:6) which is precisely what the veil was—the representative doorway the High Priest entered and approached God. Furthermore, Hebrews 10:19-20 tells us that Jesus’s flesh is the veil and His blood opened the way for us to enter into the presence of God with boldness—just like the high priest would take blood and go behind the curtain. Meaning, Jesus is the doorway one enters into to approach God by His blood. While it is true that God has moved from dwelling in temples made with hands to indwelling the temple of His people (Acts 17:24), the true tabernacle that the Levitical one pointed to—where sin was truly dealt with—was Jesus Christ’s own body (John 2:19-22).
Jesus Christ “put sin away” at the cross, by the sacrifice of Himself (Hebrews 9:26). In contrast to the Levitical priest who never sat down because the work of dealing with sin was never finished, Christ entered into Heaven itself (Hebrews 9:24) and sat down on His throne, showing that the work of dealing with sin is finished (Hebrews 10:11-14).
But because the Adventist Church erroneously teaches that the tearing of the veil represented a change in temple location and that the work of sin continues, they believe that no sin was cancelled at the cross—it’s only where the atoning sacrifice took place. Sin still stands on record in a building in heaven (missing that Jesus is the true tabernacle) and Jesus began investigating it and blotting out the sins of those found worthy on October 22, 1844. This contradicts one of the promises of the New Covenant which is that God doesn’t remember the sins of His people anymore (Jeremiah 31:34, Hebrews 10:17).
The tearing did not have to do with a change in location of the priesthood work. This is Adventist theology being read into the text to make sense of their Investigative Judgement and Sanctuary doctrinal system. It is serious heresy to claim that the blood of Christ at Calvary did not cancel sin. This is one of the many reasons why Seventh-Day Adventism is not Christian and Christians need to be evangelizing them.
