The Location of the Real Tabernacle

Dr. Couch, is the real tabernacle in heaven?

ANSWER: The most used word for tabernacle (or tent) is skeenee. It is used eleven times in the book of Hebrews. There it is called the “true,” the “first” in importance, “the holiest of all,” the “perfect.” In 8:2 we read “the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched and not man.” Verse 1 reads “the main point in what has been said is this: we have such a high priest [now], who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.” “At the right hand of the throne” is quoting Psalm 110:1-2. This is where Christ is now!

Is this tabernacle real? When we get to heaven will we have a “real” body? Yes, but it is not of this same physical we now possess. It will be real but it will also be eternal. The heavenly tabernacle is real but it is not of the same material that the wooden tabernacle was made of. The tabernacle in the wilderness was limited. It was patterned after the heavenly. But it was a place where the offerings were made representing Christ. The tabernacle in heaven represents Christ and His offering for sin, though He will be there in glory. The heavenly tabernacle but represents that great work He performed when here on earth. It is where God meets with man that brings about a redemption for believers.

Thanks for asking.
Dr. Mal Couch (6/12)

Hebrews 8:13 on the New Covenant

Dr. Couch, does not Hebrews 8:13 say that the New covenant makes (past tense) the Old (Mosaic) covenant obsolete?

ANSWER: No, not really. Here's how the verse reads in the Greek text.

"In which He (God) is to be saying (Pres. Inf.) 'A New (covenant) He has made old (palaioo, Perf. Act. Ind.).' For whatever is becoming obsolete, failing for age (garasko, Pres. Tense), [is] at hand [eggus] to disappear."

Notice it is God who is making the Mosaic covenant obsolete not the New covenant doing it. The Lord is in charge! He is creating the new Dispensation of grace. God is a Dispensationalist! He is replacing the Old with the New. The church will benefit by the New covenant but we don't fulfill it. Israel will fulfill it when the nation is converted and brought back into the kingdom. Notice I said "brought back into the kingdom." The kingdom first existed under the kingship of David and then Solomon. But it was destroyed with the Civil War and all the kings that followed were not the rulers promised by the Lord. The kingdom is to be restored. The next king is the Messiah, the Son of God, and the Son of David. He will reign and rule just as David and Solomon did, on the earth, in the Promised Holy Land! How do the Covenant Reformed guys miss this?

The great old scholar Nicoll understands dispensationalism and writes:

"In saying New, God has antiquated the first (the Mosaic); and that which is antiquated and growing old is near extinction [literally disappearing]. That is to say, by speaking in the passage quoted in Jeremiah 31, God speaks of a New covenant, He brands the former as old. Thus even in Jeremiah's time the Mosaic covenant was disparaged. The fact that a new was required showed that it was insufficient. It was condemned as antiquated. And that which is antiquated and aged has not much longer to live. 'It has become antiquated is said in Greek in the LXX.' It suggests of utter destruction, abolished!"

I don't know how they do it, but the Covenant and Reformed theologians say we are still under the Law, the Mosaic covenant. We are to keep the Law, they say. They are really ignorant of their Bible!

Thanks for asking.
—Dr. Mal Couch(6/11)