The Rent Veil
For the Church, everything we need to know about who we are and where we are in the eyes of God is contained in the physical layout of the tabernacle. The crucial significance of the rending of the veil that separated the Holy place from the Most Holy place is apparently not understood by most Christians judging by the unscriptural doctrines that pass for orthodoxy. Let us look at that rent veil and the profundity of what it signifies for God’s people.
Up until the crucifixion of Jesus, the people of God, symbolized by the golden candlestick in the Holy place, were separated from the ark and mercy seat in the Most Holy place which typified the presence of God and His throne in the heavenly realm. The two chambers were separated by a veil embroidered with cherubim. This veil stood for the physical body of Jesus Christ which, during his earthly ministry, both illuminated the glory of God for those anointed to see it and veiled it off. At his crucifixion, the veil was split in two to signify that the purpose of God was accomplished for that physical body. This means that the Church is now in the same room as the throne of God. A mighty new reality was created for believers which is described in Hebrews 12:22-24. Old Jerusalem and her children are now superceded by the New Jerusalem and her children, the sons of God, Jew and gentile. Everything that had been natural and physical is now spiritual and heavenly while still on earth.
What we see in the history of the Church is an apostasy that sews back the veil creating a distortion in the gospel. The glorious reality that Jesus opened up to us has been closed off through the doctrines of men that center around the physical body of Jesus. These doctrines have believers focused on a desire to see Jesus in physical form either at the rapture, or in old Jerusalem or in that place they call heaven. They want to see Jesus anywhere but in the mirror.
The Father has revealed to me that one of the sad consequences of this unscriptural focus on the physical man Jesus is that it limits the scope of outreach. The images of Jesus conjured up by most Western Christians have been of a European-looking white man with flowing chestnut hair. Just check out every piece of art depicting Christ from the middle ages to the popular image hanging on the walls of many Christians’ homes. I am not trying to make the point that the historic Jesus instead had semitic features (which he most certainly had), but rather that Jesus Christ is now a Spirit man who is physically manifested in the flesh bodies of the full color spectrum of humanity. I know for a fact that many African Americans have converted to Islam because they reject a Christianity which focuses on the adoration of a white man. How many people turn to Islam, Buddhism, New Age or the occult for this same reason?
The question I have been asked regarding the Spirit man Christ Jesus is what happened to the flesh body of Jesus? Was it not resurrected? What the Spirit has shown me is that the physical structure that the disciples knew and loved was taken over by the resurrection power contained in Jesus’ inner man. Jesus, in that sense, was resurrected bodily but he was released from his identification with that one particular physical body in order to be able to inhabit, by the Spirit of resurrection, the physical bodies of each and every one of his Sons, we who are the children of the resurrection. In other words, the physical body that walked the shores of Galilee had served its purpose and was no longer the exclusive habitation of the Holy Ghost.
Christians who struggle with this need to ask themselves why the resurrected Jesus seemed to make it a point to appear in bodies that were unrecognizable to his disciples. He did this in the garden, he did this on the road to Emmaus, and he did it on the shore of Galilee as he prepared breakfast. (When he did appear with the wounds of the crucifixion, it was merely to help their unbelief.) Some have concocted theories that he was so illuminated that the disciples could not see his face. Really? Some have said he appeared at a distance or in atmospheric conditions that prevented the disciples from taking a good look at him. Really? The truth is that he was bringing home to them the reality that henceforth they were not to know him by the flesh but by the Spirit. He was saying: “Don’t look for that body you knew in Galilee. I have a new body. Yours!”
“Christ in you, the hope of glory…” Col 1:27