Throughout known history, human societies have consistently associated with deities. Super powerful or supernatural beings or forces that created and/or governed life. These beings were mechanisms to explain and mollify the fear of death. They were called upon to give meaning to life and hope for an afterlife.
Gods were observed in the world. The sun and the moon, the lion and the cow, the fearsome image and the benevolent countenance – all these images, and many more, were felt to rule over some or all aspects of life. Great mountains, immense old trees, and other natural phenomena were considered gods at some times.
People prayed to these deities to deliver rain, healing, and children. Imponderable inhabitants of a detached albeit influential world have been called upon to win wars, grant wealth, and bestow wisdom. Ultimately, they were beseeched to assure that a favorite team should be victorious in a sporting event.
People figured their gods had to be superhuman in their strength and abilities. Society’s gods were surely as tangible as societal and personal requests and goals. It went without question that only a god that existed materially in the material world could influence that world. Exerting that kind of influence and power naturally required an intimate connection and understanding of the world in which mortal people thrived.
Then came a new god. A god that lived in a spiritual realm, without the boundaries of time or space. This is the god of Abraham of the Torah. This god cannot inhabit the physical universe, because such an interaction would change the 100% spiritual nature of this deity. The consequence of this loss of purity is to remove the eternal and infinite nature of this god. Possessing these never-ending qualities, this God is assumed by many to be the ONE GOD. Direct interaction with a material world would make this God material. Nothing material is infinite or eternal. Direct exposure would alter of the uniqueness of this god.
The god of Abraham is able to cast a thought and a word from the heavenly to the earthly universe. This god can affect things in the material universe without entering into it. Timeless and without form, the spiritual god can affect things in the finite and limited world of mortals. It is capable of acts of manipulations that seem to be miraculous to those of who have only our physical senses to witness them.
(We could better appreciate these phenomena by activating and applying our own spiritual essence.)
There is a barrier between the eternal, infinite, harmonious, monotonous, unchanging, uniform, unvarying Heavenly existence, and the material, shifting, limited, fluctuating, temporal Earthly universe. Although God could project across this barrier, God could not enter into the physical world without being touched, polluted, and affected – therefore altered – by the material universe. This interaction would place a limit on God, which would destroy God’s infinite and eternal nature.
Just like a person cannot enter the sun without being consumed, God could not have any physical encounter and still be 100% spiritual. God needed the Tabernacle, with its very stringent requirements that allowed God to dwell in the physical universe without being in contact with anything that could alter the unalterable Being.
But once the Tabernacle was constructed in its purity (because God knew what God could tolerate and remain God), then God was able to enter the Earthly realm and “dwell among you,” as the Bible says.
Without this structure, God became manifest in such forms as fire and smoke. God could create across this barrier using the energy at God’s command, known as “speaking words” in the Torah. Celestial speech transitioning from the spiritual to material realm focuses energy to reform itself in the innumerably different ways that we observe and surmise.
God created the physical universe by removing, altering, redirecting, and repurposing energy. God could project thought and words into the Earthly realm and cause things to happen.
God could cause things to happen on the material side without entering it. God could do this or employ an agent – like Moses – to facilitate the work and reconstruction of energy.
In this way, God could send floods, plagues, split the Sea, rain down manna, produce water from a rock, destruction in Babel, and effect Creation.
If God entered the material world without having a mechanism like the tabernacle, God would become polluted by the finite and temporally limited encounter. Nothing touches anything else without being altered by it. In God’s case, this would make God less than 100% spiritual: no longer God.
For example: in a chemistry lab, mixing substances together to create an endpoint requires the greatest purity possible inside the glass beaker holding the mixture. Any uncleanliness would alter the result. The goal of removing even the most inconsequential pollutants from the glass container is key to a chemistry experiment. In this world, perfection is impossible; interpretation of results must take this into account. However, God could direct the construction of the perfect receptacle for God outside the spiritual universe. This Conductor spelled out the perfectly inert vehicle to house Its presence.
With the Tabernacle constructed according to very precise specifications, God could enter the material world and make the Deity’s presence felt directly, as opposed to indirectly through speech, actions, and the interpretations of prophets.
Those who felt God’s presence would be forever altered by that experience. It is orders of magnitude beyond being able to know God by recognizing what God has done in Creation, an indirect connection. It is knowing God by standing within God’s Being. This would directly awaken what is godlike within each of us. Spiritual achievement is attained via direct exposure to the Deity. It is akin to stepping out of the cold into a warm room, as opposed to building a fire to hover around.
But there came the moment when God needed to be present and dwell among the people to impress the fact of God’s existence upon them.
This required a portal that was inert to interaction with a 100% spiritual Being. The Tabernacle was such a opening. It created an internally spiritual environment within a material shell residing amidst a physical world. It was the relationships of the objects of construction that made them inert to God’s presence within. Inside this tent, God could literally occupy it without being altered, remaining an eternal and infinite presence.
This palace, properly assembled from specifically prescribed substances of the Earthly Realm, provided a Heavenly retreat. Truly Heaven on Earth. When the Creator separated the material from the spiritual universes during the act of Creation, the boundary did not permit interaction of the two. The threshold between the internal and the housing of the Tabernacle functioned in precisely the same manner. The inside of the Tabernacle became a piece of the eternal and infinite spiritual world inhabited by God. To achieve this wonder, the rules of construction and organization had to be followed precisely and without compromise or innovation.
With this Tabernacle, human beings could directly experience the Deity and not lose their souls to It. The attraction of the soul to its Godly origin is more potent than anything we can imagine. When mortals come too close to the Heavenly Realm of God, they cannot persist in the Earthly universe.
But a person can activate and nourish his or her spiritual nature and create from within a bridge between the worlds, thereby providing benefits for both sides of the chasm. The Heavenly gains appreciation of the ability to innovate and change. The Earthly learns to understand the unlimited potential of existence.
Health and Spirit by Dr. Jack Zoldan 