02.00.2. PREFACE
PREFACE A VOLUME on the Tabernacle, Priesthood and Offerings is not new, others have digged, and digged deeply, in these exhaustless mines. In the present volume there will be found a sameness of exposition. Even under different headings a truth already stated is repeated, not necessarily in the same language, but again and again with renewed emphasis and amplification of the same thoughts. The same truth, the same teaching, from another angle. This is so, because, no matter whether you take up the Framework, the Coverings, the Curtains, or the Hangings; whether you consider the Priesthood, the Priestly Robes, or the successive Offerings, you will find the Person, the Work and the Glory of Christ confronting you at every turn and the fulness of these facts inwrought, more or less, with every type or symbol. The constant reiteration of already stated truth is a demonstration that the objective purpose of these symbols is to exalt the Person of Christ, to set Him before us as Real Man and Very God, Son of God, and God the Son and to bring us face to face with the sublime truth that His work on earth was not to live, but to die, and that there is yet a fuller revelation of His glory when He shall come the Second time.
Under no circumstance and in no direction is type or symbol occupied with an ethical, but only and always with a sacrificial, Christ. In these divinely–given illustrations it will be seen the best human being can approach a holy God only on the ground of the shed blood of a sacrificial and voluntarily offered substitute.
Always it will be seen (and little effort is required to see it) that our Lord Jesus Christ was no less than this eternally ordained Substitute, Who, for our sakes and our redemption, became a willing victim and the glad recipient of the judgment of God due in righteousness to the guilt of men.
Always it will be seen the title of the best as well as the worst to enter Heaven, hold fellowship with God and call Him Father, is in the blood of His Son; that any touch, or intimacy, or consciousness we may have of Him as our Father must come through the intercession, the advocacy and unceasing ministry of Jesus Christ as His Only Begotten Son and our now risen, ascended and glorified Lord. No matter from what point of view you attempt to expound the Tabernacle and its inclusive truths you will find yourself repeating, reemphasizing, the truths you have already stated just as though you had never done so; and every renewed statement will seem to you, indeed, as though you were discovering and noting for the first time the adorable Person, the Perfect Work, the Infinite Glory of Him whom we call with ever increasing delight–Our Great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.
I. M. H.
New York, N. Y.