«　WEEK 8　DAY 4　»

　　Gen. 12:8 And he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent…; and there he built an altar to Jehovah and called upon the name of Jehovah.

　　Heb. 11:9-10 By faith he dwelt as a foreigner in the land of promise…; for he eagerly waited for the city which has the foundations, whose Architect and Builder is God.

　　Abraham had his failures. In his history there was a forsaking of the altar and the tent; he went down to Egypt. But there was recovery. How did that recovery come about? Genesis 13:3-4 says, “He went on his journeys from the south even to Bethel, unto the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Hai; unto the place of the altar, which he had made there at the first: and there Abram called on the name of the Lord.” Recovery is a matter of returning to the altar and the tent. Have any of you failed? Have any of you slipped or betrayed your cause? Have any of you gone down into Egypt, so that now you have your own demands, your own hopes, your own interests, and your own aspirations? If you are seeking the way of recovery, you have to come back to the altar and the tent. (CWWN, vol. 37, “The Life of the Altar and the Tent,” p. 95)

　　Do not forget that Abraham’s history is yours. Do you not have a tent where you always have the Lord’s presence? The worldly people do not have such a tent. They only have a great city… They say, “Look at my corporation. Look at my education, my attainment. Look at how many things I have.” But we can say to the worldly people, “You have everything, but there is one thing that you don’t have—God’s presence…” When we have a tent with God’s presence, we have the deep sensation within that nothing here on earth is lasting. Everything is temporary. We are looking to eternity. The banks, the corporations, the attainments—all are temporal and mean nothing. We have nothing constant on this earth. I just like to have a tent with God’s presence… We may say to the worldly people, “…I don’t have as much as you have, but I have the one thing that you don’t have—God’s presence… I have His presence right now in my tent. My surroundings are a tent, a miniature of the New Jerusalem. This may not be worthwhile in your eyes, but in God’s eyes it means a great deal.”

　　Whenever we answer God’s calling and God reappears to us and we build an altar for God, telling Him that everything we are and have is for Him, we shall immediately erect a tent… By pitching a tent we declare that we belong to another country. We do not belong to this country; we are looking for a better one. We do not like this country, this earth, this world. We expect to come into another country. We are sojourning by faith as in a strange country (Heb. 11:9).

　　Abraham’s tent was a miniature of the New Jerusalem, which will be the ultimate tabernacle of God in the universe (Rev. 21:2-3). As he lived in that tent, he was living in a shadow of the New Jerusalem. While he was living there with God, he was waiting for a city, a city that eventually will be the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem, the eternal tabernacle, will replace that temporary tent in which Abraham lived. Abraham’s tent was a seed of God’s eternal dwelling place. This seed grew in the tabernacle erected by his descendants in the wilderness (Exo. 40), and its harvest will be the New Jerusalem, the tabernacle of God with man. God still needs to have such a seed in all of us. We all need to be those who live in a tent and who look forward to a better country, a country in which there will be the eternal tabernacle where God and we, we and God, will live together for eternity. (Life-study of Genesis, pp. 561-563)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Genesis, msgs. 41-44; CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 4, “The Crystallization-study of the Gospel of John,” ch. 13