We begin the Day of Atonement, and each of the other six feasts, when we acknowledge Christ as our Lord and Savior and are baptized in water. At this point we are to separate ourselves from the world and begin our pilgrimage toward the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:19).

However, the bulk of our personality has not as yet been reconciled to God. Our flesh is filled with sins of every description. Worse than that, our self-love is firmly entrenched as lord of our personality. King Self has no intention of allowing the Lord Jesus to interfere with the source of our will and imaginations.

During the Levitical Day of Atonement (Leviticus, Chapter 16), the high priest entered the Most Holy Place and sprinkled blood in front of and upon the Mercy Seat (Lid of Reconciliation). After that, the high priest confessed the sins of Israel, laid them on the head of a living goat, and sent the goat away into an uninhabited area.

Each of us who would press into the rest of God, into the fullness of Christ, must go through the reconciling processes of the spiritual fulfillment of the Day of Atonement. We must be willing to confess our sins when the Holy Spirit points them out to us. Also we must be ready to endure months and years of testings and tribulations as the Lord Jesus brings down and eventually slays King Self who sits on the throne of our personality.

We pass through many works of grace, many Divine dealings, as we journey toward the fullness of redemption—that "rest" of God typified by the feast of Tabernacles. The feast of Tabernacles, the third subfeast of the annual gathering of Tabernacles, portrays the union of the saint with God and Christ through the Holy Spirit.

At the beginning of the salvation experience the believer is sprinkled with the blood of Passover, having repented of his or her former life in the world. Water baptism is a step we take in obedience to God as we seek to enter the Kingdom of God. God responds to our repentance and obedience by forgiving our sins and giving us the born-again experience—the implanting of the Divine Nature in the human personality.

The Holy Spirit, the Member of the Godhead who has been in the world since Jesus ascended to the Father, enters the saint to abide with him forever. The Holy Spirit empowers the Christian to bear witness of the death, resurrection, and return from Heaven of the Lord Jesus.

Then the King, Christ, comes through the Holy Spirit and commences the work of eternal judgment on the sin and self-will resident in our personality. This is holy warfare, a miniature Armageddon in which Satan (lust, lying, and murder), Antichrist (man making himself God), and the False Prophet (self-fulfilling religion) are driven out of the saint of God.

It is impossible for perfect, restful reconciliation to God to be established until every trace of lust, self-aggrandizement, and self-fulfilling religion has been conquered and driven from the spirit, the soul, and the body.

To be continued.