Tabernacle and Its Services
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the time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices;”
its two holy places were “patterns of things in the heavens;” Christ,
our great High Priest, is “a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true
tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.”
Hebrews 9:9, 23
;
8:2
. As in vision the apostle John was granted a view of the temple of
God in heaven, he beheld there “seven lamps of fire burning before the
throne.” He saw an angel “having a golden censer; and there was given
unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all
saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.”
Revelation
4:5
;
8:3
. Here the prophet was permitted to behold the first apartment
of the sanctuary in heaven; and he saw there the “seven lamps of fire”
and the “golden altar” represented by the golden candlestick and the
altar of incense in the sanctuary on earth. Again, “the temple of God
was opened” (
Revelation 11:19
), and he looked within the inner veil,
upon the holy of holies. Here he beheld “the ark of His testament”
(
Revelation 11:19
), represented by the sacred chest constructed by
Moses to contain the law of God.
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Moses made the earthly sanctuary, “according to the fashion that
he had seen.” Paul declares that “the tabernacle, and all the vessels
of the ministry,” when completed, were “the patterns of things in the
heavens.”
Acts 7:44
;
Hebrews 9:21, 23
. And John says that he saw
the sanctuary in heaven. That sanctuary, in which Jesus ministers in
our behalf, is the great original, of which the sanctuary built by Moses
was a copy.
The heavenly temple, the abiding place of the King of kings, where
“thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten
thousand stood before Him” (
Daniel 7:10
), that temple filled with the
glory of the eternal throne, where seraphim, its shining guardians,
veil their faces in adoration—no earthly structure could represent its
vastness and its glory. Yet important truths concerning the heavenly
sanctuary and the great work there carried forward for man’s redemp-
tion were to be taught by the earthly sanctuary and its services.
After His ascension, our Saviour was to begin His work as our
High Priest. Says Paul, “Christ is not entered into the holy places made
with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now
to appear in the presence of God for us.”
Hebrews 9:24
. As Christ’s
ministration was to consist of two great divisions, each occupying a
period of time and having a distinctive place in the heavenly sanctuary,