The Tabernacle and Ark of the Covenant with Dr. Chris McKinny (Going Deeper Series)

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Welcome to Out of Zion with Susan Michael, an exploration of the Bible and the land of

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Israel.

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From ancient biblical sites to the story behind the stories, join Susan on a journey through

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the most exciting book on the planet.

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Hit the subscribe button for future episodes, which will deepen your faith and bring the

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Bible to life.

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And now here's our host, Susan Michael.

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Well, hey there and welcome to our Going Deeper episode this week.

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We are so excited to have with us today Dr. Chris McKinney, who is an archaeologist and

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an expert in the realm of the Israelites.

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Exit from Egypt, they're wandering in the desert, the Tabernacle.

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We're going to talk about a lot of these really interesting things that we've been reading

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about in our walk through the Bible.

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So welcome and let's get started.

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So Dr. Chris McKinney, I'm going to address you as Chris, but I want to emphasize your

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amazing background.

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You have a PhD from Bar-Lan University and you have a master's degree from Bar-Lan and

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another master's from the Jerusalem University College, where I also attended, although many

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years earlier than you did.

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And I know you're an adjunct faculty member of several universities and I appreciate you're

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also an ordained minister and involved in church leadership.

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And I have here your 16 page CV of all your archaeological experience and all the papers

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and scholarly works that you've written and co-edited and it's just so impressive and

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we are so appreciative of you giving up your time today to be with us.

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So a warm welcome to you.

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Thank you very much Susan and it's my pleasure to be on the podcast and to offer any insight

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to what I consider just to be a fascinating section of the Bible.

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I would like to talk about though now about the tabernacle and I find the story so fascinating

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that God calls Moses up to the mountain and he like proposes to his people a covenant,

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what I like into a marriage and they say, yes, we'll do everything the Lord says.

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So it's like, okay, we're going to seal the deal and he gives the 10 commandments and

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then the next thing is he tells them how to build this tabernacle so that God can come

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down off the mountain and dwell amongst his people.

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And this is what sets him apart from all the other ideas of God's that were, you know,

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way out there.

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They couldn't be touched.

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They couldn't be really known and here the God of the Israelites wanted to be known.

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He wanted to dwell with his people.

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So share with us about the tabernacle.

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I know it does have some similarities to other buildings in the region and none of that bothers

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me.

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God was speaking to his people within their cultural context, but explain to us about

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the tabernacle.

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Yeah, I mean, I think that the tabernacle in some ways is kind of just another part

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of this grand sweep of the Exodus event that is, if you don't have the tabernacle, you're

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kind of left with a salvation without sanctification, if you will.

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You know, you're not, and really that's what the tabernacle is about.

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It's about sanctification.

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It's about making holy.

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You know, God is holy and you have to come into his presence in a correct way.

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And so when we talk about the tabernacle, I think one of the first things is everything

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you said I completely agree with and as it happens, one of the things that we're doing

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with with Geshe is developing products and particularly a documentary that will be about

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this very topic where we're going to be interviewing a number of scholars talking about the tabernacle.

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And it's something that we're really excited about.

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Hopefully it will be out in the, who knows, we have a release date, but we're really excited

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about this, about this very idea.

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And so whenever I talk about the tabernacle, I think one of the most interesting things

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about it is to go to its predecessor.

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And its predecessor, I would say, is actually in the Garden of Eden because if we think

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of the tabernacle and its features, we have a structure that has three main parts.

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It has courtyard, it has a holy place, and the most holy place, sometimes called the

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Holy of Holies.

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And these three parts are a set of sacred space that include a number of utensils.

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Now the courtyard itself on the outside, it has the bronze altar, the sacrificial altar,

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it has a bronze laver or a wash basin, which is important for the priests to sanctify and

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purify themselves with as well as washing utensils.

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As you would enter in through the first veil of the tabernacle, you would encounter other

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utensils, the bread of the presence on your right or the table of the showbread.

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On your left, you would have what's called the menorah or the lampstand, which is styled

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after to look like a tree.

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It has all of these vegetation characteristics.

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And then you would have, of course, the altar of incense, where you have incense burning.

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We have all these descriptions in Exodus describing just the right type of incense you need to

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be holy.

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And then directly right in front of you, you have the next veil, which has the cherubim

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on it, what I would call divine throne wardens with their wings guarding the way into God's

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most sacred space.

