The Holy Place - the three divisions of the Tabernacle

THE HOLY PLACE the three divisions of the Tabernacle by Steve Myntti

In the past several decades many Christians found a new spiritual dimension. They had entered the division of the tabernacle called the holy place; this is, the middle section of the Tabernacle. ( In the OT this division of the Tabernacle is sometimes called the inner court (as opposed to the outer court) or the outer sanctuary (as opposed to the inner sanctuary, the Holy Place). It is thus both a court and a place of ministry. I call it the middle court although this is somewhat of a misnomer.) They had a powerful personal experience with God that would often be called the baptism in the Holy Spirit. They discovered from personal experience that God actually was present in the lives of people today and could do great works of healing and restoration of the body and the soul as he did in the time of Christ and the early church. He even spoke to people in prophesy, visions, and words of knowledge. Christians who had spent years in a denominational church discovered the reality of the body of Christ and began to minister to each other in true agape-love equipped with spiritual gifts, edifying and strengthening the body of Christ. They discovered that there was more to being a Christian than they ever thought or dreamed. They had never imagined that God could be so good and bestow such blessing on mortal man or that walking with Jesus could be so glorious. Many people gifted in leadership wanted to serve God and minister this message to the church at large and to use their spiritual gifts to build up the church.

This was the beginning of many Christian movements and much Christian activity of recent times. Those who had discovered this dimension of the Christian life had entered the middle court or the holy place in the Tabernacle. Our path to Christian maturity consists of three phases: childhood, young manhood, and fatherhood ( I John 2.13-14, 18). These phases correspond to the three parts of the OT tabernacle: the outer court, the middle court (or the holy place), and the holiest place (or the holy of holies). Under the Law of Moses God commanded Israel to build a tabernacle for the purpose of conducting the priestly ministry. In it we find a revelation for the church of Jesus Christ regarding God's purpose for his people individually and for his people corporately in the church age.

life in the middle court
So we entered the middle court and we spent (or have spent) quite a few years there. What are some of the things that we experienced in the middle court? Right now some of us are looking back to those early days with nostalgia (and some are not). I will try to list a few of the things that characterized our life in the middle court:
camaraderie
deliverance
envisioning
community
acceptance
evangelism and other outreach
spiritual gifts
healing
worship & praise
joy
exuberance
personal growth
excitement
caring
building up the body
exhortation
teaching
prophesy
ministry undertakings

Life was on the whole quite pleasant in the middle court. We all probably remember the large gatherings for praise, worship, teaching and exhortation. We were on the move; we had a sense of destiny; we were not static like the churches many of us had previously known. Our lives had new direction and purpose. People began to care for each other and minister to each other in agape-love. God granted a time of refreshing. We embraced world-wide visions for ministry and outreach. We thought it within our reach to conquer the world for Jesus.

Our minds were being renewed. As we received the teaching that came forth we were freed from the prison of the secular humanistic mind that many of us possessed or of the religious mind - including the evangelical, fundamentalist, Pentecostal mind - that we had cultivated for so long. Much understanding of biblical truth - the body of Christ, God's end-time purposes, spiritual gifts - was imparted. We also saw examples of God's healing power. We experienced powerful exuberant worship and praise. God spoke to us with powerful prophesies and visions in gatherings large and small.

God truly poured out his blessings on many people in those days. And we expected life to remain as glorious as it now was and even to become more glorious.

why we retreated
A work of God had begun. People were born spiritually; we saw God's mighty deeds of power; the enemy was being overcome; we were ready to change the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. But that never happened. If we are honest enough to admit it, our middle court experience has not been what we initially expected. Instead the middle court began to deteriorate and we began to retreat from it or perhaps settle down in it to less that what we expected at the beginning. Let's take a look at some of the negative things that we experienced later in the middle court:

Discouragement set in when the novelty of everything wore off and we were faced with a less than glorious reality. The results that we expected did not happen as quickly or as successfully as we may have wanted. Many of us later found that previous pursuits in life - our business, career, education - very inviting after we had encountered discouragement or lack of results. We forgot all our many resolutions to be true to Jesus and to live for him and we lost sight of all the visions that had stirred our souls and to which we had earlier committed our destinies.

