The following are my notes on Matthew B. Brown’s presentation at the recently held Expound Symposium that I participated in on May 14th (see my initial report on the event here). Matthew’s paper was intriguing — a very insightful treatment of temple-related topics that readers of this blog would surely find extremely interesting. My notes do not do it justice by any means, especially because my computer battery is so bad that I had to take notes by hand (gasp)!! So, keeping in mind that what few notes I am providing don’t nearly represent the breadth and depth of Matthew Brown’s wonderful paper, nor his own words verbatim, here goes (after the notes, I provide links to my and to Jeffrey Bradshaw’s papers, for those who haven’t seen them, as they both touch on some of the same temple themes as Matthew’s paper):
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Matthew B. Brown
“Cube, Gate and Measuring Tools: A Biblical Pattern”
There is a close relationship between the ancient Israelite temple and the book of the Apocalypse in the New Testament.
The holy of holies of the temple was based on a divine pattern that was revealed to Moses. What we know of the holy of holies can be compared to what we are told about the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation in Rev. 21. The New Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven is described as a gold cube, just as is the holy of holies of the temple.