THE CHURCH

THE CHURCH by Elder Joe Holder

It may well be that the tabernacle in the wilderness not only depicted the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s true priest, but also the principles of worship for all time. God gave detailed instructions to Moses and directed him to build every segment of the tabernacle and its furniture according to the pattern that he saw on Mt. Sinai. Whole books of the Old Testament deal with the details of tabernacle worship, not to mention a whole book in the New Testament, Hebrews. Given all the details of the tabernacle, one should find it worth noting that none of these detailed descriptions ever mention a word about the floor of the tabernacle-not a word. The tabernacle had no floor; it was erected on the sand of the wilderness. Such a heavenly mission unfolded on the common sand of the wilderness. New Testament Christian worship should follow that example. We have a truly heavenly mission. It has been set forth in vivid details in the New Testament. We have no authority for variance of any degree. Everything must be done according to revealed Scripture. However minuscule the variation, as soon as we allow, much less rationalize, variance, we have lost touch with the divine origin of our faith. However, that heavenly revelation and mission are to be taken to the people around us with faithfulness and with humility. The Christian who claims to be "so heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good" has lost the Biblical vision of the faith. Can we read the book of Acts and miss this truth? From nearly uncivilized and isolated villages to the most respected centers of learning, the apostles and early Christians took their faith into the world and proclaimed it in word and deed with such conviction and evidence as to turn the world upside down. The evil Roman emperor Caligula fiercely attacked the Christians, hoping to stamp them out of existence. On his deathbed he is reported to have whispered the words, "Thou, Galilean, has conquered."