THE ENIGMA OF CREATION is the lofty theme in the Prologue to the Gospel of John. Everywhere this Gospel is transcendental. It deals with matters which transcend all that is earthly, and plunges always into the eternal, and the meaning behind all meanings. The drama of God's life is being worked out. The natural creation has a purpose - to reveal God and provide the field on which will be developed and displayed, the manifold wisdom of God.
The manifestation of the life of God begins in that region of NO BEGINNING, the eternal birth of the Only Begotten Son, who always WAS and ever will be, in the bosom of the Father. Proceeding from, towards, and within the communion of the Father and the Son is that life and love personified in the Holy Spirit, who is of both, yet is a THIRD, eternally proceeding in an origin which never began but always IS - and we have the glory of the Holy Trinity, one God in the mystery and the marvel of Three Persons, always at rest, yet ceaselessly working, always complete and unchanging, yet ever traveling to that glorious destiny yet to be realised, but which in the timeless, ineffable peace of the Godhead is eternally achieved and not subordinate to the alphabet of history.
Incomprehensible? Indeed. For no-one knows the Son save the Father, and no-one knows the Father save the Son - and he to whom the Son will reveal Him. Yet though incomprehensible, God brings Himself into the sphere of existence, to be "known" In a knowledge which transcends all mental apprehension - a knowing which is itself eternal life:
This is life eternal that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. John 17:3
In that blissful unknowing (after the earthly sort) we know Him (after the heavenly manner) with a knowledge which is conveyed and regulated and made apprehensible and sure through a Written Word, inspired, preserved, infallible, which is the vehicle by which the Eternal and Living Word who was before all things and by whom all things consist, unfolds Himself to those who believe, that by faith they might grasp and receive Him who is the Eternal.
To as many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. John 1:12
This is the theme of John in all his writings. Everything has its being for the praise and glory of God. The Wisdom of God is projected in created form, in the visible universe. Our three-dimensional creation, however, is not an end in itself. It is a thing of time, which must pass away with time itself. It is a means to the great end God has in view, in making Himself visible by arraying Himself with a garment which displays His manifold and many-coloured perfections - as Joseph's coat of many hues. Into this scene He comes down from above. The Son of God becomes the Son of Man - the representative man, the heir to Creation and the means of realising its full purpose - an end which the First Man (and the race in him) surrendered in a colossal act of disobedience. The disinherited race finds a Promise of Deliverance, but for four thousand years knows not, except by enigmatical prophetic hint, imperfectly grasped even by the greatest of men, that the Deliverer is God Himself - the Word become flesh and dwelling amongst us, even He who was the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
In this glorious Second Man, who is the Lord from heaven (1 Cor. 15: 47) a new creation arises, invisible, transcendent, eternal. Because it depends on His obedience its course is sure. It is a creation in which will be fully realised all God purposes to do. In the mediation of the Redeemer all is certain, because though truly man He is Very God of Very God. Likewise because this is He who should come and none other, the purpose embodied in Him is sure from the beginning and is as, eternal as the life of God. God being what He is, nothing can miscarry. The end is as sure as the beginning. The number of the elect is sealed. Their salvation is secured from before the foundation of the world. All evil is comprehended and brought under the harness of Almighty Sovereignty. The fixity of the end is according to the dictates of absolute wisdom, and is ordained after the pattern of that nature of .God which is incomprehensible. As is His nature so are His works and ways, His thoughts are high above ours as heaven is high above the earth; His ways are as far removed from our ways as the east is from the west (Isaiah 55:8-9).
The FACT we may know, because He has declared it. His eternal thought and all-embracing comprehension and justice, we may not know. His word which proceeds out of His mouth must infallibly accomplish that which He pleases and prosper in the thing whereto He sends it (Isaiah 55:11). That Word is Christ who is the power and the wisdom of God. It is not the word of the 'preacher in the pulpit.
THE WORD WHICH DOES NOT RETURN VOID
Christians who pray, and that most earnestly, that God's Word will not return to Him void, are too late with their prayer. God has already decreed it will not return void. When they apply it to their own preaching, they misapprehend Isaiah 55. God is not referring to preaching but to His unchangeable decrees in Christ eternally promulgated before the foundation of the earth. We ought not to think so highly or so foolishly of ourselves as to suppose the Word which comes from our lips is the word which goes forth from the mouth of God. Let us indeed be sure or as sure as men can be, that what we say from pulpits is the preaching which God commands in the written Word, but what we say does not have IN OUR MOUTH the power of a divine decree. The sound of our voice will not move a dead leaf, much less a soul dead in trespasses and sins. Only the effectual call of the Spirit can do that
Why then must we preach? Because it pleases God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. It is the voice of Christ sounding through the truth of His word preached, which reaches down into the sepulchres .of sin and the rottenness of the graves of those who are slain thereby, and raises the dead .
The hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God - and they that hear shall live. (John 5: 25)
Let the preacher labour as the poor mouthpiece. Let him not think that HIS faithfulness, HIS fervour, HIS gifts, HIS consecration, HIS prayers (or the prayers of his supporters) are the effectual cause of conversions. Above all, let Christians in these days of shallow and decadent evangelicalism cease to sing the praises of preachers as though there were something magical or specially meritorious which accounts for their 'success'. Whatever success attend our ministry is the decree of God. Into all faithful ministry there enter the elements of a man's consecration to the great end in view, his early rising, his hard and devoted labours, his sacrifice of his own interests, the agony of the consciousness of his own inability and the awful sense of his responsibility for speaking in the name of God. The ministry of the Word is a real thing, not a schoolroom exercise. It requires the total application of a man's soul. But let not that man, or any of his adulating admirers, say that this is the secret of his success, if any, or judge him if God does not please to raise him to prominence and fame.
Who is Paul? Who is Cephas? Who is Apollos? Are they not but the servants by whom we have believed? What have they which they did not receive by grace alone? Truly they ought to be loved and revered for their works' sake, for their faithfulness and zeal, for their pastoral devotion, for their sufferings for the gospel's sake, for their tender concern (as under-shepherds of the Great Shepherd) for the flock of Christ. For all this and more, let their name never perish or be slighted. “I will give men for thy life,” says the Lord to His Church, and let the peerless faith, ceaseless devotion, and selfless sacrifice of the Lord's true witnesses who have loved not their own lives even to the death that the truth of the Gospel might continue amongst us, witness to the love that Christ has for us. That He should give us such men as our ministers, is proof indeed of His grace toward us.
Let the sufferings of Paul, his ill-treatment at the hands of bitter foes and false friends, his stripes and imprisonments, in deaths oft, in hunger and nakedness, testify to us of what Christ must think of us, His sheep, that such men should be raised up who should fill up in themselves those sufferings of Christ which lie behind and beyond the cross, for His body's sake, which is the Church (Col 1:24).
If a man would be esteemed the true minister of Christ let him also be as Paul was, or as John – “our brother and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ”.
Let all preachers beware, however, of that falsity (common in our times) whereby a man rates himself as indispensable and arrogates to himself language and function which belong to Christ alone, as in the deplorable ease of that individual whose publications make his own name pre-eminent on every page, and the Name of Christ scarcely at all, who recently boasted, “If you pray for me, I believe God will help me to save many souls”.
Evangelism is not a matter of hiring the right man, choosing the right moment, spending the right amount of money, using the appropriate amount of publicity. Paul had none of this. Luther knew nothing about it. The mighty works of God in the gospel have never owed anything to money or organising skill. Those who think otherwise do not know their Gospel of John. Least of all do they know the first chapter with its glorious prologue on spiritual creation, with Christ supreme, the source and the sole glory of it all.
Nor have they understood John's fifth chapter with its description of the prerogative of Christ in raising the spiritually dead, nor the seventeenth with its probing truth about the secret of those who are destined to salvation, having been given to Christ before the world was, nor the last chapter with its governing word from the Almighty Redeemer – “Cast thy net on the right side of the ship” - and the consequent haul of the specific number, one hundred and fifty and three - which as we hope to show later in this series, is the exact mystical and prophetic number of the elect church of Christ.
If these things are not true, then let men look to themselves and. not to Christ, because God has abdicated His rule, creation has broken loose from the throne of the Almighty, and WE ARE LOST.
WORDS WHICH DESCRIBE THE WORD
We now proceed in our endeavour to exhibit the uniqueness of Christ in a new family of words which the inspired John introduces to theological thought, and which he brings up from the depths of that prophetic Word which God spake by all His holy prophets since the world began.
He begins with the word LOGOS (for those unfamiliar with the Greek - two short "o's", please! as in "cosmos"). This word of words we have already studied to explain. There are other vital and extraordinary words, which describe the unique glory, nature, and purpose of the Son of God in His incarnation.