Lack of unity. Unity of Christians was highly desired in the middle court. There were attempts made at cooperative ministry or even merger by different fellowships and churches. But when it came time to working together, much of the time different groups could not come together and work together. There were personality clashes and disagreement over methods, corporate vision, policies, and priorities. Men gifted in leadership would separate from each other, each would take part of an assembly and begin separate groups.

Desire for a private life. Often after several years of being heavily (probably overly) committed to a group and experiencing all the crises and inconveniences that came with it, many desired to have a comfortable, peaceful life in their own home, and a living standard similar to that of the rest of society. They also wanted it to include Christian values and a Christian environment for their children to grow up in. They began to equate God's purpose with their own interests. Many retreated to a more private life which would include a very limited number of people outside of their own families and limited participation in a more formal organized church life.

Failure to resolve personal problems. Others did not or would not resolve problems - such as addictions, abusive behavior towards others, love for material things, desire for status and approval in the world's eyes. They had been covered up or ignored for awhile because of our outward zeal and the appearance of godliness that accompanied membership in the group. But they could not be covered forever and they would eventually be revealed when an individual was at a point of decision or confrontation. We also gave up on people when we discovered that their problems were not resolved (while others gave up on us, also) and became more hesitant to reach out and help others.

Demagoguery. Some people wanted to personally profit from the zeal and commitment of young Christians not only financially but wanted rulership over them. They became leaders of churches and proceeded to manipulate and control people from their position of authority.

The cult of personality. This is similar to demagoguery. A person becomes the leader of a group and for all practical purposes becomes God to the group.

Scandals. The middle court was also a place of scandal and offense as the indiscretions and sins of people in positions of leadership were discovered. Things that we thought unthinkable among Christian people came to the light. The world did not remain ignorant of the scandals of middle-court Christianity and many of us were embarrassed by them. Many of us could not believe how much sin there was among the nationally known leaders in the middle court (to say nothing about what went on at lower levels). Because they are so well known I need say nothing more about it.

Treachery. I need only mention the word and many will be quickly reminded of certain experiences they had at the hands of other Christians. Things that were not ever dreamed possible of occurring in Christian circles did happen.

Outside religious influences. Some embraced non-Christian or quasi-Christian teachings.

As great and powerful as God's works were and as real as his presence was many nevertheless lost interest in them (and in him) and became preoccupied with pursuits that were not of him.

For these reasons a large number of middle-court people have retreated into the outer court and are living a religious lifestyle with church attendance, Bible study, a devotional life of some kind, church commitments, and occasionally wondering about what happened in the past. They may have stepped back into an outer-court church or perhaps stayed in the same church as it became an outer-court church. They departed from the middle court not fully realizing that they had done so.

the mixed court
The middle court turns out to be the court of mixture. It is here that the soul is both denied and pampered. Although it is very difficult for us to comprehend, we must realize that the middle court is a mixed court. It began with much good and some bad. It ends with much bad and some good. To some degree self will be denied and to some degree it will be catered to. Not everyone will deal with the problem of the self. The eyes of some will remain shut. There will be a reception of the love of the truth on the part of some and there will be a great disinterest in the truth and even a denial of truth by others. Sound teaching will be received by some and rejected by others.

If we are aware only of the good that happens we will have unrealistic expectations of the middle court and we will put our hope not in God but in our environment. If we see only the bad we will become very cynical and will not recognize God's presence in the middle court. Let me repeat: It is a mixed court; and its mixture of good and bad may fluctuate from place to place in the Christian world. Even if leaders rise to positions of recognition in ministry and then fall due to sin and immorality it is still a place where God does work.

