The Tabernacle of Perception

The past is invisible, known only by its memorials. The future is also invisible, known only by its promises. In between is the continual, eternal ephēmeros, the “slit screen” of existence.

Past and future are concealed by two temporal “veils,” curtains which give us two steps in the dominion pattern: Division and Conquest.

One’s experience of reality is thus an itinerant “tabernacle” that travels with us through life’s holy mission. On a band of darkness, it is the visible rainbow at whose center is the brightness of the human consciousness. This “house of perception” moves like a tent for the sun on the line of time (Psalm 19:4), and it is primarily ethical in nature. Our continuous now is the “day” of human action, a binary tension between the do or do not inherent in every sphere of human activity.

This spectrum of personal perception is a microcosm of one’s own personal history, which is in turn a microcosm of familial, tribal, and national histories. Each nested “house” is flanked by the invisibles, having its own dyad of veils. Beyond these we cannot see except through reliance upon the testimony of God and/or the testimony of men who speak on His behalf.

Israel’s trek from slavery to Sabbath is a perfect type of the Tabernacle of Perception because it realized the abstract pattern in history and geography. The twin veils in this case were the Red Sea and the River Jordan.

Typologically these were the waters below and the waters above. Egypt relied upon water from the ground, but Canaan relied upon water from the sky. In its entirety, the nation’s journey through this parched, natural and cultural abyss was a death-and-resurrection, and each of the passages through water was also a death-and-resurrection. God works in fractals.

The point here is that both Egypt (as the past) and Canaan (as the future) were invisible to the wanderers. The new, uncircumcised generation of Israelites had to rely upon the testimony of their forebears for any knowledge of Egypt. All Israelites, including Moses and Joshua, had to rely upon the promises of God for their hope in the possession of Canaan. Because, in this territory between the veils, the truth concerning origin and destiny exists only in testimony, it is the domain of the fiery serpent, the forge of lies. As the original false prophet, the devil rewrites the past in order to steal the future. As in Eden, he is a servant seeking to appropriate the inheritance of the firstborn son. In the wisdom of God the Father, the evil one is given this limited arena because Testing brings godly wisdom to the Son.

If the past and the future are never in question, the one being tested dwells in the security of that knowledge. This is true for individuals, families, nations, and entire cultures. As Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn said, “To destroy a people you must first sever their roots.”

Adapted from Dark Sayings: Essays for the Eyes of the Heart.

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