Here in his Prologue, John presents Christ as the Life, the Light, the Unknown, THE ERKMOMENOS (the one who should come), the Shekinah, the Only Begotten. In a few graphic sentences full of these significant words, he presents a portrait of Christ which can only be interpreted as a portrait of absolute deity.
Pursuing the analogy of the first and natural creation, its light dispelling the darkness, glorious life appearing in manifold forms, he shows how in the New Creation (for which the Old was only the prelude or the overture) Christ is the only light and life, the glorious source and fountain of that new order in which the purposes of God are fully realised, and His manifold wisdom displayed.
The redemption of the Church through Christ is the means by which the nature and purpose of God are fully revealed. Paul writes “to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places, might be known, by the Church (i.e. by means of the redemption of God's elect) the manifold wisdom of God” (Eph. 3: 10).
Light is life -- eternal life: “In him was life and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). This light is knowledge and truth concerning God.
The light of which John speaks is not that of natural creation but of grace. This is the light which was promised in Isaiah: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light and they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined”(Isaiah 9: 2).
“For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee and his glory shall be seen upon thee”.
(Isaiah 60: 2)
The “light which shineth in darkness” is that eternal life “which was with the Father and which was manifested unto us" (1 John 1: 2).
“AND THE DARKNESS COMPREHENDED IT NOT” John 1:5
The darkness is spiritual - it is the ignorance and blight of sin and unbelief. It is the moral depravity of the human race through the fall of man. The inability of the human mind in its best state to grasp, understand, and receive the truth, is the substance of John's statement here.
John has a unique way of stating the evangelical doctrines. In his teaching there is no glimmer of suggestion that there is in human nature that which can respond to, or receive the light, apart from an act of divine mercy, selective and sovereign.
As the darkness of the original state of Creation in Genesis 1 could not bring forth the light or utter that commanding word which could bring life to the birth out of a dead and barren ground, so man is destitute of all ability of will or comprehension, to raise himself to God and life and truth. - The blight of sin hangs heavily upon all his faculties and desires. There is a love of darkness and hatred of light which can only be remedied by a sovereign act of electing and predestinating grace. This the scriptures clearly reveal, especially in the writings of Paul (Ephesians 1), and this was the basic principle in the restoration of the Church in the 16th Century - that great and dynamic episode in the Church's history known as the Reformation. It was the recovery of the doctrine of grace – absolute mercy, unconditional and undeserved - which enabled the Reformers to overthrow the antichristian darkness which so long had reigned in the visible Church.
“THERE WAS A MAN SENT FROM GOD” (vs. 6-8)
Most appropriately, John proceeds to show the historical means by which an All-Wise and All-Merciful God restored light and life in the darkness of this world. John the Baptist was sent primarily to the Jewish people, as the inheritors and custodians of the divine testimony in the world, that they, deeply fallen into the same darkness of unbelief, pride and sin, which had engulfed the heathen world, might experience first the saving grace of God. The Promised One silently comes. A child appears in their midst: “He came unto his own and his own received him not”.
The coming of John the Baptist in the purpose of redemption called together a nucleus of believing people from which should grow that glorious Kingdom destined to outlast and outgrow and overcome all other kingdoms of the earth – yet should be in midst of the earth, invisible and uncomprehended, a Kingdom and Church in which Christ should suffer and prevail and overcome, till all enemies be made His footstool:
“My Kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36)
“The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation” (Luke 17:20)
John the Baptist was “a burning and a shining light” but “he was not THAT light ....”
“That was the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (verse 9)
This introduces our next great word in the cycle of truth which John's Prologue unfolds, namely “The One who should come” or, as it is in the Greek:
THE ERKHOMENOS
Dominating the Gospel of John, as it also dominates the prophetic word throughout the O.T. scriptures, is this concept of Christ, “the true light that cometh into the world”. Our authorised translators, not surprisingly, had difficulty with this sentence, and, as was their wont, they reproduced the literal order of the words of the text and left it to theology and exegesis to unravel the truth contained therein.
The termination of the text (“that cometh into the world”) belongs not to “every man” but to “the true light”. Hence the text may be rendered,
“That was the true light (which should come into the world) which lighteth every man”.
In other words, John was not that light, for he could give no more than a testimony or a witness to the true light, who should come into the world, and who should, not by any reflected or borrowed light, but by Himself and from Himself, the true and only light and life of man, cause the darkness of mankind to be penetrated and illuminated by the bright rays of grace and truth of which He was the everlasting SUN.
