The Fundamental, Prophetic Power of Blood

And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb 9:22). A short contemplation of blood in the Bible.

This verse reveals an irrefutable, divine law of destiny for us. In Paradise, immediately after the Fall of man, the prophetic power of the blood of redemption was already breaking through for the first time. Although it remained unseen, it came through God’s direct, personal action. This happened in two respects. The first is by His Word, when He promised: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen 3:15). This was both a promise to man and a word of judgment for Satan, that he would be defeated by the woman’s offspring. The second immediately followed, through His deed: “Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them” (Gen 3:21). He announced it by His Word, and by His deed He shed blood for the sins of man for the first time.

Thousands of years later, the prophet Isaiah sings of the wonderful result of God’s Word and deed in a prophetic retrospect, saying: “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels” (Isa 61:10). Thus clothed, enveloped in Jesus Christ Himself, we are happy and joyful beyond measure. Whether we are young or old, frail or healthy, we are righteous before God! We celebrate this precious fact with the lyrics:

Jesus, thy blood and righteousness
my beauty are, my glorious dress;
midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
with joy shall I lift up my head.

Prophesied in Paradise, the fulfillment of the blood’s power took place on the Cross of Calvary, where the Lamb of God shed His precious blood for us.

The Bible itself gives the most profound explanation for the blood’s prophetic power: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” (Lev 17:11). A tremendous word! God’s Spirit is explaining the manner in which God has reconciled, and is reconciling, us to Himself. He also explains how, despite our sins, we can claim to be reconciled to Him before the holy face of God: through the shed blood of Jesus.

If a person who has been hit by a car and seriously injured doesn’t receive first aid, he may bleed to death. His life is dissolving into the earth. Blood is a mighty force, and we’re shaken when we see someone bleeding profusely. We can’t just let it happen! We have to intervene immediately, because we know that the blood that constantly pulses through us is liquid life that could last more than 80 years … and it’s now spilling out and streaming away.

Let’s try to imagine the eternal power that was (and is!) in Jesus’ blood. When the Son of God poured out His eternal life, the earth shook, stones broke open, and the sun went dark. The overwhelming event is described in Matthew 27:50-53: “Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many” (cf. Luke 23:44-45). What happened there, under the effect of the eternal Son of God’s bloodshed, is definitively unimaginable!

Let’s return to Adam and Eve. They were no longer naked before God, but clothed by virtue of the sacrifice that God Himself had slaughtered, whose blood He shed for man’s sake. And the same is true of us. This tremendous truth is described in Romans 3:25 as follows: “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.” God initiates the greatest deed of all for us when we believe in the blood of Jesus: He forgives, He blots out sin … He accepts the atoning blood of His Son!

Here in Romans 3, Paul makes reference to the prophetic event that has been repeated in Israel for thousands of years on Yom Kippur. The true centerpiece of this great Day of Atonement, a day when the people were forbidden to work under penalty of death, was what happened in the Holy of Holies. Only one person was performing a task: the High Priest, the people’s highest representative before God. He slaughtered bulls, calves, and lambs. But Leviticus 16:14 describes the central point of this great day: “And he shall take of the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it with his finger upon the mercy seat eastward; and before the mercy seat shall he sprinkle of the blood with his finger seven times.” As mentioned before, this took place in the Holy of Holies, while the people waited outside. It was where the Ark of the Covenant was, as well as God’s holy presence: the Shekinah, the cloud of glory. The High Priest came in reverence only once a year with a bowl of blood, freshly collected from his slain victim, to sprinkle it seven times upon the mercy seat. In Hebrews 9:6-7 it says: “Now when these things were thus ordained, the priests went always into the first tabernacle, accomplishing the service of God. But into the second [the Holy of Holies] went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people.”

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of the children of Israel were standing outside the tabernacle, anxiously awaiting the High Priest’s return from the Holy of Holies, where he had gone with the blood of atonement for the sins of the people. They were waiting anxiously to see whether the Lord God would accept the blood of atonement for their sins. And this again reminds us of the passage from our introduction: “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.”

The waiting assembly remained in great silence. They listened to find out whether the High Priest was already on his way, because they would be able to hear him. Scripture says of the High Priest’s robe: “And beneath upon the hem of it thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the hem thereof; and bells of gold between them round about: A golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe round about. And it shall be upon Aaron to minister: and his sound shall be heard when he goeth in unto the holy place before the LORD, and when he cometh out, that he die not” (Ex 28:33-35).

The Israel awaiting the High Priest on Yom Kippur, is an illustration of today’s Israel, which has been gathering around Jerusalem since 1948; and by extension, around the still invisible temple that is yet in heaven. Consciously or unconsciously, Israel is awaiting the return of the heavenly High Priest, its Messiah.

In a larger prophetic dimension, the event in the Holy of Holies means: Yom Kippur is fulfilled by the heavenly High Priest—Jesus Christ—on the Cross of Calvary because: “But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Heb 9:11-12). Our own eyes show us the fundamental, prophetic power of the blood, and the Lamb of God’s overwhelming fulfillment on the Cross for all of us—and soon for all of Israel.

Midnight Call - 04/2025