The Tabernacle: The Holy Place and The Holy of Holies

Alright, brothers and sisters, we have finally come to approach the tabernacle. I’d like to go back for a moment and review. When God created man, He created man to contain Him and to express Him. Now, you’ve heard that before. So, the next time, I’m going to let you tell me what God created man for. But he created him to express God corporately. There is no one in here who can express all of God. There is no way for the richness and the fullness of God to be expressed by his creation unless it is expressed corporately. So God has a corporate man to express him, but brothers, I don’t really feel that we have seen this until we have fully understood that God also wanted man to subdue the earth. The corporate man, wherever he is, is to subdue the earth.

Now, the best way I can explain this is that there is a battle raging on this earth right now between not God and Satan but man and Satan. You don’t realize how much higher God considers man than man considers himself. We have really been tricked by Satan because we think individually. And we see the great limitation of the individual man, but we don’t see the great power of the corporate man. There is a battle of the corporate man versus Satan for this earth, and the satanic force has, under the control of the old man, the earth. But God wants the corporate man, the new man, to subdue the earth by expressing Christ and by having the power and the authority of God on this earth. Now, don’t think that this is a small thing. This is the very thing that Jesus Christ said when he gave what has been called the Great Commission. He said, Go ye and preach the gospel, and I will do what? And you shall receive what? You shall receive authority. You shall receive authority. He said, I will be with you. You shall receive power, you shall receive authority, and I will be with you. I will be there with you in your midst, and you will have my authority.

Now, brothers and sisters, when Jesus Christ began the age of the church, he began the real, not the pictorial, but the real expression and the authority. But this has been a battle that has been fought back and forth to the ages by the man, the old man, and the new man, and we will better say, by Satan and God’s man, the new man, but be at peace. The new man cannot be defeated. In order to really understand this, you have to have the mountaintop beauty, and one of these days, you are going to see the mountaintop view in all its fullness, and that’s going to be the end of our ups and downs. We’ve got to one day come in full experience to the mountaintop view. Right now, God’s new man, when he takes a stand, and he is built together as a corporate expression on this earth, Satan cannot have authority or power over him. The new man has the image and the representation of God upon the earth.

The best illustration of this that I know of is, right now, Biafra. You know the situation in Nigeria. The Nigerian government cannot claim full authority over that land because others claim we are the rightful owners. Another situation is this: in Vietnam, do you realize there is no capital city held by North Vietnam? Not one. They would try it over and over and over to gain just any one capital city. If they ever gain a capital city, they will gain control of the South Vietnamese government. You cannot claim authority over everything. Brothers and sisters, as long as there is a group of people in a city that claims that territory, that piece of real estate for Jesus Christ, no matter what Satan claims, he knows he has lost the clear title to that town. And when he has lost clear title to it, we have taken that land, and God has begun his building, and we shall not be just a building, but we shall be a temple in this city, and before this week is out, we shall see that God will have us be much, much more. We are a corporate man claiming the earth for God. There is in the scripture something so clear that we have not been able to see it.

I want to give you just two or three secrets. Can you remember that? Two or three little secrets. The Psalms are the richest expression in the word of God of this. If you think this is just something somebody thought up and got a few passages together, you just haven’t really seen the word of God open up. The word earth, if I’m not mistaken, appears in the Psalms one hundred and ninety times, and in each time, the psalmist is either saying, Lord, get it back, or Lord, you’re getting it, but usually, the psalmist has the mountain view. Brothers and sisters, we really need to see the Psalms. They’ve got the mountain view. They say, “Oh earth, rejoice in the Lord thy Lord.” Over and over and over, we see the psalmist singing praises for man having the earth, taking it back, and having it for the Lord’s habitation. You go back and lead the psalms again. That’s one tip.

