Read Revelation 11:19, Exodus 25:16, Exodus 31:18, and Revelation 12:17. What do these verses indicate was in the ark of the covenant in the Most Holy Place of the sanctuary?

 The Day of Atonement was a day of judgment. All of Israel was commanded to take part in this event by repentance, soul searching, and refraining from all work (see Lev. 23:29-31). On this day alone the high priest would enter the Most Holy Place to make atonement for sin. There, in the innermost apartment of the sanctuary, was the ark of the covenant. Within the ark was God’s Ten Commandment law, written on tables of stone. The golden cover of the ark was called the mercy seat, where blood was sprinkled to cleanse the sanctuary from sin. God’s presence was manifest in Shekinah glory above the mercy seat. Every sacrifice offered revealed God’s mercy toward sinful human beings, but the Day of Atonement shows that sin is remembered until the day of judgment (Heb. 10:3) and that it could really be removed only through faith in the blood of Christ to cleanse from sin (1 Pet. 1:18, 19). There, in the presence of God, mercy and justice beautifully combine.

 Looking into the heavenly sanctuary, the apostle John saw “the temple of God . . . opened” and the “ark of His covenant” revealed (Rev. 11:19, NKJV). The Great Controversy adds this comment: “Within the holy of holies, in the sanctuary in heaven, the divine law is sacredly enshrined—the law that was spoken by God Himself amid the thunders of Sinai and written with His own finger on the tables of stone. The law of God in the sanctuary in heaven is the great original, of which the precepts inscribed upon the tables of stone and recorded by Moses in the Pentateuch were an unerring transcript. Those who arrived at an understanding of this important point were thus led to see the sacred, unchanging character of the divine law.”—Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy,p. 434.

 As the early Adventist believers studied the Bible’s teaching on the sanctuary, they realized the significance of the law of God and the Sabbath in the heart of God’s law. They reasoned that if the law of God was pictured in the ark of the covenant in the heavenly sanctuary, it certainly could not have been done away with at the cross.