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And of course, if you were to go in there, if you were the high priest or if you go to

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Israel and visit Temna, you can see what that would look like, or at least a reconstruction.

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You would, of course, find the Ark of the Covenant, which is a two-part item, the chest,

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which includes the two stone tablets and the jar of manna, as well as Aaron's staff, and

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then the mercy seat, which again has these two cherubim figures.

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And most people don't usually think of this, but also, and it's very clear in Exodus, the

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very presence of God, not just symbolically, but physically there in the form of the pillar

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of fire and cloud, depending on what time of day or night it was.

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Now, so just giving that, like, broader perspective, and obviously we can say much more about how

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this plays a role in Exodus and Leviticus, we have everything you're supposed to do

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in terms of sacrifice, but let's think about each one of those features as we go back in

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time to think about the Garden of Eden.

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The Garden of Eden, of course, with an Adam and later, she's called Eve in the story,

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who are created, they're placed in a location where God is.

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And so this is a divine, sacred space.

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They of course are provided for.

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They are given food they can eat from, most especially, we're told that they can eat from

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the Tree of Life.

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Well, in my opinion, and many would agree with me, that the menorah itself is likely styled

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after the idea of the Tree of Life, that it is a place where you have God's presence

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and symbolic of what is there.

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And this is kind of our first hint as to what the tabernacle, it might be modeled off of.

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In fact, if we fast forward in the Bible to the book of Hebrews, we learn that Moses is

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actually given a vision of what he saw on the mountain of the real thing.

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And so he actually is given what was actually in God's court, what I like to call the room

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where it happens.

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This same place where Isaiah in Isaiah chapter six says, Woe is me, I'm a man of unclean lips,

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where Ezekiel has the vision of the wheel within the wheel as it's in the Jerusalem

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Temple.

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And we have John and Daniel all doing the same thing.

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And so he's given this vision and he said, make a copy of what you see.

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And I'll instruct you as well as these workmen, Batsaleh and Ohaleov, to make these items.

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And so one of those features is the Tree of Life, which I think is connected with the

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menorah.

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But the other thing is the table of showbread is a symbolic element that shows that Adam

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and Eve could have eaten from any of the food that was all available to them, except of

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course the one tree they weren't supposed to.

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And so if we apply that to the tabernacle, we have the consecrated, those made righteous

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and representative for the people, which of course is the priesthood, who share in this

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meal with God, who share in his presence and they're provided for, which they also function

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as an intermediary role for the people that remain unable to because of sin, because of

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what of course happened in Eden.

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And so as you go further, of course you have the altar of incense, which represents the

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idea of God's, the smell that God has in this aroma.

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But I would say one of the most important connections is the Ark of the Covenant itself, because

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the Ark of the Covenant represents God's, of course God's presence, his physical presence

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in the tabernacle.

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And that also is representative of what you have going on in Genesis 3, Genesis 2 and

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3, where God is walking among them.

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And the most obvious connection is actually after the fall and after the curse is given,

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where we have Adam and Eve driven away from the access to the tree of life.

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And what we actually have is an angel or a cherubim set up with a flaming sword guarding

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the entrance to Eden and to the tree of life.

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And God stationing him there to protect man from having access to the tree of life.

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Well, if you plot that on the tabernacle, which also gets repeated, of course, in the

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Salamonic temple, you have almost exactly the same thing where God's presence has these

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tears of access to because of the nature of sin, because of the nature that man has to

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come in God's presence.

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It has to go through all of these steps to become clean and righteous and holy before

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they can come into God's presence.

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And so what we see then is that the tabernacle is that all important step to begin the process

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where we can get back to Eden, where you can have mankind, man and woman made in the image

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of God coming back into his presence.

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And that's actually another really interesting thing as well.

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The tabernacle itself doesn't, of course, or I should say the Ark of the Covenant, doesn't

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have an image.

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Now, you might say, well, it does have the terabine, which of course are images.

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They are most likely meant to depict people with wings, although some people think they

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may have been lions and that type of thing.

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But they're most likely angelic-like, divine beings.

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But they're not the object of worship.

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The object of worship is an invisible, the sometimes visible in the form of pillar of

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fire and pillar of cloud.

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But there is no image.

