Daily Rhema: Understanding the tabernacle and the temple

2Corinthians 6:16 (KJV)
And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

In the New Testament our bodies are called both the tabernacle and the temple of the Holy Spirit (2Pt.1:13-14).

In the Old Testament the tabernacle was a mobile, temporary dwelling place of God’s presence. The temple was to be a fixed and permanent dwelling place of God’s presence among His people.

What does this speak to us today as New Testament Christians?

When we first get born again and are filled with the Holy Spirit, we become individual tabernacles of the Holy Spirit. Individual tabernacles will only manifest the glory of God to a very limited degree occasionally.

God is there all the time, but the degree of the manifestation of His glory is limited and sporadic.

This is the condition of most of the Church today. On a corporate local level, a local church made up of individual tabernacles is a corporate local tabernacle and manifests the glory of God also in a limited and sporadic manner.

If we grow into the perfection of Christ, with the nature and character of Christ being built into our souls and bodies, permanently, then we become individual temples of the Holy Spirit. Individual temples will manifest the glory of God to a spectacular degree constantly as it was in the life of Christ.

A local church made of individual temples who, in the corporate setting, are now seen as individual stones (1Pt. 2:5); make up a local corporate temple.

Also, a local corporate temple will manifest the glory of God in its fullness on a constant regular basis, like it was manifested in the ministry of Christ and even greater (Jn. 14: 12).

God desires in this hour that we grow from tabernacles into temples. This is why the scripture uses the present continuous tense to describe us being built into the temple of God (1Pt. 2:5).

A tabernacle can be set up anywhere without a foundation. Many of the Christians and churches today are tabernacles that are not built on the foundation of prophetic and apostolic revelation knowledge teaching of the Word of God (1Cor. 3:10; Heb. 6:1; Mt. 16:17-18).

Now, after we die and go to heaven and after the resurrection, our works (1Cor. 3:12-15) will all be put together by God to form the eternal, corporate city (Rev. 21:2-3).

All Christians who have died already have their place in the eternal, corporate, city. That is why the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb are in the foundations of the walls of the eternal corporate city (Rev. 21:14).

So we who are still physically alive on the earth should labour, by the help of the Holy Spirit, to become stones and temples and so have a place of honour in God’s corporate eternal city.

For more on today’s study visit:
https://bit.ly/2QsRcnI

Follow Pastor Olubi Johnson on
Twitter: spcconline
Facebook: spcconlineoj
IG: spccchurchonline
YouTube: spcconlineoj
Web: www.spcconline.net