"Psalm 18 is one of these wonderful psalms; it's a psalm of David and it was sung in the day the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. It's actually repeated in II Samuel 21 and it's a picture of the Second Coming of Christ, the deliverance of Israel by their Messiah.
Verse 7: [7] Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth.
"God's wrath shakes the earth; that's the Second Coming," explains Richard Jordan.
[8] There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it.
[9] He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under his feet.
[10] And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.
[11] He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.
"Israel had a pavilion, a tent, a tabernacle made out of skin. You go inside of it and it's pitch-black dark. They had it all layered over and you couldn't see anything inside. That's why they had to have the seven-candelabra lamp stand. Without that there wasn't any light in it.
"God shrouds Himself in darkness. His presence is in the third little room back there; the Holy of Holies, and only the high priest could go in there. But the glory of God would fill that place.
"There's a supernatural manifestation of God's glory. Ezekiel sees it in Ezekiel 1. He sees this great light; it's like a rainbow. Instead of being a white light like that, it's all facets of the light refracted. Like the coat of many colors kind of thing and it demonstrated the glory and the majesty of God.
"When He wanted to demonstrate His glory to Israel that's what He did. You remember when they're in Egypt and He put darkness on the land? There's a verse that says it was darkness that 'could be felt.' Just completely consumed all of the light.
"There was a darkness that God laid on that land and then there was a supernatural light that He put in those houses.
"God has this glory that manifests Himself, but He blocks it off so that it can't shine down from the third heaven.
Job 26: [9] He holdeth back the face of his throne, and spreadeth his cloud upon it. [10] He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end.
"There's a sea up here and He puts clouds on it. Clouds make a pavilion of darkness, but when you see in Psalm 18 where it says 'He made darkness His secret place,' He hides himself.
"Genesis begins, [1] In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
[2] And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."God is light and darkness is the absence of Him. He literally put a tent around Himself. Now that tabernacle is the picture of something bigger. He made the tabernacle after the pattern in the heavens. Isaiah 40:22 says when He made the universe, He was making a tent to dwell in.
[21] Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?
[22] It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:
[23] That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.
"The third heaven is like that Holy of Holies in that third place in the tabernacle where He's boxed Himself off and creation can't see Him, except they have the light that He gives them; the candlesticks that show light on the table of shewbread.
"You know what's on that table of shewbread? Twelve loaves of bread in two rows of six each. So the light shines on the six six. Sixty-six. 'Man shall not live by bread alone . . .
"You see, I told you this stuff kind of gets weird. It just goes bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop.
"If you look back at verse 9, it says, [9] He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under his feet.
"I don't know how much you've studied Einstein's theory of relativity but what he postulated was that if you could bend the universe . . . One of the things he demonstrated is we don't live in space and time, but we live in space-hyphen-time. The time is an integral part of the universe we live in.
"If you could bend the universe like this, then you could reduce the time it takes to go across there, by going from here to here. You remember Star Trek and the Starship Enterprise where when they wanted to go somewhere, what speed did they go at? Warp speed, and you know how they defined warp speed? It was that you warped the universe; you warped the time shape of the universe and you created from this point to that point a worm hole (we call them a black hole) through which things are sucked.
"What they're theorizing has to do with an explanation of how you can travel, you know, 850 million light years in a span of just a moment. What they're doing is taking what we can understand from science and observe through the application of mathematics to the creation and they're working.
"Now Einstein, if had not been for this theory of relativity, we would not have gotten to the moon. Because he demonstrated that the closest route between two points is not a straight line but it's that curvature and that bend. But he wasn't saying, 'Travel the bend.' He was saying, 'Realize that you can go from here to there and you don't have to go that way--go this way.'
"That verse says, 'He bowed the heavens and came down.' You ever wondered how the Lord Jesus Christ can get, physically, with all the armies of heaven, from the third heaven which is millions of light years away, down to here, instantly like that? He knows something about travel; He knows something about worm holes and black holes and moving around.
"I'm just saying there's stuff about the universe long yet to be discovered and I tell you repeatedly, when you read something in the Bible and it doesn't make sense, chalk it up to your ignorance, not the Bible's.
"You read a word and you don't understand, chalk it up to the fact the Bible knows more about your language than you do. It knows more about things than you do. You say, 'I'm the ignorant one; I need to keep studying,' because you know what you do? You study and you find answers.
"If you work that out, you can see where that fire comes in and my point in Psalm 18 was that fire. That stuff's associated with the Second Advent over there. Fire is taking molecules and releasing the energy. Think about what fire does and the chemical catalyst involved in fire and what it does to creation."
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Here is a related study on the tabernacle's untold dimensions:
God’s original intention was to dwell with man in His Creation and then sin threw a monkey wrench into the plan.
“The great issue in the universe all along has been God dwelling in His creation and sharing His life with His creation," says Jordan. "The tabernacle God gave Israel is a foreshadowing of that. As the verse says, ‘The Lord chose Zion and desired it for his habitation. This is my rest forever; here will I dwell for I have desired it.’
“His intention is to put His throne in the city of Jerusalem on the hill of Zion; that special place in Jerusalem that was the dearest to David’s heart.
“The tabernacle, built by Moses, is a picture of the first coming of Christ and the temple, built by Solomon, is a picture of the Second Coming of Christ.
“The tabernacle was a temporary structure--made to be moved from place to place—but the temple was a permanent place built in the city of the great king, Jerusalem. Moses is the prophet who builds the tabernacle and it’s the king who builds the temple.
“The temple is the second meeting place; the tabernacle’s the first. The temple was renowned for its glory, majesty and beauty; it was like the city on the hill. People would come and marvel at its majesty.
“The tabernacle was just the opposite. It wasn’t built in the city; it was built for life in the wilderness. Not life in the kingdom reign of glory, but in the wilderness of nomad life. It was humble and unattractive in its outward appearance.
“When you walked up on the tabernacle, what you saw was a funny-looking wall made out of boards and skins and post. It was not outwardly attractive.
“What does Isaiah say about Christ in His first coming? ‘There was no comeliness about him.’ He was a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief.
“The tabernacle was a place where God’s majesty dwelt but it was veiled behind the skins of that building. I keep emphasizing that the building was made out of badger skins and goat skins and all kind of skins. Well, where does God put His life? If He puts it in you, where does He put it? He puts it in a body of flesh. That’s the idea back there.
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