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If you went to any other Egyptian or Canaanite or Mesopotamian temple, what you would find,

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of course, is a wooden, usually covered with metal, precious metal, idol that depicts the

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deity.

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Now, even they didn't think that that was the full deity.

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They thought it was the symbol of that deity.

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It reflected their power on earth.

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Now what's so interesting is that we have the same terminology of being an image compared

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to people.

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In other words, if we think of the way that we are created, we are made in the image of

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God to be reflective of his glory in the same way that the pagan mind considered how idols

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were meant to reflect the divine deities that they worshiped.

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Someone reading that in that context would immediately make that connection.

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Now that's harder for us living in the 21st century without walking down the street, like

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if you're in Israel, I live growing up in Egypt, and you pass all these temples.

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In fact, you even see these metal gods, these idols going on display.

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But to say that we are made in the image of God, as it is in the Edenic temple, as it

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sometimes called, is very, very important to make those connections.

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So that's the first thing I'd say is that when we think of the Tabernacle, its construction,

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it really is, at its basis, a return back to what Eden was all about.

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But as you hinted at, God gives instructions, but they're not starting it.

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Let's say ground zero.

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They're not going to be able to make a one-for-one build of the Tabernacle and the Ark of the

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Covenant without some cultural context.

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And so if you've read through Exodus, you actually have the instructions twice.

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I read it through recently with my boys, and I got them to pay attention better when I

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called these as kind of like the LEGO instructions.

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The LEGO instructions on how to build the Ark and the Tabernacle and so on.

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And actually, the reason why we have it twice is because one is in the first giving of the

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Covenant, which is already broken because they have the Golden Calf episode.

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And then the second part is giving it again, but as they're building it and as it's becoming

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completed.

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And so there's been a number of really important studies over the years that archaeology has

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heavily contributed to.

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The single most important discovery is really one of the most well-known discoveries, and

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that is King Tut's tomb, or Tutankhamen.

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It was the only tomb that was not looted in antiquity.

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And as I always like to say, King Tut's was really an unimportant figure.

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He died at the age of 19, and his tomb was actually much smaller than many of the others

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of his forebearers and people that followed him.

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And it's only really because his tomb was so small and accidentally was not discovered

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in antiquity that we have it.

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But from the amazing wealth that was in there, one can only imagine what Tut most of the

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third or Ramses would have had.

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But even with just this kind of really unimportant pharaoh that we all know because of the discovery,

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we see just the absolute wealth of Egypt.

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And one of the most important features that was found in his tomb was what's called the

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Anubis chest.

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Anubis is a jackal deity in ancient Egypt, but what this is is it's a box that holds

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holy objects, and it has a figure on top of it, the figure of Anubis.

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And also, it's overlaid with gold.

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It's made, I believe, from Acacia wood, and it is connected with poles that are overlaid

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with gold.

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And one of the really interesting things is, because scholars have often noted that if

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you put the rings for the poles on the side, as it's often depicted even in the movies

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with Indiana Jones, for instance, it wouldn't work well.

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Because it would just fall right off.

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So they actually have the poles running under the feet or running right underneath the main

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part of the chest.

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And so that's one of the ways which we can now most likely reconstruct how the Ark would

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have worked.

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But not just in terms of the build, but in terms of also its function.

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It held holy objects.

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Inside of it were important objects, perhaps even some of the canopic jars and things of

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that nature were held in that to help, in this case, King Tut in the afterlife.

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And so that's just one object.

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There's others as well.

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There's an excellent book that I can point your listeners to that was just published

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this past year by an Egyptologist named David Falk, who I think it's called The Ark of the

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Covenant in its Egyptian context, very well illustrated, very well written with, I think,

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100 or so photos where he makes the case that the Ark of the Covenant really is heavily

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influenced by New Kingdom Egypt.

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Of course, there's the example I just gave of the Anubis chest, but we have other things

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such as mobile thrones or what's called palanquins, which would have some of these objects, including

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winged figures on them that would carry kings as well as carry other figures.

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We have these solar, or I should say these ships, or they're called barks, that have

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a shrine on top of them that would carry the god, the small idol from one part of the temple

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to actually go on display and be brought and placed inside of the holy of holies.