Here’s tip number two. Zion. Are you ready for this? I’m going to tell you a secret, and if you go to the Word of God, it will open up so much for you. Zion is the church. Zion is the church when it has its city; when the city is the Lord’s, it’s Zion. Zion is the church in the city, having fully taken it, and the city is the church. You go back now and reread, see how many times the city and Zion are mentioned, and relate that to the tabernacle and the temple, and all of a sudden, the Psalms will just open to you. The Psalms are a New Testament book. They belong in the New Testament. For they have really seen, especially the Psalms toward the end; they have really seen what God is doing.

Now, brothers and sisters, there is no question in my mind that right now, at this moment, God is coming…I’m not going to predict that this is the end of the age…that’s not proper for men to do. But I will tell you this: it’s been 1,900 years since the Jews had Jerusalem, and it’s only been about 13 months that they’ve had the temple area. That’s something to look at, at least, but that’s not the main thing to look at. Do you know the main thing to look at?

What is God doing in the church? Praise the Lord. All over this country, the reports keep coming in. Everything is good. I find more and more that people are getting discouraged. Whenever I hear that, I say hallelujah, because when you get hungry, you start looking for something. And when you get thirsty, you start looking for something to drink. You might even go outside your little camp to do it if you get hungry. And the Lord Jesus Christ has put his hunger in the heart of his people, and right now in denominations, there is what they are calling renewal. Brother, you’re not going to renew a dead animal. You can do anything you want to. I have said this before. You take that little car out there, that little Volkswagen, it’s got a 60-horsepower engine, and there is one thing about it. If it has square wheels, you can put a 300-horsepower motor in the back, a 600-horsepower motor in the back, and you can even tie a rocket to it. And you can polish it. You can shine it and do whatever you want. You can light the rocket. You can run the motor. That thing’s not going to roll. Square wheels will not roll. I challenge the very basic concept of revival. There ain’t no such animal. You cannot revive a situation. All you can do is temporarily reciprocate it,

and it will just die again. That’s all you can do. You cannot take something that is basically just not fit, and make it something it isn’t. You cannot have the Lord’s headship where man’s headship is. You cannot make the old man act like the new man. The whole is not the children of God; it is the structure of the concept therein, and God today is building once more his church upon this earth, but it is going to take the full cooperation of his children.

The Lord is appealing to young people. He always has, always will, but brothers and sisters, I want you to know that what God has called you to is no light thing. And if you think this is going to be all hip hip hooray in a day or a week or a month or a year, you have really not seen that we are inheritors of all of the past recovery, and that we are to be children, or I should say, students of all the past mistakes, and that we have got to walk humbly before the Lord and give ourselves to Him that He might in this day work fully in us. Brothers and sisters, this is a serious matter, but I say to you that God is constantly recovering, and I cannot deny the sense within me. I have seen the work in this country, and we have known it’s got the death knell on it; it even has the smell of death to it. I do not know a single place in America where people are optimistic about present-day Christianity. Nobody. These are the most precious brothers and sisters, but now here you are, and God has sovereignly got you in the mess you’re in. You are sovereignly in this situation in Isla Vista, but now… now comes the cost. Now comes the serious matter. Now we can no longer be young college students. Now God has called us to restore. He has called us to restore.

I read something so sweet the other night, it just blessed me. You know, David got run out of town by Saul. Do you remember that? Saul just couldn’t stand him. Saul had killed his thousands; David had killed tens of thousands. And Saul couldn’t take it. This friction came between them, and David got kicked out of town, and you know who joined themselves to him? It says the people who were in trouble with the law, the people who were in debt, and those who were dissatisfied joined themselves to David, and I just said, “Praise God. Praise the Lord.” These are the same kind of people who joined themselves to the Lord Jesus. You know, they were just ordinary folks. They didn’t look like much. We don’t look like much. Who in here is impressed? We are not, and we never will be anything, but do you know what happened to David’s debtors, gripers, complainers, and all this that they were? Do you know what came of them as God built them together? Yes, but just more than an army. Yes, but even more than that. They became David’s mighty men of valor for the taking of the rest of the land that Saul had not taken.