Posted by Yong TM (192.169.41.41) on March 11, 2003 at 01:41:09:
In Reply to: The Ark posted by Bel on March 10, 2003 at 12:38:51:
You have made a very good observation.
The Bible is progressive revelation. Clearly the revelation of the Old Testament was not complete, and in God's wisdom, the complete revelation was made in the New Testament. In the lessons that the LORD wanted mankind to learn, progressively, it moved from the physical temple to the true meaning of worship, as declared by Christ to be truth and in spirit (John 4:24).
But I need to tell you that symbols are still very important to people. So there is always a great temptation to build a huge and glorious church 'for the glory of God'. People somehow need to look at something. In the Old Testament, it was the ark. Now, it is probably a church leader wearing a certain symbolic garment, a cross, stained glass windows, a large church building, whatever. Titles like 'Elders', 'Rev', etc are important to people, who needs such psychological anchors.
I do tend to see all these things as tools. I do believe that we need to focus on witnessing for Christ through outreach and alleviation of poverty that I have told many people that if I ever were to pastor a church, I may consider calling the church the 'four-walls church' because I would want that church to be as simple as having 4 walls without any fanciful anything. But I really wonder how many people can take that sort of teaching. I do agree with your overal observation, but for the weakness of others, I suppose forms of the 'ark' would still be needed. Clearly it is not something that God needs, but something that man needs.