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And so all of these things, there's not to say a one-to-one between the Ark of the Covenant

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and something exactly you have in Egyptian culture, but there's so many parallels that

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you see that the people who made the Ark of the Covenant, that Salel and Ahaliyah, the

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two craftsmen that are mentioned, are using the same ideas that we have coming out of

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Egypt.

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It's very difficult to look at what you have in King Tut's tomb and what you see there

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and not see some similarities.

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And yet that's what many biblical scholars have to do because they want to say that a

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book like Exodus dates to a much later period.

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And so David Falk has done a great service in showing that these parallels that exist

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between the book of Exodus and I should say that the Exodus description of the Ark of

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the Covenant and what you see in Egypt really can only be dated to the new kingdom.

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And again, that's 1550 to about 1150 BC.

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After it, you have a major shift, a major change.

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And so that's one element.

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But the Egyptian parallels don't really end there.

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In fact, in my opinion, one of the most fascinating ones goes back to the guy we talked about earlier

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with Ramses II.

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And on those same reliefs, which I talked about at the Battle of Kadesh, we have two

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of these that are preserved.

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The best one is at a place in southern Egypt called Abu Simbel.

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Way up in the top of his temple, he has on this battle relief, he has a picture of his

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war tent in a plan view as if you were a bird looking down birds eye view.

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And he has a courtyard, a wide rectangular courtyard with with shields around it.

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He has his fortress, his forces all around this courtyard and the midst of this courtyard

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seemingly to be east oriented.

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He has another smaller rectangular structure, which has worshippers bowing down to it.

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And at the very back in the innermost part of this, he has a separate room.

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And in that room, he has a cartouche, which in for Egyptians, that's a basically a small

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oval, which has the name usually of the of the Pharaoh.

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And on this cartouche is his name.

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And on both sides of this cartouche, we have two winged figures with their wings pointing

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up, looking at it.

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And I mean, you look at this and you say, this is the tabernacle.

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This is exactly what the the tabernacle looked like, and this is the function of the tabernacle.

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And so what it actually is in the relief is a war tent where you have Ramsey's own tent

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that he is camping in among his fighting men as he goes to the battle to fight with them.

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And so if we think of that as what God is building, where God is empowering and inspiring

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that Salel and Ohalyav with the instruction of Moses to build is more or less the same

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thing.

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It is a war tent where he as their warrior king is residing above these thronewardens,

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these cherubim.

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And he is communicating and oftentimes giving instructions on how to fight the enemies.

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We can see this with Sihon, King of the Amorites, when they go there, Moses goes before him

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and he asks, okay, what should we do?

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And he tells us what we're supposed to do.

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Same thing with Ogre.

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When the mantle gets passed to Joshua, same idea.

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He sees the commander of Yahweh's host and he gives him the information.

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This is what you do to fight the battle.

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And so we have here again the idea that God is a much better version of what Pharaoh claims

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to be.

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And they have the using of this warrior tent shrine to have the tabernacle.

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Now that's not to say there aren't innovations.

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Of course there are.

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We don't have other gods present.

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There's only one God that is present.

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We have the commandments or I should say the covenant placed inside of the tabernacle.

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We have these other features that the parallels are really striking once you see the visuals.

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Now another person I would point your readers to is a scholar named Joshua Berman out of

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Bari Lan University who has made a lot of these suggestions and built on a lot of these

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ideas as well.

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Now one last thing before we move on, one of the really interesting things as well is

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what's inside of the Ark of the Covenant.

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Now most people will remember of course the the Jar of Manna and Moses or Aaron's staff

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that that butted.

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But the other thing is of course the tablets.

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Now in every depiction we have of those stone tablets, what do we have on there?

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On one tablet it's the first five commandments and on the other tablet it's the other five

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commandments.

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One is associated with how you're to relate to God, the other one's to be how you're

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supposed to associate with your neighbor and others.

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But if you look in your Bible it never says that.

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It never says that the tablets are meant to just only have the ten commandments.

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In fact if they're doing that it's a gross use of writing space because these pranks

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were probably quite large.

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And we know from this very period that the idea of a covenant was ratified through these

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treaties and especially the idea of a what's called a Vassal-Sous-Rain treaty where you

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have a great king who is going to make treaties with a lesser people.

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And this is mostly connected with the kingdom of the Hittites.

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And we have a lot of these that were discovered in Turkey thankfully because most of their

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archive was intact.

