negotiating to purify himself; Numbers 17:20 see Numbers 19:20.
All the chief of the priests and of the people polluted it by transgressing very much after all the abominations of the heathen; 2Chronicles 36:14. "Surely, because thou hast defiled My Sanctuary with all thy detestable things, and with all thine abominations (idolatry), therefore will I diminish thee." Ezekiel 5:11.
Moreover this they have done unto Me; they have defiled My Sanctuary in the same day, and have profaned My Sabbaths: for when they had slain their children to their idols, then they came the same day into My Sanctuary to profane it; Ezekiel 33:38,39. "Her priests have polluted the Sanctuary; they have done violence to the law." Zephaniah 3:4.
Antiochus 22 polluted it by offering swine flesh upon its altar, 1Maccabees 1:20-24.
From these texts we can clearly see, that it was moral rather than physical uncleanness that defiled the Sanctuary in the sight of the Lord.
True, it did become physically unclean, but that uncleanness had to be removed before the atonement was made by which it was reconciled or cleansed.
See 2Chronicles 29.
And that, we have seen was the law of cleansing, Leviticus, chapters 12 to 15; the object must be made visibly clean, so to speak, so that we would call it clean , to prepare it for its real cleansing with blood.
Now no one supposes that New Jerusalem is unclean or ever has been, as its type was when overrun, desecrated and desolated by Syrian, Chaldean or Roman soldiery, or trode by wicked priests.
Even if it were, the removing of such defilement would not be the cleansing it was to undergo at the end of the 2300 days.
The Sanctuary was unclean in some sense, or else it would not need to be cleansed; and it must in some way have received its uncleanness from man.
Removed, as the heavenly Sanctuary is from the midst of mortals and entered only by our Forerunner, Jesus, made an High Priest, it can only be defiled by mortals through His agency, and for them cleansed by the same agency.
The legal typical process of defiling and cleansing the Sanctuary through the agency of the priest has been examined.
With that in our minds, let us go to the New