The Heavenly
Sanctuary
Stephen Terry
Commentary for the
October 5, 2013 Sabbath School Lesson
“Go and tell my
servant David, ‘This is what the Lord says: Are you the one to build me a house
to dwell in? I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites
up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent
as my dwelling. Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say
to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, “Why have
you not built me a house of cedar?”’” 2 Samuel 7:5-7, NIV
When I go to
visit my son and his wife, who live in Seattle, I must travel a few hundred
miles. I live in the Spokane area, and depending on what stops I make along the
way, the trip to Seattle can take around four hours. Within legal limits, I can
go faster or slower and thereby change the time, but because of the distance I
must travel I cannot eliminate the time factor. Since we live in the dimension
we do, most of our activities are very much a function of Distance = Rate x
Time (D=R*T). We fantasize not being limited by such constraints and being able
to travel across both distance and time instantaneously. To my knowledge, no
one has been able to transcend our dimensional boundaries to achieve
instantaneous travel, much less manipulating time in the process.
We continue to
dream, though. One very popular television series on British Broadcasting, “Dr
Who,” has achieved a phenomenal run from 1963 to the present by keeping those
dreams alive. A Time Lord, known as The Doctor, travels magically through space
and time in a blue, British, police call box which is in reality a Tardis, a
machine of infinite size inside while appearing rather small from without. Naturally,
such a long-lived series has gone through several actors over the years
requiring a somewhat unusual approach to explain the different characters. The
Doctor is capable of regeneration, a god-like quality that allows a facile
explanation of why his appearance keeps changing and also allows a series that has
had a fifty-year run to have perpetually young actors.
While it may
be fun to imagine time travel and contemplate its implications, the very fact
that we do imagine it is proof of the limitations of our existence. Those
limitations do not allow us to experience the stuff of dreams. They also can be
barriers preventing depth of understanding beyond our experience. While this maybe
should produce in us some humility in regards to the universe and what may
exist beyond it, we sometimes find ourselves acting exactly the opposite.
Failing to recognize our limitations, we may assert we understand more than we
really do. We should perhaps realize that no one really understands beyond a
certain point because that perspective is not attainable from where we are. But
some boldly offer that understanding in the form of proclaimed certainties. Because
these “certainties” are outside the realm of perception, they cannot be either
proven or disproven. This can give a person a tremendous amount of control over
anyone who accepts their perception of reality, because they have made
themselves the definer of what is real and what is not.
If that
offered reality does not measure up to experience over time, they can simply
ignore the data and state that all is a matter of faith, not facts. Even if the
reality is internally inconsistent, they may claim that these things are beyond
our understanding, since they are outside the realm of measurable perception. This,
too, can be rolled up and packaged as a matter of faith. In any event, someone
advocating for the alternative perception can readily manipulate followers from
an unassailable position.
If looked at from
the perspective of our dimension interacting with a two dimensional world, we
can see how this can happen. Suppose we find an individual we can communicate
with in that world, we’ll call him Fos (Greek for light). Fos doesn’t have the ability to enter our dimension, but we
have the ability to enter his to some degree. For instance, when we stand in
his world, he can see how wide our feet our and how long, but not how tall as
depth does not exist in his dimension. He knows we are there, but he cannot see
our true form. We ask him to tell his friends about us and where we come from,
and he happily does so, describing our width and length but not much else,
because that’s all the information he has. Unfortunately, his description is
not very compelling evidence of our extra-dimensionality. A frustrated Fos might
wonder how to more fully explain us to his fellows. He may even ask us to help.
We make every
effort to communicate with Fos and give him the tools to explain. However, when
we draw pictures of ourselves, pictures of where we dwell, and some of the
objects in our dimension, he can only see width and length, not depth, and we
cannot provide him with the compelling evidence he needs. In the end, Fos can
only tell others that something that he doesn’t understand exists even if he
cannot describe it adequately. He may be forced to simply appeal to faith. Undoubtedly
this would be far from convincing for most. If others do choose to believe him,
as we have already discovered this puts him in a powerful position as
gatekeeper for the newly discovered dimension. Depending on the level of Fos’
altruism, this can be good or bad. But laying aside the morality of where Fos
goes from here, perhaps we can now understand some of the difficulty of
interdimensional communications.
Now let’s go
the other direction and postulate that a being from a higher dimensional
existence is trying to communicate with us. Let’s make that being God, who by
definition exists in every time and place.[i] How would such a being
communicate an image of where He lives? Like our experience with Fos, perhaps
His attempts would all end up looking like something native to our dimension,
leaving out important aspects impossible to portray from our perspective. They
may even be colored with cultural anomalies. To nomadic peoples, His dwelling
may take on the appearance of something transportable and temporary. To those
living in cities, His dwelling may be more like their own fixed dwellings. This
does not mean that these approximations can in any way give us understanding of
very much of God’s reality.
Sadly, in
spite of these limitations, history has shown us that there are those who feel
that life or death is determined based on these inadequate perceptions about God.
Some might feel that today we have grown beyond such things, but if we ask the
average person which is a holier building, a church or a garage, we see that
the perceptions linger. Neither building may be very representative of what
actually exists beyond the perspective of our existence.
Biblically, we
see a progression of understanding about where one meets God. In the beginning
it was simply going for a walk in the garden[ii] or perhaps down some path
that leads to where God lives.[iii] Next we find people were
coming to mountains and hills to communicate with God,[iv] perhaps because the Ark
landed on mountains per the flood account.[v] As time went on, people
had a very hard time making a transition to later understandings. Moses
introduced the wilderness tabernacle, and David and Solomon moved the people to
worship in a fixed temple, but throughout the changes, people continued to
worship at the “high places.” Over and over the Bible states, “The high places,
however, were not removed; the people continued to offer sacrifices and burn
incense there.”[vi]
The picture portrayed is one of conflict regarding the older and the newer
forms of worship. Perhaps this mirrors our own modern struggles over worship
styles.
By the time of
Jesus, a newer form of worship based on the community synagogue was gaining ascendance.
It was this newer format that was able to survive the destruction of the Jewish
temple in 70 AD,[vii]
and spread across the world to Jewish communities everywhere and is still with
us, today. This model may have also informed the style of Christian worship as
Paul first sought converts in the Jewish synagogues and then established
separate congregations, perhaps with a similar organization and style to that
of the synagogue, when they rejected him.[viii]
It seems we
often have trouble breaking with the past, whether it is worshipping in the
high places or promoting the idea of the Aaronic priesthood and the sanctuary
as the model for worship. We even ignore the inconsistencies we create at times
when we promote sanctuary based worship while actually following the synagogaic
model. Perhaps we could avoid these “die on our sword” conflicts if we
recognize the limitations of our perspective and therefore our understanding of
God and our relationship to Him. “The Lord does not look at the things people
look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the
heart.”[ix] Maybe this is where God
seeks to meet us, today, in our hearts.