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And we can find many of the same features that appear in the book of Deuteronomy such

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as the long historical prologue, the blessings and the cursings that we have in Deuteronomy

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which have direct parallels to what you see in these Hittite treaties.

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And one of the features that I really want to point out is what they would often do

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in these treaties is at the very end they would say, okay, you agree to all these and

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if you don't this is going to happen to you.

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You will be cursed.

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That's the blessing and cursing side.

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And then you both agree to it.

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You take one copy and deposit it in your temple.

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I'll take one copy and deposit it in my temple.

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So it's on a really public display but in a divine space that the gods are called to

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bear that you make sure you keep up your end of the bargain.

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So that's a way that they were trying to make sure that this covenant, this treaty would

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stay intact.

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Well, most likely what you have then if the Bible, if the Exodus covenant can be connected

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with this, which I think makes really good sense, Kenneth Kitchen for instance, very

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well known Egyptologist.

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I like to say he has magnum opuses.

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I mean, he has just a huge amount of text that he's translated over the years.

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But one of the main things he did is compare all the different trees of the second and

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first millennium and then made the point that I just made.

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So if that's true that what we have on these tablets is a treaty that is the treaty between

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the God of Israel and Israel itself, then it would make sense that both copies would

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actually be duplicates and they would be both placed inside of the main shrine and warrior

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tent, both of the overlord, that would be God as the king of Israel, as well as his vassals,

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which would be Israel itself.

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And so it's placed inside of this chest much in the same way that we saw with Egyptian

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chess, where they hold these very important pieces of information.

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And so when they carry this from place to place, they're carrying not only the idea

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that God's going before them, they're bringing with them also this covenant that they're

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going to, of course, ratify later on when they get to the land.

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So a lot of important, a lot of really interesting connections that great theologians that have

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gone had no access to because archaeology hadn't been developed yet.

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The Hattushah, the capital of the Hittites had never been excavated.

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And so we can see more and more of these parallels that I don't like to use the word prove the

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Bible, but actually help us understand what these connections really are and actually

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tease out new ways of interpreting it that get us much closer to the original understanding

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of the original author and the original audience.

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Yes.

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And I just want to mention, you know, one of the things that people use if they want to

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debunk the Bible.

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And I always bring this up because I want to give our listeners answers so that they

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can respond to some of these things.

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And so one of the things is that whether it's not unique that there were these same elements

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in Egypt or in the culture at the time.

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So you've given us a great example there with the Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle.

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But for me, I think it's the flip side.

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Actually it shows me how accurate the Bible is because it's rightly reflecting of the

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time and the culture.

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So if God were to have come to them 3500 years ago in the wilderness and said, OK, I want

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you to build a Tabernacle.

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Now go lay your concrete foundation and then get your wood frame.

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I'm going to be like this is totally foreign.

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Yeah.

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You can tell that that was written later and put in.

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But this was not.

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This is very, very accurate of something that they were familiar with.

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But I love the way you describe the connection back to the Garden of Eden and that what God

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intended all along was to have this space whereby he fellowshiped with man.

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And due to our sin, we lost that space.

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But his goal always was and still is to get mankind back to that space and get us back

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into fellowship with him.

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And the Tabernacle, all of these beautiful things that you described were later than

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just put into the permanent temple.

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And it was like a spiritual reality carried from Eden to the Tabernacle to the temple

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and into the body of Christ today.

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And what we have to look forward to when heaven comes to earth, new heaven, new earth.

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I mean, that's that's where God is headed.

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So it's really beautiful.

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So we just want to thank you for sharing with us from such a place of knowledge and of expertise

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and to share with us your excitement over the Bible and over the the stories and the

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accuracy of it.

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So we just want to thank you for giving up your time and sharing with us today.

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And once again, we link in the show notes to the Geshe-Media project that he referred

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to and and as soon as you have your documentary done, Chris, please come back and talk to us

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further about the Tabernacle and the temple as you'll be covering it in this documentary.

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So thank you.

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Thank everyone for joining us.

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See you back in a few days for Walk Through the Bible.

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And until then, God bless.

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We hope you have enjoyed this episode of Out of Zion with Susan Michael.

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Be sure to subscribe to Out of Zion now on Apple Podcasts, CPNshows.com, YouTube or wherever

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Out of Zion with Susan Michael is a production of ICEJUSA, All Rights Reserved.