Let me also firmly state that God was there in the middle court. Yes God was there despite all the sin, darkness, and confusion. Despite the discouragement and crises that we encountered in the middle court let us not lose sight of the fact that he was there. And God came face to face with the human flesh and all that it is capable of. He was not ignorant of what was happening in the middle court.

We were in the middle court and we saw all that was happening in it but it was with unrenewed minds (or with partially renewed minds) and unopened eyes (or partially opened eyes) that we saw. We were like Israel who saw God's deeds but did not know his ways (Psalm 103.7). At first we thought that we had found the real thing in the middle court. We thought that in the middle court we would find the solution for all that plagued the church in today's world - lack of zeal, dwindling numbers, secularism, materialism, immorality. We thought that Christianity in the middle court would be dynamic and appeal to the world and that multitudes of the world's population would become Christian. We envisioned very powerful outreaches to the nations of the world and overwhelming success for our efforts.

the outer court
This is the court that corresponds to childhood. It is the court that one enters upon being born from above. It has a basic salvation message; it is the place for basic formation, evangelism, sharing one's testimony, and encouragement. Later some people discover that there is something more to being a Christian and enter the middle court.

Not everything that appears to be of the middle court is of the middle court. The outer court sometimes would adopt features of the middle court such as the music, livelier worship services, some spiritual gifts, as well as some of the books and teachings. Some people in the outer court appeared to be in the middle court but were not; they had not actually entered it or experienced what God granted people in the middle court. Many Christians remained in the outer court, taking an interest in the middle court and considering the teachings and ministry of the middle court as an option or something which could benefit them with a certain need.

God's purpose
According to God's intention the following things are to happen in the middle court:
1. the denial of the self
2. renewing of the mind
3. receiving the love of the truth
4. receiving sound teaching
5. the opening of the eyes

God had a definite purpose in granting us a middle-court experience. The middle court is the place of edification or building. It is the place where we receive blessings from God so that we can be built together as the body of Christ and as God's temple. And God did move in it and he built up the saints. Our lives really did change. The lives of many were straightened out. There was legitimate cause for rejoicing. Let us not depreciate that phase of our lives if we are at present disillusioned with it and even if some bizarre things happened there. God was able to accomplish many remarkable things in this court despite the mixed motives of some people in it.

But the duration of the middle court is temporary; it is there to get the saints on their feet spiritually and to move on to the next phase. After a glorious, robust, joyous, even raucous time of edification and refreshing we found ourselves at a point of decision or even confrontation. God was calling us onward in his purposes; he wanted us follow him with a renewed mind and as knowers of the truth and to press on to maturity. He called us to true fellowship with himself. To do so he began to change the manner in which he dealt with us; for one thing he began to withdraw some of his external acts of blessing.

Despite its mixed nature God had his people in the middle court for a purpose for a limited time period. In that environment of mixture and strangeness his purpose is fulfilled in the lives of some people (but not all) in middle court. We were happy to receive God's blessings. We were glad to get on our feet and get our lives straightened out. In the midst of receiving many blessings from him God began to call us to look beyond our own interests, to embrace his purpose, and to be his servants. But when confronted with God's call to go forward to maturity and to his eternal purposes, many turned back. We preferred our own interests, to God's purpose. We either ignored what he said or we had little interest in this sort of message because it was not exciting enough for us.

how the middle court deteriorated
One of the important features of the middle court is the ministry of the word, the teaching of the truth of the gospel. The middle court begins with a real ministry of the word and enjoys God's blessing upon it as long as the word is taught and as long as the people of the middle court receive his word. But after awhile some will begin to pursue things that are not from God and which replace his call for them. Among them are the following:

1. intellectualizing and embracing worldly wisdom. We began to prefer our own natural, worldly, religious and secular wisdom, and we began furnishing the uncomplicated pristine middle court with the doctrines of men and religious tradition. We appealed to people's intellect in our attempts to evangelize and enlarge our group. We were willing to work for God but we wanted to do so with our own know-how, devising our own methods and trying to popularize Christianity. There was a group of thinkers who sought to explain and promote these movements to the church and to the outside world and to justify it using Scripture and logic.

