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Chosen no: P-94 ,   from: 1914 Year.

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We have already noticed that the Tabernacle represented God's temporary residence with the Israelites. Later on, the Temple was substituted for the Tabernacle. Thus God indicated that He would later abide permanently with His people.

King David, as we have seen, represented Christ during this Gospel Age. He collected the materials for the Temple, but was not permitted to build. The lesson is that the Divine arrangement complete is not to be established by Christ in the flesh, but by the Christ of glory, represented by Solomon.

The Temple of Solomon was destroyed in B.C. 606, but later on King Herod, who was not a Jew, but a descendant of Esau, favored the Jews by building a great Temple which was in its grandeur in Jesus' day.

Those Temples were merely typical of the greater Temple which St. Paul and St. Peter declared to be the Church. "The Temple of God is holy, which Temple ye are;" and again: "Ye are built up a Holy Temple, a habitation of God through the Spirit." St. Peter declares all of God's faithful saints to be Royal Priests, living stones in the Temple of God, through which, eventually, all the world shall have access to God.

The stones of Solomon's Temple were shaped at the quarry before being brought to the Temple site. Likewise its beams were prepared in advance. The workmen put together the Temple "without sound of hammer." Every piece was so thoroughly fitted that no force was necessary.

This typified the building of the antitypical Temple, the preparation of the Church in the present life and their construction by and by as God's Spiritual Temple, by resurrection power. This is the meaning of the trials, chiselings and polishings which all true Christians must receive. The resurrection change will bring all these living stones together without force or compulsion. Then the glory of the Lord will fill the true Temple and the New Dispensation will begin.

PD - 94