Exodus 25:9

9. The pattern of the tabernacle This is most positively represented throughout this entire narrative (comp . Exodus 25:40; Exodus 26:30; Acts 7:44; Hebrews 8:5) as given to Moses by divine revelation . The notion that it was a fiction of the priests, invented nearly a thousand years after the time of Moses, puts such a withering stamp of falsehood upon this straightforward narrative that it must fail to commend itself to any serious student of history . But when we study out the details, and picture the whole pattern before our eyes when, further, we consider the striking symbolism of the various objects, and their adaptation to body forth the profoundest truths touching the relations of God and man we are convinced that the pattern originated not with man, but with God himself . How God showed Moses this model of the tabernacle we are not told . It may have been imaged before him in clear outline, like the sight of the burning bush; or, in a dream of the night it may have been definitely pictured before the soul . We have no need, however, with the rabbins, to suppose that he saw heaven opened, and a material tabernacle there, in form and substance like what he was commanded to make .