It was the Israelites in their 40 year camping trip that through the process of putting up and taking down the tents and Tabernacle with The Holy of Holies, were suppose to learn some things. You see everything they did physically had it’s invisible counterpart they were supposed to learn about. To put them up in the spirit of their mind was more of their journey then to go from place to place.

Even as Paul said “when I was a child, I thought like a child and spoke like a child, but when I became an adult I put away childish things” meaning the law and the prophets.

In our case they are expired in the spirit of our minds, where the maturation takes place. We exchanged physical things for the invisible, always available “Kingdom prepared from before the foundation of the world.

For this reason the writer of Hebrews had this comment to say about them, that “the Holy Spirit indicating this, that the way into the Holiest of All was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle was still standing. ⁹ It was symbolic for their current time.” 

These are all only tools for transition. Not so much from place to place, but from flesh to Spirit. From earthen things to invisible realities that have no beginning or end, but just the mysteriousness of being just outside the realm of carnal perseptions. However they are ever ready and always”at hand”. Meaning graspable and fully operational to the re-spirited mind of faith, even now. If that were not true, there would be no “Kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world”, or “The Kingdom of God at Hand”. But there is. This is the goal of our calling, something the Old Covenant culture just could not ascertain.

This is the reason it was said “for the Lord your God has not given you ears to hear and eyes to see, even to this day”. Which seams to be largely true again in our day as the church awaits another savior, or saving with the same name as though the cross was insufficient.

Isaiah also chimed in saying ” But the word of the Lord was to them,
“Precept upon precept,
Line upon line,
Here a little, there a little,”
That they might go and fall backward, and be broken, snared and caught.” 

The things they were given, as long as they expected them to appear physically, became their demise. Same as today because “Today is the day of salvation”. Today it’s time to cross over. Tomorrow may not be. The gospel message expires when faith is no more.

The constant taking down and putting up became important to the Israelites and not their spiritual transformation. Their carnal journey became their occupation because they forgot where they were going. This is the reason that generation died in the wilderness. For even when Moses was at the end of his life , he pleaded with God to go in to the promise land, but God only allowed him to gaze at it from Mt Nebo. That’s like window shopping. Look but don’t touch.

And not only with Moses, but even up untill David, no one heard, no one followed. If you remember with Joshua, it was only him, Caleb and those of the next generation that crossed the Jordan and advanced into “The Promised Land”, of which they failed too. 

This is affirmed in Hebrews saying if God “He designates a certain day, saying in David, “Today,” after such a long time, as it has been said:

⁸ For if ^[b]Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. (That was a picture of the invisible as well) ⁹ There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. ¹⁰ For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.”

And so each successive generation in turn failed to harvest the promises of God from “the land of promises” by applying the promises of God to their obstacles. They fought through fear with sticks and stones to no avail. With the exception of those with Joshua who were instructed to shout, and the walls fell down.

The idea of resting in the reality of experiencing God, with God, in the place of God, while we are in our incarnation, surrounded by distraction’s of all sorts. As John said “as He is, so are we in this world”. Meaning, not as He was when He became flesh and dwelled among us, but as He is now in His pre-creation existence. Yes, He gave us that.

Even in our day most are looking for another type of saving from God. Some call it a second coming, a phrase not found once in scripture. Others think it’s a vaccine. What an insult to God’s incredible gift to us, the one who died for us, for us to set aside that fear.

And as many prophets as God sent they rejected as evidenced by these words from the One who came to save them from that fruitless cycle who said “oh Jerusalem, the one who stones and kills the prophets and all who are sent to her, oh how I mourn, now this destruction is upon you.”

And of The Holy Spirit thus indicating that while the earthen Holy place stood, the way into the original was not manifest. That while the believer thought the Tabernacle was significant, that it had to be removed to open the invisible one, how much more their stone buildings in a physical Jerusalem. That “while the first one was standing, the way into the original in the heavens was not yet manifest, it too had to be taken out of the way, so Jesus ordered it’s destruction saying “not one stone shall be left upon another”.

You may say, huh? But remember the testimony to the Samaritan women “the time that is coming is already here when you will not in Jerusalem worship the Father but in Spirit and Truth. For the Father is Spirit and truth and seeketh such”. Such are we who have made the exchange.  Our transition from here to there. This is our journey into the invisible, as being more substantial then the ground on which you stand because “faith is the substance of things hoped for being the evidence of the things unseen”.

You see because of faith, all physical items become un-necessary relics. And in their case they were adulterous because they got stuck on them

This is the whole reason for Paul’s letter to those in Galatia, who said For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. ²³ But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, ²⁴ which things were symbolic. For these are ^[g]the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar— ²⁵ for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to (earthen) Jerusalem which (then was and) now is, and is in bondage with her children— ²⁶ but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all.” Showing the exchange takes place, from above in the spirit of the mind.

This was all because they couldn’t make the corrolation or the transition of these things into the spirit.

Yes we are sojourners, but our travel “Jerusalem above, the Mother of us all. She is the one adorned being the bride of Christ coming down of God from Heaven”, do you know She meets you where you are at? She comes down from Heaven.

In the beginning She brooded over the face of the waters. Then She brooded and said Oh Jerusalem how I would’ve gathered you as a mother hen gathers her chicks. And now She broods over you looking for a reflection of Jesus. As these words concur that “we beholding as in a mirror are being transfigured in His self same image, from the glory to the Glory as by the Spirit.

The Kingdom of God is at hand.