15 A.D.
The priests gather in the temple and they enter through the first curtain to the Holy Place and offer their animal sacrifices to cover their sins. The High Priest has a rope tied to him and bells placed on him because he's about to enter the Most Holy Place where the Ark or the Covenant lay with the mercy seat atop where God is said to dwell as he meets with the High Priest once a year. He enters with blood sacrifices to cover his sins and more sacrifices to cover the unintentional sins of the people.
The bells are on him so the other priests can hear him moving around. The rope is tied to him in case he is overcome by the power of God either by his own impurity or accidentally touches the Ark of the Covenant and dies. The other priests must pull out his body using the rope because only the High Priest is allowed to enter the Most Holy Place. Anyone else would be overcome by the power of God and die.
All this done, once a year, to obtain atonement for all the wrong doings of His people.
The people are living in a time where God is unattainable by all but one man. Even then, that one man can only enter into the presence of God once a year!
And when he does this He has to enter with the blood of a pure animal on him to cover his own sins and even more for the sins of the people. The offering being pure symbolism that something pure had to die to cover the sins of this world. Even then the blood of these pure animals could only cover the sins. Leaving them in the conscience of the people. And to top it all off, the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place are in a temple that not all the people can gain entrance to.
Living this way for so many hundreds of years places the people in a place of waiting. Waiting for redemption as was promised to them!
"How long, Oh God, must we life with this yearly routine until we are free to be with you?"
That's probably something I would have said at that time.
Then one night in an animal house in the feeding troff of the animals there laid a baby who had come to end that systematic redemption.
Little did these waiting people know that that baby had come to be The High Priest who is able to enter all Holy Places, the pure Lamb of God who would sacrifice Himself and not only cover the people with His blood so they would be seen as pure, but would eradicate their sins completely. His body would represent the temple that would be broken down and, more specifically, His flesh would represent the curtain that separated God from the people. And just God resided behind the curtain He resided within the flesh of Christ. When the guards flogged Jesus they ripped His flesh and when Jesus died and It says He yielded up his spirit meaning the gave it away the temple curtain was torn from top to bottom to represent that through Christ the separation between man and God had been joined.
Christ is...
...the High Priest
...the Pure Sacrifice
...the Temple
...the Curtain
...The Living God
Christ is all of The Law fulfilled in One!
