Tabernacle in the Wilderness 15 this illustration of that peculiarity seems to us rather to cap the climax. 3. And here, if we choose to go farther, it might be shown that, if this peculiar doctrine is true, then the Savior and all of his Apostles were mistaken. For certainly Christ (see Matt. 12:3, 4) and perhaps all the Apostles without exception, did believe in the Tabernacle as a real existence; and one of the Apostles, or at least an apostolic writer, went so far, in the Book of Hebrews, as to compose what may be termed an extensive and inspired commentary on that sacred structure—on its apartments, furniture, priesthood and serv ices ; bringing out particularly, from a Christian point of view, the rich typical significance of all those matters. Now that all these inspired men and the Savior Himself should either have been themselves deceived or should try to deceive others with regard to an important matter of Old Testament history is surely incredible. VII. EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 1. Just here, however, we desire to introduce some con siderations of a different nature. There exists, even outside of the Bible, a small amount of evidence in support of the Tabernacle’s existence, and although we have already alluded to a part of this testimony, under the head of favoring pre sumptions, yet it will bear repetition or rather a fuller consid eration. Now, as we conceive of this evidence, it consists, in the first place, of various notices or even of full descrip tions of the Tabernacle as a real existence, which are found in very ancient writings, some of these writings being quite different from our Christian Scriptures. To be sure, a large part of this literature is copied in one way and another from the Bible, and none of it dates anything like so far back in time as do at least the earlier books of the Old Testament; and yet, as we shall see, some of it is very old, sufficiently so to give it a kind of confirmatory force in support of what the Bible has to say concerning the matter in hand.
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