The Equipment for Sacrifice (Ezekiel 40:38-43).
Full provision was made for sacrificial activity, including whole (burnt) offerings, sin offerings and guilt offerings. Approach to God still required the full sacrificial rites, the same as before the exile. So there were eight or more tables for the slaying of sacrifices (probably at each gate) and four to carry the sacrificial instruments.
The emphasis is therefore laid on the fact that none could approach God without the shedding of blood for sin and guilt, together with worship and thanksgiving offerings. The whole (burnt) offering was an offering of total surrender to God, and in its different uses included worship, praise, thanksgiving and atonement. The sin and guilt offerings were on the other hand basic. They represented a sacrifice for the taking away of the guilt of sin (Leviticus 4:1 to Leviticus 5:17). There is no way in which they can be seen as memorial offerings. Their meaning is clearly identified. A man sins. The sin or guilt offering is necessary in order to ‘bear' the man's sin (This once for all cancels the idea that they can just be dismissed as memorial offerings as is required by the millennium theory). Once the tabernacle was taken up into Heaven, however, these would be unnecessary, as the one offering for sin for ever would already have been made.
It is no argument against this to say that animal sacrifices did not really take away sins, but only did so as pointing forward to Christ. That is true, but at the time that they were instituted they were the only way known by which sin could be taken away, and the complexity of the sacrificial system was because of the complexity of the problem of sin. To reproduce this in a ‘memorial system' replacing the simplicity of the Lord's Supper (Holy Communion) would be ludicrous in the extreme. Solemn ceremonies carried out and animals killed in large numbers in a complicated system were necessary before full enlightenment came. Once, however, it came, and the full price was paid at the cross, they were no longer necessary. And in a land noted for the fact that killing between man and beast had ceased it would be shameful (Isaiah 11:6-9).