Many Christians wanted to counsel others and help them get their lives in order. There was a great outpouring of one-on-one counseling. Much of it was the psychological wisdom of the world; some of it was just plain nonsense.

2. sensation. The middle court also becomes experience-centered at the expense of truth. We wanted to experience sensation, especially large-group sensation. We were excited when we heard prophesy, saw visions, and had inner experiences and became seekers of such experiences. The teaching on the baptism of the Holy Spirit degenerated into a promotion of any and all kinds of experiences which are said to be of the Holy Spirit but which were imitations. Many would accept any kind of manifestation by someone as being from God's Spirit. All kinds of visions and prophesies and other phenomena are accepted without question and without discernment.

3. inspiration and entertainment. Many ministries today merely entertain and inspire people with lofty thoughts about God and divine things. Their messages, testimonies, and music are there to inspire, to entertain, and to create satisfying large-group events. They create the impression that something great is happening in their midst because of the all ways in which people are being inspired, entertained, and blessed and because of all the feelings that are generated. But the ministry of the word of God is missing, the true gospel is hardly known, the church is not being built, and the believers are not maturing.

Many ministries in the middle court now merely cater to people's need for entertainment, problem-solving, and personal gain. It has become very crass. The real ministry of the word is replaced by verbiage - all kinds of ideas planted in the mind, both truth and error - and by advice given to others which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

4. the stimulation of great expectations. One of the features of Christianity today is the use of images to convey ideas and expectations that some great worldwide work of God is going to happen soon. Some of the images augmented by visions and prophesies depict fire burning, wind blowing, spirit breathing, rivers flowing, and lights shining. Meetings are used to bond individuals together and images that have no substance are used to keep the group together, the individual committed to it, and everyone expectant of some great move of God that will take place in the days to come. Commitment to God is equated with commitment to the group and its undertaking.

5. commissions, agenda, and movements. In conjunction with the above visions we launch out on a campaign of mass evangelism, church growth, national reform, political action, church renewal, or massive media outreaches. We wish to expand our work or to bring about massive political or social renewal in our nation. When the middle court loses the ministry of the word, people still try to minister messages that persuade others to do something such as make some kind of a commitment or decision for Christ or to respond to an appeal of some kind. This is accomplished through an intellectual salvation message, music, dramatic performances, appeals to one's reasoning, sharing testimonies, and promises of rewards and benefits.

6. lifestyle. Many began to want a Christian lifestyle and wanted the church to support them in their middle-class American lifestyle, to help them raise their families, and to help them solve personal and family problems. They no longer had a pioneering spirit that wanted to press on to know God and to seek new ground.

7. technique. Many forms of spirituality, exercises, and devotion - some of them borrowed from the New Age - were taught in the middle court. Different techniques were offered that were guaranteed to bring us in contact with the divine and grant some excitement and fulfillment, some inner experiences to make us think that we had touched God and were receiving blessings from him.

We were willing to embrace these techniques if they had the label 'Christian' attached to them. But these things were merely of the soul and cultural, and in some cases demonic, in nature. Some had been followed for many hundreds of years and had therefore been hallowed by the ages. And we would not have to break with the world and practice the denial of self required for true godliness. They offered us a sense of fulfillment and made us think that we were in touch with God. This was the replacement that came in when God was rejected, but we would not admit that it had happened.

the eyes open
Upon seeing all these things in the middle court, a big change began to occur in some people. They began to see beyond appearance to the reality of their Christian environment. Their eyes began to open to certain things around them and what they saw troubled them. They were no longer content with the number of people who were coming into their group or with all the activity that went on in it. They were no longer happy with other people in their midst merely because they professed Christ and took part in the worship and praise and were identified with the group. But they began to look beyond appearance to their own and others' motives and drives. They gained sight on a lot of things about their personal and corporate situation and on God's eternal purposes.

