11th Oct 2019

“…through the veil, that is to say, his flesh..” (Heb. 10:20 KJV)

With the state of things in the lives of God’s people, it seems plausible that as the end of the age draws to a close, two distinctive types of believers will perhaps emerge more and more on the scene. One is that which obviously stands before the veil in the long, unfulfilled, and unsettled life, and the other that has experientially entered and lived within the veil, partaking the glories of the Great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The issue of the veil has remained one of the most unwelcomed and least considered truth in the long history of the church. For God, the veil served as a symbol and its meaning was demonstrated in the finished work of His Son; the veil enigmatically confronts every believer who is hungering for a deeper and intimate relationship with the Person of Jesus Christ. Comprehended and made personal, the veil is ultimately the gateway to a true knowledge of the Father and the Son Jesus Christ.

For me, the clearest and most profitable understanding of the veil comes from the writing of G.W. North, an English minister of the last century. In The Priesthood and The Offerings, he writes,
The rending of the Veil, not the removal of it, was the point to which God had been moving throughout all history. The Jews gazed upon their rent veil without comprehension, not knowing what God had done; understandably they sewed it up again and continued their time-honored self-deception. But it ill becomes us, who profess to be enlightened by the Spirit to attempt to remove the veil which God purposely left hanging there, lest we practice self-deception of a worse order than they. We who now are invited to enter the Holiest place must know what God has done; the way in is still through the veil; God rent it so that we may enter in through it. We must see that if our blessed Melchizedek needed to go in that way, then a thousand times more is it necessary for us to enter thereby. Indeed the unmistakable statement is that He inaugurated or consecrated this new and living way especially for us. He went in as the first of a long line of sons of which He is the Leader, and a great house of priests over which He is Chief. In this He was not as Aaron, who went in and out of the Holiest only as the first of a longline of High Priests who should succeed him in office following his demise.

Jesus went in first as the High Priest of the original order of Melchizedek over which He presides, and to which He gave His name, and all the priests who shall enter in through Him shall be with Him in the Holiest of all. Neither He nor they enter as Aaron, who went in round and under the drapes of the veil which dropped into position again upon his entrance and exit; Jesus our Melchizedek went in simultaneously with the rending of the veil which represented His own crucified flesh.(32)¹

North continues with this understanding by quoting a hymn. He writes:
Long ago Bishop Ray Palmer wrote a lovely hymn revealing his rare spiritual insight. With great perception in his opening lines he says, “Jesus, these eyes have never seen that radiant form of Thine, the veil of sense hangs dark between Thy blessed face and mine.” He realized that although the veil of the Tabernacle is rent, there is still a veil, even as did the writer to the Hebrews when he penned such words as “which hope we have as an anchor of the soul…which entereth into that within the veil whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an High Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.” So the bishop goes further, finishing his poem with these words, “When death these mortal eyes shall seal, and still this throbbing heart, the rending veil shall Thee reveal, all glorious as Thou art.” (35)

The veil of sense that he speaks of is the mortal flesh or the physical body that houses our being; by our five outward senses and our basic fleshly urges, we cannot know God. When a person goes to Calvary to submit himself to the death of the cross, passing into God by Jesus’ death, he only does so as a result of the veil being taken off his mind because with his whole heart, he turned to God; but even so, while remaining here, he still abides in a tabernacle or earthly house. In the senses and powers of his outward man, he still does not see the Lord, although inwardly by reason of his inward senses and powers, he knows Him who is dwelling within. Through a spiritual experience of the death and resurrection of His Lord, he has entered through the rent veil of Jesus’ perfect flesh into the Holy places made without hands in the heavens. His soul is anchored in that which is within the veil, but physically he still dwells in his earthly tabernacle. This house, now entirely without the veil, serves him while he is awaiting the consummation; for in this respect, Jesus is the perfect example of the true life of every man who is a priest of His order.

May this ‘veil of sense’ linger only for so long as we approach the throne of grace and do so continuously, confidently, and boldly in the knowledge that our Great High Priest through His Spirit bear us to Himself as priest unto God.

¹North, G.W. A Sign of Authority and the Priesthood and the Offerings. Exeter: Publications Secretary, 1979. Print.