The Veil Torn

Introduction – A Wall Comes Down, A Veil Is Rent Down

I still remember the summer of 1964 when our family crossed from West Germany into East. We were crammed into a Volkswagen bus—my parents up front, four sisters and two brothers jammed shoulder to shoulder. The youngest, little Sarah, was still in diapers, dozing and fussing in turns. Space was so tight that our laundry dried as we drove, tied to the rear-view mirrors and the rack on top of the mini-bus, shirts and diapers snapping in the wind.

We were headed to visit a family my dad had known from his time in Europe during World War II. That day I tasted fresh raspberries for the first time—sweet, sun-warmed, unforgettable—a little burst of joy in a day otherwise heavy with tension.

Because getting there meant crossing the Berlin Wall.

The wall was only three years old then, but already infamous—concrete, razor wire, and armed guard towers that divided families and froze politics. At the checkpoint the mood shifted.

Soldiers with hard eyes and hard voices ordered us out. Mirrors swept under the bus. Questions were fired in German. Rifles stood ready.

As a boy I felt the weight of it all: this wall wasn’t just stone; it was a message that shouted Keep Out.

Fast-forward a quarter century to November 1989.

Crowds gather at that same barrier. For a generation it has split parents from children, lovers from each other. Then—without warning—word spreads: “The gate is opening.”

A metallic groan of hinges, a stunned hush, and then a roar as people surge through, laughing and weeping.

Overnight a wall that defined nations simply collapses.

If a human wall of concrete and barbed wire can come down in a single night,

imagine something infinitely greater:

“At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split.” (Matthew 27:51)

The Berlin Wall came down.

The temple veil came down.

One by politics, the other by God Himself.

One gave families a chance to reunite.

The other opened the way for the whole human race to be reconciled to the Father.

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Scene at Calvary

Now walk with me to another Friday afternoon, centuries earlier, outside Jerusalem.

Darkness covers the land from noon until three.

The air grows heavy, unnatural.

The crowd shifts nervously.

Soldiers glance at the sky.

At the center stands a wooden cross.

The Son of God hangs there, beaten and bleeding.

And then Jesus lifts His voice: “It is finished!” (John 19:30).

The words are not of defeat but of triumph.

He bows His head and gives up His spirit.

At that very moment, the earth convulses.

Rocks split. Tombs open.

And deep inside the temple, unseen by most, something impossible happens:

the massive veil that for centuries barred sinners from the Most Holy Place is ripped apart—from top to bottom.

Through the Eyes of a Temple Priest

I had just trimmed the golden lampstand and was preparing the incense for the evening sacrifice.

The air was thick with the sweet fragrance of frankincense and the quiet shuffle of fellow priests at their stations.

Suddenly the ground shuddered beneath my feet. A low rumble rose like distant thunder until the very walls seemed to groan.

I gripped the lamp to steady myself. Then a sound like tearing lightning cracked the silence.

I turned—and froze. The great veil, sixty feet high and hand-breadth thick, the very barrier between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place, was ripping. Not from the bottom, where human hands might reach, but from the top—split as if an unseen giant were drawing it apart.

Fibers snapped, the massive fabric sagged and collapsed in two halves. Light from the Most Holy Place poured out—light no living priest had ever dared to see. My knees buckled. One priest dropped his bowl of incense.

Another covered his face. We waited for judgment fire… but none came. Only a rushing stillness, a presence that felt like mercy flooding in where fear had ruled.

Something greater than the temple had just happened. Whatever sacrifice was being offered outside the city walls had shaken the heart of the temple itself.

That is what God was declaring when He tore the curtain:

the barrier is gone, the price is paid, the way is open.

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What the Veil Meant

To grasp the power of that moment we need to remember what that veil signified.

From the days of Moses’ tabernacle to Solomon’s temple and finally Herod’s, the curtain separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. It was woven of blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, heavy and thick—some say four inches thick and sixty feet high.

Behind it rested the Ark of the Covenant, the mercy seat, and the blazing symbol of God’s presence. Only one man, the high priest, entered that space, and only once a year on the Day of Atonement, and never without the blood of sacrifice.