The Tabernacle: Ex 35-40; Lev 1,16,19 - CFM with Sam

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The great secret of the temple

Understanding the Tabernacle requires a different mode of thought than the world. The world wants to treat the mysteries like a giant treasure hunt, a labyrinth of clues that leads you to ultimate power, enlightenment, presence, whatever you want to call it, and that the secret of the temple is these hidden clues and symbols that you collect like Pokémon cards until you you've caught them all and you are ready.

Its not exactly wrong, because there is a great treasure and there is a map and there are symbols and secrets to understand.

But for the most part, its actually bypassing the whole point of the temple experience, past and present. All the secrets you need to know to understand the temple are in fact hiding in plain sight, but the key to unlocking their knowledge requires a lifetime of work.

The temple is a miniature representation of the cosmos, and the temple ceremonies past and present are the story of eternity packaged in a way that we live it through beginning to end in a fixed amount of time. The symbols are not so much secret clues to guide us as they are ultra compacted representations of meaning that open the door to understanding the meaning of eternity. The actions we do are less secret actions, as they are sacred repetitions that represent the actions we must take to live eternally in the sam way God lives.

In other words, God lives above all things in a glory we cannot yet comprehend today. We are here on earth to imitate that manner of living so that we can become like Him, living this lifetime as we would wish to live for eternity. But even a lifetime of work doesn't get us there. So we compact it down further. The temple is an acting out of the glory of God's life represented in our striving to live that glory in our life represented by sacred actions that we partake of in a sacred space that lasts for a few hours to a few days.

So anyone can learn the mysteries we go up to learn in the temple, but the great catch is that to learn these things, you need to first dedicate your life to living like God. They cannot be understood otherwise because the whole pattern is a condensed way of showing how to live like God. The temple is in a way the most open, in a way the most secure mystery on planet earth because you cannot unlock the secret without doing and being; there is no other way around it. This is what I mean by the great secret of the temple.

So as you ponder the tabernacle, feel free to chase symbols, or to look at similarities or patterns if that is what you want, and there is certainly some learning that can come from that, especially if it opens your mind to the greater things. What I think will be most helpful is looking at the tabernacle as a whole, and seeing how the Israelites tried to live like God through the sacred ceremonies there. Look at how they reenacted the purifying of sin in their lives, the coming and atoning of the savior, and the rapprochement of God to the house of Israel.