Tabernacle Glory Is Reversed In Christ

I am currently working my way through the Meredith Kline collection. While Kline says many weird and frustrating things, and his writings can be a chore to understand, occasionally there is a gem, an "Aha!" moment. I had one of these moments reading Images of the Spirit. Sometimes Kline makes you read a paragraph multiple times because it is confusing, and other times he makes you read a paragraph multiple times because it is profoundly insightful; confusing and insightful happen side by side a lot too.

When The Temple Fills The Earth

Today in church we continued our exploration of Hebrews 11.32. The past two weeks we've taken glimpses into the lives of both Gideon and Barak. Today, we focused on the life of Samson, a man a little more well known in bible stories. The sermon focused predominately on the death of Samson in Judges 16.23-31. In his death, Samson saved the nation of Israel from the Philistines; he destroyed the temple of Dagon, the Philistine God. This, of course, is a picture of Jesus Christ, the Greater Than Samson, who saved the Israel of God from the enemies of sin, death, and the Devil by dying and then rising again from the dead. One of the comparisons that my pastor brought out was that Samson destroyed the temple of Dagon, but Jesus destroyed the temple of God, at least the physical temple in Jerusalem. The glory-presence of God left the temple when Christ went to the cross and died, which was signified by the temple veil being torn in two.