The last two chapters of the Bible are profound. With our human mentality we cannot fathom them. In the early days of my Christian life I simply could not understand how they fit in or what they were trying to say. Yes, these chapters are about the New Jerusalem, but what is the New Jerusalem?
Revelation 21:3 describes the New Jerusalem as the tabernacle of God. To understand the meaning of the tabernacle we must refer to the Old Testament.
At first there was no tabernacle. Adam was created; then he fell. After him there was Abel, then Enoch, then Noah, and then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Noah was a great man, enjoying God’s blessing, but there was no tabernacle in his day. Like Abraham, he dwelt in a tent.
One day God in the form of man came to visit Abraham. Genesis 18 says that Abraham received Him as a guest outside his tent. There was no tabernacle; God came to that place just for a visit.
In later years Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, was on his way to his uncle’s, fleeing from his brother and feeling sorrowful and desolate. When he lay down to sleep, “he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it” (Gen. 28:12). When he awoke, “he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (v. 17). He called that place Bethel, the house of God (v. 19). But Jacob’s experience of the house of God was only a dream. Instead of entering the house of God, he and his kinfolk ended up in Egypt, where Jacob died.
In Exodus God sent Moses to bring the children of Israel out of Egypt to a place where they would build Him a tabernacle (Exo. 3:10; 25:8). Exodus shows us that God’s salvation delivers from the bondage of the world to His tabernacle. The ultimate consummation of salvation is God’s tabernacle, which is His very home. Not only God dwelt there; the priests who served also lived there. They and God lived in the same home.
Have you ever asked God, “Where is Your home?” Have you ever asked where your own home is? Your home must be God’s home. Where God dwells, there you should also dwell. Unless God is dwelling with you, you should not consider any place your home. Because you are a priest, you should live in God’s home. That home in the Old Testament was the tabernacle.
In the conclusion of the Bible a city appears. A voice out of the throne declares that this city is the tabernacle of God (Rev. 21:2-3).
The tabernacle of Moses was a miniature, prefiguring this true tabernacle. The first tabernacle was only fifteen feet wide (ten cubits), forty-five feet long (thirty cubits), and fifteen feet high. It was much smaller than one of our three-bedroom houses today. It was small, but nonetheless it was God’s home on this earth. He lived there for about forty years in the wilderness and for more than four centuries in the promised land. It was a movable house, without floors and without a foundation. Furthermore, only the priests were qualified to enter that home and stay there with God.
The New Jerusalem is the fulfillment of this type. How great a tabernacle this is! Its height, breadth, and length are all the same-twelve thousand stadia or about fourteen hundred miles. Have you ever seen any house that big? The type was small, but the fulfillment is bigger than we can imagine.
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