SKENE 8 (e): the Tabernacle - God's tardis?

So we have managed to find our way back to the verse from which we set out on this excursion into outlines, models and examples – back to Hebrews and to the Tabernacle. This brief tour - or detour – has shown us that, for the writer of Hebrews, the Tabernacle is not just a piece of ancient and irrelevant history, but a key-stage in God’s plan of salvation, and a key to a fuller understanding of that plan. For him, in short, the Tabernacle is not just a tent but also a type: it is much more significant than it first appears. We might, perhaps, (reverently, I hope) think of the Tabernacle as God’s tardis, infinitely bigger on the inside than on the outside; and the veil (‘katapetasma’) separating the outer ‘first tent’ from the inner sanctuary might be seen as a portal leading from time to eternity and from earth to heaven, the ‘true sanctuary’. In the next chapter (10. 19-22) we find that this portal has now been opened, by the blood of Christ’s sacrifice, to all who put their trust in him, for Jesus has made “a new and living way for us through the veil” into the very presence of God himself, a way which the writer encourages us ‘to boldly go’. I have used here the imagery and language of the wilder fantasies of science fiction because the idea that sinful men and women like us can enter the awesome presence of a holy and almighty God seems too good to be true; but it is, in actual fact, gloriously true: it is God’s truth, gospel truth.