The text does not teach that there is a light of reason or a light of conscience in “every man”. However much this may be true, it is not the meaning of this verse. “The light which lighteneth every man” is the same light already referred to several times in the preceding verses. It is that light which is the life of men and which shines in the darkness of a morally depraved creation.
The contents of this great verse are deeply rooted in the Old Testament prophecies, as we shall now proceed to show.
“Every man” does not mean all men born into the world, but mankind as such, considered in that portion of humanity enlightened by faith and drawn from all parts of mankind and from all ages, nations, peoples and tongues. It is the elect part which represents the whole. This is in distinction to the limited ministry of Old Testament time, when God suffered all nations to walk in their own ways, and tolerated their ignorance (Acts 17: 30) until the appointed time when light should arise upon all mankind. That time was the gospel time. “Now is the accepted time, behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6: 2).
“THE ERKHOMENOS” in John (“the One who should come”) is the LOGOS, the Everlasting Word, the Image of the Father, and the Revealer of the Godhead.
With our fallen race from its beginning, was this expectation of One who should come, who would destroy the Serpent’s dominion and be the head of a New Creation. This One was to be known also as “the Second Man, the Lord from heaven” (1 Cor. 15: 47)
“UNTIL SHILOH COME”
The first foreshadowing of His coming is in Genesis-3:15 – the great prophecy of the Seed of the Woman who was to destroy the Serpent's head (or dominion).
The prophecy found a yet clearer unfolding in the great promise of the Shiloh in Jacob's dying words in Genesis 49: 10: “UNTIL SHILOH COME”.
Shiloh (“the Man of Peace” who should make peace between earth and heaven), gave His name to Solomon, the Son of David, who in his unique wisdom, peaceful reign, and building of the Temple foreshadowed the greater Solomon who should arise from amongst his remote descendants. The name “Solomon” is a construction of the name “SHILOH”.
Luther, commenting upon the great Shiloh passage in Genesis 49, says: “This is a golden text and well worthy of remembrance, namely: that the Kingdom of Christ will not be such a kingdom as that of David, of whom it is said that he was a man of war. The Kingdom of Shiloh consists in this - that the Word by which it is ruled is heard believed and obeyed. All will be done by means of preaching: and this will be just the sign by which the Kingdom of Christ is distinguished from the kingdoms of this word which are governed by the sword and by physical power”.
Luther adds, “The kingdom will be realised by the proclamation of the promise. Shiloh will be present with it and will be efficient and powerful through our tongue and mouth”.
EZEKIEL AND THE SHILOH
The remarkable prophecy of Ezekiel (Chap. 21, verse 27) of the coming of Christ to set up His gospel kingdom on the ruins of the Davidic monarchy is. based entirely on Jacob's description of the SHILOH.
Here are Ezekiel's words:
I will overturn, overturn, overturn it (i.e. David's Kingdom) UNTIL COME whose right it is and I will give it to him.
The three fundamental letters of SHILOH reappear in the words underlined, as we shall endeavour to show by transliteration. The Hebrew for “whose right it is” reads:
ASHR LO HMSHPT (Literally, “which to him the judgment”)
The letters underlined read “Shiloh”. There are no vowels in the original Hebrew. Vowel “points” were added in a much later age.
Ezekiel’s prophecy denounces the wickedness into which David's successors had fallen and the consequent decree of God to “remove the diadem and take off the crown” (v. 25-26).This was to continue until Christ, the true Shiloh, should come, when the crown and kingdom of Grace (of which David's kingdom was but the foreshadowing, just as Aaron's priesthood was but the foreshadowing of Christ's true and eternal priesthood) - should be given to Christ.
This prophecy was fulfilled in the first advent of Christ when, having fulfilled the will of the Father in righteous obedience even unto the death of the Cross, Christ was raised from the dead and exalted to the right hand of God to be a prince and a Saviour (see Acts 5:31). It is a false and dangerous millennialism which teaches that Christ's reign does not begin till His second Advent.
Shiloh has come and been crowned King of the Ages. He now sits on the throne of heaven and earth, from henceforth expecting until His foes be made His footstool.
“TAANATH - SHILOH” in Joshua 16: 6 is a place specially named in view of Jacob's prophecy. The Hebrew signifies “The appearance of Shiloh” or “Shiloh shall come”.
