God's Tabernacle: From Strange Work to Eternal Dwelling

"The tabernacle of God is with men" (Revelation 21:3). Joseph S. Exell observed that the present world presents a paradox: philosophers from Ray Lankester to John Stuart Mill cannot agree on nature's character. Yet Scripture resolves this tension. Elohim created the world "very good"—a cosmos of harmony, loveliness, and blessing where "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy" (Job 38:7).

What changed? Exell calls God's current governance a "strange work"—labor seemingly at variance with His glorious character. The sweating, groaning, bleeding, and dying that mark our age do not belong to God's eternal order; they are consequences of violating His laws, not expressions of them. Suffering exists "locally and temporally for ends of discipline"—lesser evils permitted and overruled to prevent greater ones.

Yet Revelation 21 unveils restoration: God's tabernacle returns to dwell with humanity. The antagonism between Creator and creation, between divine justice and human rebellion, ends. What began as a cosmos of pure goodness, fractured by sin into a world of strange judgments, culminates in reconciliation. When God tabernacles with His people eternally, the strange work concludes. The original blessing—unmarred by consequence or discipline—returns. This is not escape from creation but its healing, when Adonai's dwelling place and humanity's home become one.