The Ark of the Covenant, Will It Be Found?

Chapter 2—The Original Set is Kept in the Ark in Heaven

The set of tables of the Ten Commandments kept in the ark of the covenant in the heavenly sanctuary is the great “original”, while the set kept in the ark in the earthly sanctuary is a transcript or copy of the one above. Such is the teaching set forth in the following statements from the Spirit of Prophecy: ACWF 2.1

“Sacrilegious minds and hearts have thought they were mighty enough to change the times and laws of Jehovah; but, safe in the archives of heaven, in the ark of God, are the original commandments, written upon the two tables of stone. No potentate of earth has power to draw forth those tables from their sacred hiding place beneath the mercy seat.”—The S.D.A. Bible Commentary 7:972 (The Signs of the Times, February 28, 1878).

“Do not place your influence against God’s commandments. That law is just as Jehovah wrote it in the temple of heaven. Man may trample upon its copy here below, but the original is kept in the ark of God in heaven; and on the cover of this ark, right above that law, is the mercy seat. Jesus stands right there before that ark to mediate for man.”—The S.D.A. Bible Commentary 1:1109.

“They [the Adventists] had by faith followed their High Priest from the holy to the most holy, and they saw Him pleading His blood before the ark of God. Within that sacred ark is the Father’s law, the same that was spoken by God Himself amid the thunders of Sinai, and written with His own finger on the tables of stone. Not one command has been annulled; not a jot or tittle has been changed. While God gave to Moses a copy of His law, He preserved the great original in the sanctuary above.”—The Spirit of Prophecy 4:273, 274 (The Story of Redemption, 379, 380).

“None could fail to see that if the earthly sanctuary was a figure or pattern of the heavenly, the law deposited in the ark on earth was an exact transcript of the law in the ark of heaven; and that an acceptance of the truth concerning the heavenly sanctuary involved an acknowledgment of the claims of God’s law and the obligation of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. Here was the secret of the bitter and determined opposition to the harmonious exposition of the Scriptures that revealed the ministration of Christ in the heavenly sanctuary.”—The Great Controversy, 435 (The Story of Redemption, 380, 381).

“The law of God in the sanctuary in heaven is the great original, of which the precepts inscribed upon the tables of stone and recorded by Moses in the Pentateuch were an unerring transcript.”—The Great Controversy, 434.