There cannot, of course, be any doubt that the name Solomon was conferred by David upon his heir, in view of Jacob’s prophecy, for the root of the two names is the same and David foresaw that Solomon would be a type of Shiloh.
(See 1 Chron 22: 6-10).
The Bridegroom in the Song of Solomon is this same heavenly, Solomon or Shiloh, and the heavenly bride is “the Shulamite” whose name also is derived from Shiloh in the feminine form.
(See Song of Sol. 6: 13).
The angelic chorus announcing Christ's birth at Bethlehem borrowed their words from Jacob's prophecy. “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men” is a paraphrase of Genesis 49:10, where Judah (“Thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise”) means praise, or glory, and Shiloh means peace. The termination of the Shiloh prophecy, “to him shall the gathering of the people be”, reappears in the words of the angels, “Goodwill toward men”. This is a prophecy of the ingathering of the election of grace from all nations into the kingdom of Shiloh.
Contrary to the usual interpretation of the words of the angels, the chorus does not foreshadow a peaceful earth, but proclaims the setting up of the mystic, invisible kingdom of peace.
It is impassible to exaggerate the importance of Jacob's dying utterance. The “hidden meaning” in these prophecies of the Coming Redeemer is one of the gems of inspiration, and remarkable internal proof of the supernatural nature of the Holy Scriptures. Not Reuben the firstborn; not Levi from whom came the High Priestly succession; not even Joseph, that grand and good man - but Judah, sinful, erring Judah: this was the man the prophecy named as the progenitor of David, Solomon and Shiloh, at a time when no-one could have dreamed that the fourth son of Jacob and Leah would be the favoured one through whom the birthright would descend.
Here we have in the inspired words of the dying saint, as he leaned upon the head of his bed surrounded by his twelve sons, the promise which was to keep the light of God burning in the blackness of that long night when the people of God waited in Old Testament times for the dawning of the day of Shiloh. Here in the words of Jacob are the Coming of Messiah. His mysterious name, the characteristics of His life on earth, His sure and certain and worldwide triumph - all in covered language, so designed that only faith can receive it.
Had they known this hidden wisdom, this concealed Word, says Paul, “they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory” (1 Cor. 2: 8).
Why then should God proclaim His truth so enigmatically? Why not say it all plainly rather than conceal it in words and names which require hard searching and meditation?
Because His Word is hidden from the eyes of the wicked. “I thank thee Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden those things from the wise and the prudent and revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight” (Matt. 11: 25-26).
The message of God can only be received and understood by faith. Hence, prophecy is NOT merely “history written in advance”. It is that, but much more than that. It is the hidden Word of God shining in the darkness, to be sought after and longed for and grasped by faith alone.
There is a ministry from the Lord which hardens the heart of the wicked while it rejoices the soul of the righteous; which conceals truth from the one while revealing it to the other. Those who seek for godly pearls will find them - if they sell all that they might be possessed of them.
To these Christ will be unveiled in new and ravishing beauties and they will sit down in the banqueting house to eat and drink with the Beloved.
“Judah”, said the dying patriarch, as his prophetic eye saw beyond the solemn figure of his principal son, “Judah: thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise”. The dying saint saw in his noble son, the royal personage of heaven’s king who lay concealed in great Judah’s name.
ISAIAH'S “ERKHOMENOS”
Isaiah perceives in this Coming One none other than the Lord God Himself. In his 40th chapter he declares the comfort which is to come to the people of God, beginning with the ministry of John the Baptist – “the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness”. The glory of the Lord would be revealed; to the cities of Judah would be proclaimed this word “Behold your God.”
“Behold, the Lord God will COME....” (Isaiah 40:10)
Again he declares. “The redeemer shall COME to Zion” (Isaiah 59:20)
This “coming” of the Redeemer to Zion is the first ADVENT, not the second, or away goes John and prophecy, and away goes the hope of the gentiles.
It is in Malachi, however, that the promise of the Coming One is most clearly and categorically declared, as we should expect in the book which closes the canon of O.T. scripture.
MALACHI'S “NEXT EVENT”
THE ERKHOMENOS is “the next event” in Malachi's prophecy. John the Baptist is clearly seen as the forerunner in the spirit and power of Elijah:
“Behold, I will send my messenger and he shall prepare the way before me: And the Lord whom ye seek SHALL SUDDENLY COME to his temple, even the messenger (Angel) of the Covenant whom ye delight in: behold HE SHALL COME, saith the Lord of Hosts” – Mal. 3:1.
