LECTURE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2234, 30 July 1891, Page 3

LECTURE.

There was a fair attendance at the Oddfellows’ Hall, Geraldine, on Monday evening, when Mr George Grove, of Melbourne, delivered his first lecture on the Tabernacle of Israel. The lecturer read Hebrews ix. ii., “There was a Tabernacle made.” The word “Tabernacle,” he said, meant simply a dwelling place, and the Tabernacle of Israel was God’s dwelling place among his redeemed people. The diagram by which Mr Grove illustrated his lecture showed God’s dwelling place (the Tabernacle) in the centre, with the tents of his people encompassing it on every hand. Thus God,, he assured his audience, was dwelling in the midst of His people. In Exodus xxx. God speaks unto the children of Israel that His desire was to have a place in which He could dwell among them. Previous to this in the word of God no mention was .ever made of His having a dwelling place among men. We could read of Him having converse or communion with individuals, but never dwelling among them. Then again, ever since the Tabernacle, God always had a place among men, and the speaker asserted that He always would have. The Lord Jesus Christ was the dwelling place of God, “ The Word was made fiesh and Tabernacled among us.” ; When Christ had ascended on high the' Holy Spirit descended and formed , the dwelling place of God. When the Church will be gone he believed there would be a Temple on the earth for Jews' at Jerusalem, and *the anti-Christ would be the first to occupy it, and then Christ would come, and then would be brought about what was written, “ Behold, the Tabernacle of God is with men, and j He will dwell among them and they shall be His people and He shall be , their God, and God shall wipe the j tears off all faces.” The Tabernacle of Israel had to be a holy offering from j a ’redeemed people. God set apart men of His own choice to attend to the Tabernacle and the first called was from the front ranks shown on the diagram; the tribe of Juda, and Juda meant “Praise.” The second called

was the tribe of “Dan,” called from , the rear ranks, and Dan meant “Judgment.” So that that God’s ministers were to be praising men and men of judgment. The altar which was erected just within the entrance of the Court of the Tabernacle represented to the world the coming out of God to meet poor lost man. The Court of the Tabernacle which was made of white linen, represented the , Righteousness of God. There was only one gate and there was no other way into the Tabernacle. The gate, ' the entrance to the Tabernacle, and the veil before the Sanctum Sanctorum,

represented the words of Christ when He said, “I am the door.” The r veil and each of the curtains at the v entrances to the Tabernacle were Blue, Purple, and Scarlet. The Blue represented Christ in His heavenly aspect, the Purple in His royal aspect, 1 ' ank the Scarlet as Christ, the sufferer for humanity. Mr Grove will again lecture in the , .same halli to-morrow evening. J