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Gen. 1: introduces the Jubilee element on the opening page of Scripture, and this
feature is enforced by parallel heptads as the following list will show:
DAYS
Seven days of creation, ending in a sabbath of rest (Gen. 1: 2, 3).
WEEKS
Seven sabbaths to the morrow. Pentecost (Lev. 23: 15, 16).
MONTHS
Seven months complete the festal year (Lev. 23: 24-44).
YEARS
Seventh year kept as a sabbath.
JUBILEE
Seven seven years, liberty proclaimed (Lev. 25: 8-10).
CAPTIVITY
Seventy years, which lead on to the seventy sevens (Dan. 9: 1-23).
PROPHETIC
Seventy sevens, Gentile dominion, Israel's restoration (Dan. 9: 24-27).
It is abundantly evident that the vision given Moses of the six days work and the
seventh day's rest of the creation and restoration of the earth as a dwelling-place for man
was intended to be typical, setting forth in this first of a series, the redemptive purpose of
the ages. The heaven of Gen. 1: 1 lies entirely beyond the limits of the firmament of
Gen. 1: 6 and will never pass away. Through these limited and stretched out heavens the
Saviour passed at His ascension (Heb. 4: 14 dierchomai "to pass through"), was made
"higher than the heavens" (Heb. 7: 26), and "ascended up far above all heavens"
(Eph. 4: 10). These words are emptied of meaning unless we perceive that "far above"
the stretched out curtain or firmament, there remains unaltered by the advent of sin and
death, the "heaven of heavens" (I Kings 8: 27).
What is the significance of this teaching concerning the present heavens? Because
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob looked for a city which hath foundations, they were content to
dwell in tabernacles as tent-dwellers, and by so doing declared plainly that they sought a
heavenly country (Heb. 11: 9-16). They "sojourned" in the land of promise, the word in
both the English and the Greek suggests a temporary residence. "We are strangers before
Thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, there
is none abiding" (I Chron. 29: 15). David in Psa. 39: 12 says:
"For a sojourner I am with Thee
A settler like all my father" (Young's Lit. Trans.).
It is that expression "with Thee" that is so startling. We can understand Abraham and
David being sojourners, but in what way was the Lord Himself associated with such a
mode of living? Shaken, the word translated "dwell" in Exod. 25: 8 and Gen. 9: 27
and in Job 18: 15 means to dwell as in a tent or a tabernacle and consequently, many
of the passages which speak of God "dwelling" imply that He too, during the outworking
of the purpose of the ages, He too, shares with His redeemed this attitude of heart; He
too dwells, as it were in a tent, until the Day of glory dawns, and sorrow and sighing flee
away.
Every one of us who have been redeemed, and have consequently set our affection on
things above, who look for our equivalent of a heavenly city and heavenly country, every
one of us can have the overwhelming joy of knowing that God Himself is with us in our