John the Baptist dwelt deep in this verse. In it he saw his own identity and perceived himself contrasted with the great, the ineffable, the Eternal One: - the Angel of the Covenant, the Unveiler and Revealer of God, who was with God and who also was God. Here in the one verse are the two “Messengers” - the human and the divine, the earthly and the heavenly.
“For him (John the Baptist) this passage was, as it were, the basis of his existence, the programme of his appearance, the defining of his position with respect to Christ”. Dr. Hengstenberg)
Hence the doctrine of the ERKHOMENOS runs through the ministry of the Baptist.
“HE THAT COMETH after me is mightier than I” (Matt. 3:11).
“Art thou HE THAT SHOULD COME, or look we for another” (Matt. 11: 3).
Three times in the first chapter of John's gospel, the Baptist uses the word (15, 27, 30).
The apostle John’s uses the same word constantly in reference to Christ:
“He that cometh from above is above all” (3: 31).
“This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world” (6: 14).
“I know that thou art the Christ the Son of God, that should come into the world” (11: 27).
The woman of Samaria says “I know that Messias cometh which is called the Christ”. (4: 2.5)
So, to revert to our text (John 1: 9), it is conclusive that when John declares, “That was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world”, he is referring to Christ as the one who should come, and that this would be the mark by which He should be identified - that His coming would lighten the whole world. This has been fulfilled in the gospel which has gone forth into all the world. Incidentally, it is a most valuable key to the interpretation of all prophecy.
The true light which was to come into the world to shine out in this world's darkness was to be known and recognised by its complete contrast with all other lights. The prophets were lights in their day, as also was John the Baptist, but they were not THAT LIGHT, the true promised “light of lights”.
This glorious Light would appear, said the prophecies, to lighten all ages, all time, and all peoples. When darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people, then would appear that bright uprising of the Sun of Righteousness (Mal. 4: 2). The light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4: 6), would enlighten not just a Jewish fragment of the human race but would cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.
If these promises have not already been fulfilled in Christ, we are without the final proof that He is our Promised Deliverer and Redeemer.
The fulfillment of that Word is the most formidable proof that He is Lord and God, Jehovah and Saviour, the Word that was with God and was in fact God.
THE SHEKINAH
John 1: 14 – “The Word was made flesh and DWELT among us … full of grace and truth”.
The remarkable word translated “dwelt” in our Version, occurs in this, its verbal form, only in Join's writings. It is the common word used as a noun in the Septuagint (the O.T. translation in Greek) and in the, New Testament for the Tabernacle - the tent raised by Moses in the wilderness according to the divine specification given to him on Mount Sinai and used as the centre of worship for the tribes until the days of Solomon when the Temple was built to replace it.
The noun means “a dwelling place” and is compounded from three Greek letters (SKN) corresponding with the same three letters in the Hebrew denoting a tent or dwelling place.
There is no doubt whatever that the Greeks derived their word from the same Hebrew source.
The rabbinical period (between the two testaments) saw the development of the Hebrew form of the word into “Shekinah” (note the SKN) a manufactured word used by the rabbis to denote the appearance of the glory of the Lord between the golden cherubim which, in the Mosaic tabernacle, overshadowed the “Mercy Seat” or “place of propitiation for sin”, beyond the inner veil of the sanctuary.
Into this Most Holy region, only the High Priest penetrated, and that but once a year as he carried the blood of the sacrifice on the annual Day of Atonement, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.
This appearance of the glory of the Lord between the cherubim is referred to by David in Psalm 80:1 “Thou that dwellest between the cherubim” (See also King Hezekiah in 2 Kings 19: 15).
This glorious symbol of the Divine Presence is fully developed by the prophet Ezekiel in his vision of the glory of the Lord departing from the temple at Jerusalem prior to the Chaldean judgment.
“Upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it, And I .saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord”. (Ezekiel 1: 26-28)
This splendid enlargement of the Shekinah appearance in Ezekiel's vision with its foreshadowing of the incarnation in the “appearance of a man above upon it” prepared the way for John's use of the word: “The Word was made flesh and DWELT (SKN) among us” (John 1:14).
Only here and four times in Revelation (7:15; 12:12; 13:6 and 21:3) is the verb used in this form in the N.T. In the last reference we have the words -
And. I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men and he will dwell (SKN) with them and they shall be his people and God himself shall be with them and be their God.
Here is the final development of the glorious word which we have been examining.
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