We have seen the base, the gates, the wall, and the center of the New Jerusalem. It would seem that these things are sufficient. But who are the dwellers of the city? And what is the dwelling place of the dwellers? Revelation 21:22 says, “And I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” This verse says that there is no temple in the city, because God and the Lamb (the redeeming God) are the temple. Only the Holy Spirit could write in such a way. In verse 3 the city is called “the tabernacle of God.” The temple and the tabernacle are actually one. The tabernacle was God’s portable, movable building, a building that traveled in the wilderness. When the tabernacle became the temple, it was settled, no longer portable. God was in the tabernacle when the children of Israel were traveling for forty years in the wilderness. Thus, the tabernacle was God’s temple (1 Sam. 3:3). Within the tabernacle were the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place. When the children of Israel entered into the good land, they built the temple to replace the tabernacle. Within the temple also were the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place. The temple is not only the place where God stays to be worshipped but also the place where those who serve God live. Those who serve God live in the temple and take the temple as their dwelling.
The temple of this organic building is another aspect of the tabernacle of God and is the almighty God and the Lamb (the almighty redeeming God) for the eternal dwelling place of all the redeeming God’s redeemed (Psa. 90:1; John 14:23). The temple is God’s dwelling place, but it becomes the place where God’s serving ones, the priests, live. Hence, the priests live together with God. The temple is God Himself. Thus, the very God worshipped by the priests is the dwelling place of the priests.
In Psalm 90:1 Moses wrote, “Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.” Then, in Deuteronomy 33:27 he said, “The eternal God is thy dwelling-place” (ASV). Even in the Old Testament, Moses considered God as Israel’s dwelling place. Later, Israel, under God’s punishment, was scattered among the Gentile nations. In Ezekiel 11:16 God said to them that in their dispersion He would be their sanctuary. Moreover, in the New Testament John 14:23 says that the Father and the Son will come to the one who loves the Son and make an abode, a dwelling place, with him. This dwelling place will be a mutual abode for the Father and the Son and the Son’s lover. When a young couple is going to be married, the young man may tell his bride that he will purchase a house that will be a mutual dwelling place for them as husband and wife. Eventually, the husband is the abode to the wife, and the wife is the abode to the husband. In the same way, God is an abode to us, and we are an abode to Him. The New Jerusalem will be a mutual dwelling place for God and His redeemed.
This organic building as the tabernacle, mostly of the humanity of God’s redeemed, is the eternal dwelling place of the Triune God; this building as the temple of God, mostly of the divinity of the redeeming God, is the eternal dwelling place of God’s redeemed. This indicates that this building is a mutual abode of the redeeming God and His redeemed.
The tabernacle is built mostly with the humanity of God’s people to be God’s dwelling place. The temple is built mostly of divinity to be the dwelling place of God’s redeemed. This indicates that God takes us as His dwelling place and gives Himself to us to be our dwelling place. The divine God lives in a human tabernacle, and the human redeemed live in a divine dwelling place. This indicates the mingling of divinity with humanity, in which both humanity and divinity became a mutual abode. Concerning God and His redeemed in the New Jerusalem, a new hymn says, “As man yet God, they coinhere/A mutual dwelling place to be.” The New Jerusalem as the tabernacle of God indicates that the redeemed of God are the dwelling place of God, and the redeeming God as the temple indicates that God is the dwelling place for His serving ones.
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