They later discovered that they were no longer one in spirit with the people around them. It was not something they had chosen to do but it had nevertheless happened. They may have been aware of problems and shortcomings in the middle court and tried to think of ways to solve them, but now they saw things with eyes opened and knew that problems were deeper than they imagined and required more than upgrading and innovation to be resolved.

After spending several years in the middle court many Christians began to gain their sight and life changed very drastically. At a certain moment in time we saw the reality of the middle court. That happens because God opened our eyes to see the nature of the middle court and the motives of the people in it - the dynamic that was at work in it. Up till then we lived with an ideal of what we thought the middle court was supposed to be and of what should happen in it. It was an ideal that we had imposed on the people and events in the middle court, an ideal influenced by our hopes and desires of what we wanted from God and of what we wanted to see there. And what we wanted to see was the reflection of our own self-centered religious interests.

We realize now how easily impressed we were by appearances in the middle court. There were many people in the middle court that had the appearance of godliness. Because we had seen so much blatant godlessness and sin in the world we thought that someone who looked godly therefore must be godly. They did remarkable things, built powerful ministries, spoke words of wisdom, and had much authority. It was the first time in our lives that we had heard people speak such words to us. We immediately thought that they were committed, sincere, righteous people, true men and women of God. But we learned some very difficult lessons when we saw that appearances were very deceiving. People that appeared godly were found guilty of serious sin and had severe problems. We were often distressed and embarrassed by what we saw.

We entered the middle court, thinking we would stay there forever and that we would have a middle-court spirituality and an enjoyable Christian lifestyle there with like-minded people. But we were ignorant of God's purposes. Some would discover to their great surprise that there was something beyond the middle court. God's purpose was not to be fulfilled in the middle court but in the place beyond the middle court, the holiest place. Even now it will be incomprehensible to many that this wonderful and yet not so wonderful thing could be of temporary duration.

We began to see what was really going on in the middle court. And we thought that it should not have happened as it happened. We expected that the true ministry of the gospel would produce a people that are more righteous, more loving, move zealous for Jesus, more committed. We had our ideal of what Christians should be like and what a Christian group should be like. And we compared what we saw with what we envisioned and there was such a discrepancy. We thought things should not be like they are.

The above statement is undoubtedly true. However things could not have turned out any differently. And God knew that on Pentecost, when he poured out his Spirit upon the church, a cadre of equipped commissioned faithful ministers of the gospel would go out into the world and would minister the gospel and would build a body of believers in each locality. He could see a people gathering unto Jesus from all the corners of the earth. He also knew what would come in the wake of the ministry of the gospel. He knew the many people would become professing Christians without being born from above. He knew that many who heard the gospel and believed would later be attracted by teachings and notions and trends that were not from Him. He knew that well meaning leaders would use their own natural wisdom in leading the people of God. He knew that the church would not turn out to be a pure righteous corporate people that we expected at least in the middle court.

He also knew that some Christians would later see the real nature of the middle court and wonder what to do about the situation in which they found themselves. This sequence of events had to happen because of the lawless element that is in many people who enter the middle court and that does not get dealt with by the cross. As people came face to face with Jesus Christ and also considered their priorities and the desires and inclination of their own hearts they would make certain decisions that would not reflect God's desire for them.

the point of decision
Whether we realized it or not, it was time to move on to higher ground. He was preparing us to progress beyond the middle court into the holy place. In his counsels God is bringing many of us to a point of decision. We can choose between that which we have created in the middle court or that which God is calling us to in the holiest place.

(Note from David Stewart: If you have enjoyed this article by Steve I would encourage you to contact him and let him know you would be interested in reading more from him. More articles or an entire web site may be in the future.)

Responses to this message can be sent to the writer at mintiev@juno.com

Copyright © 1998 Steve Myntti
June 29, 1998

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