What may be regarded as an allusion to the underlying idea of Church is found in Genesis 28:12, 17, in the account of Jacob's experience at Bethel, when he dreamed of a ladder which reached from earth to heaven, on which the angels of God ascended and descended, and received the assurance of God's presence with him "in all places whither thou goest." And Jacob said, "This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."
Thus, the earliest indication of the meaning of Church was not a building, a doctrine, or an organization, but a spiritual revelation of the presence of God with men. Here it is seen that the idea preceded the temples and organizations which later came into being. The ladder in Jacob's vision represented the ascension of human thought to God, and the inflow of divine inspiration in return, which must ever be the true function of Church. But the human tendency is to symbolize mental concepts in some outward form, and so we find that Jacob set up a stone to commemorate his experience.
Moses came down from Sinai to build the ark and the tabernacle, the former as a sign of God's covenant with Israel, and the latter as a shelter for the ark and a place where, in their belief, the people might meet with Jehovah. "And there I will meet with the children of Israel, and the tabernacle shall be sanctified by my glory." Later, in the more pretentious temple of Solomon, the spiritual idea was overshadowed by the material splendor of the symbol, and by its ritual and ceremony, until devotion to these to a large extent replaced the spiritual purpose of the temple service. This substitution of the shadow for the substance, and the subsequent rejection of the Messiah, finally resulted in the destruction of the third and last temple soon after the crucifixion of Jesus.
