THE SANCTUARY | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 4, 1876

THE SANCTUARY.

Eighteenth Paper.—Points of History.

It now pleased God that the sanctuary should take a more permanent form. All necessity for a movable structure, to be temporarily located in different places, had ceased to exist. The period of Israel's journeyings had long gone by. The period of the Judges, during which the affairs of Israel were often uncertain and the times troublous, though exceeding in duration more than four times the length of the existence of our own government, was at length ended. The tribes of Israel were consolidated into a new and powerful kingdom. Under David the Hebrew scepter established its broadest sway.

At length God gave him rest from all his enemies round about. 2 Sam. 7 and 8. Then came the house of God into his mind, and to the prophet Nathan, he thus spoke: “See now I dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains.” This doubtless refers to the tent which he had pitched for it in the city of David, of which the words of Uriah the Hittite, 2 Sam. 11:11, may also probably be understood.

The prophet approved of what was implied in the language of David, that he purposed to prepare a suitable structure for the permanent abiding place of the ark of God, and he said, “Go, do all that is in thine heart; for God is with thee.” But the Lord the same night reversed the decision of the prophet, saying to the king that he could not build a house for him to dwell in; for he had been a man of war and had shed much blood. This was an important and a holy work. In this house the olive branch of peace was to be held out by Heaven to a rebellious world, and none but those whose lives had been passed in peace could be employed in its erection.

THE TEMPLE, LIKE THE TABERNACLE, BUILT AFTER A PATTERN.

Nevertheless to David was given by the Spirit of God, an accurate pattern of the temple, and all things pertaining thereto, just as Moses had received the pattern of the tabernacle in the wilderness of Sinai. This we find in 1 Chron. 28:11, and onward; and in verse 19, David says, “All this the Lord made me understand in writing by his hand upon me, even all the works of this pattern.”

Besides thus receiving the pattern, it was permitted him to make also abundant preparation for the coming building. Its erection was committed to his son Solomon, and to him and the princes, David gave the following solemn charge concerning this work: “Now set you heart and your soul to seek the Lord your God; arise therefore, and build ye the sanctuary of the Lord God, to bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and the holy vessels of God, into the house that is to be built to the name of the Lord.” 1 Chron. 22:19.

Again: 1 Chron. 28:10: “Take heed now; for the Lord hath chosen thee to build an house for the sanctuary: be strong and do it.”

Mark, it was the sanctuary for which provision was thus carefully being made, the sanctuary, of which David had seen the pattern, for which he had made ready his material, and concerning which he gave this solemn charge.

The pattern is now furnished, and the material prepared. Where was this sanctuary located? The spot chosen was most significant. It was none other than the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, 2 Chron. 21:14–18, where the angel of the Lord appeared to David, upon Mount Moriah, 2 Chron. 3:1, which was near to Mount Zion. Upon this spot Isaac had been offered eight hundred and sixty years before, and a lamb had been provided in his place. Gen. 22:1–14.

All questions being thus decided and all preparations made, the work commences. The sacred writer thus marks this important event: “And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord.” 1 Kings 6:1.

A question of chronology here demands solution. Paul in Acts 13:18–22, gives a far different reckoning of the time from the exodus to the building of the temple. He allows to the wilderness 40 years, the time given to the destruction of the seven nations of Canaan, usually computed as 6 years (see Bliss’ Sacred Chronology), to the Judges 450 years, to the reign of Saul 40 years, to that of David 40 years, and to Solomon’s fourth year, 3 years, making in all 579 years, and bringing the building of the temple in the 580th year from the exodus, instead of the 480th as in 1 Kings 6. It is not necessary to give the long and elaborate opinions of critics upon this matter. There being a difference of just one hundred years goes far to show that a mistake of just that measure of time has somewhere been made. This could not be made in the text of the Judges, nor in the discourse of Paul, where the period is drawn out in items, so easily as in 1 Kings 6, where it is expressed in a single statement. Hence it is the opinion of chronologers that the reading in Kings is not genuine; that the building of the temple was commenced in the fourth year of Solomon, as here and elsewhere stated, but that this was the 580th year from the exodus, instead of one hundred years earlier. See this question discussed at length in Barrett’s Synopsis of Criticism, ii. part 2.