1 Chronicles 22:1

"Handfuls of Purpose,"

For All Gleaners

"Then David said, This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of the burnt offering for Israel? 1 Chronicles 22:1 .

And yet not a stone of the building was laid! The reference is to the site whereon the temple is to be built. We read, "Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem in Mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father" ( 2Ch 3:1 ): the literal rendering would be, "which was shewn to David his father," the place being pointed out by the appearance of angels as the spot on which the temple was to stand. This is the very spirit of prophecy. We find all prophets impatient of time and space, and taking the future into their own hands, and dealing with it as if it were the immediate present. Say they: This is the place, this is the time, this is the means, a handling of time and space only to be understood by those in whom the spirit of prophecy resides. There are prophets, and there are those who understand prophets, and both the classes may be said to live upon the same intellectual plane. Some men are poets, others are only readers and lovers of poetry; yet those who love poetry are in a sense themselves poets, having the poetic instinct but not poetic expression. We are more than we show ourselves to be in words. The vividness of David's representation is singularly instructive, for David already seemed to see the temple and to be in the temple, and to know all the appointments of that sacred pile. It was the privilege of David to live in the future as if it were present. Is there not a sense in which we can all do this? May we not even now be in heaven as to all our highest desires and truest sympathies? Why speak of heaven as in the future, or in the distance? The apostle did not scruple to say, "Our citizenship is in heaven." Jesus Christ did not hesitate to declare that whilst he was upon the earth he was in heaven. And the glorious company of the apostles constantly declared that like Moses they endured as seeing the invisible, and their thoughts were intent upon a house not made with hands.