Accordingly, when he visibly appeared incarnate among men, he spoke of the temple as representing his body. "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.... But he spake of the temple of his body." John ii. 19, 21. And John, describing the Messiah as he appeared visibly incarnate, says the WORD was God--was in the beginning--created all things. "The WORD became flesh and dwelt [literally, tabernacled] among us, and we beheld his glory." John i. See also the Epistle to the Hebrews, especially chap. viii-x., where the Mosaic tabernacle of witness, as it is called in Numbers and Acts vii., is in all its essential characteristics and objects contrasted with the person and office-work of Christ as he appeared incarnate,--"a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle, [his human nature,] which the Lord pitched and not man,"--in fulfilment of the things signified and prefigured in the tabernacle of witness, "which was a figure for the time then present." "But Christ being come, ... by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, ... by his own blood entered once into the holy place, [heaven as prefigured by the holy of holies within the veil,] having obtained eternal redemption for us;" _i. e._, by the offering of his own blood as an atoning sacrifice for sin, as prefigured by the sacrificial shedding of blood in the Levitical service and the patriarchal worship. "He entered not, when he offered himself a sacrifice, into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself. Nor yet did he offer himself often, as the high priest entered into the holy place every year with blood of others, but now once at the end of the Levitical economy, he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." After he had once offered himself a sacrifice for sin, he ascended, and "sat down on the right hand of God, thenceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. Having therefore boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living [life-giving] way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; and having an High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith." The foregoing observations and references show, in some degree, how Moses and his inspired successors wrote of the Messiah. CHAPTER XIII. Of the Chaldee Paraphrasts--Their method of designating the Personal WORD or Revealer--Occasion and Necessity of it.