In the Old Testament, the altar was a place where people would offer sacrifices to God as atonement for sin (Lev. 9:7). But in the New Testament times, we no longer need an altar because Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross as an atonement for our sins (Heb. 9:26) means that altars are no longer necessary. So now, we have the pulpit, which has become the place where God’s word is delivered to us. Both the altar and the pulpit are vertical in the sense that an altar is a place where people offer sacrifices upward towards God. The pulpit is where the word of God comes down from him to his people.

Altars were made of various materials such as bronze (Exo. 39:39; 1 Kings 8:64), gold (Exo. 40:5), earth (Exo. 20:24), stone (Exo. 20:25), and wood (Exo. 27:1). They were for the cleansing of sin (Lev. 9:7). Things sacrificed on the altars included rams (Exo. 29:18), lambs (Exod. 29:38), calves (Lev. 9:8), goats (Lev. 16:18) turtledoves (Lev. 1:14-15), incense (Exo. 30:1, 27), and grain (Lev. 14:20). In the offering on the altar, blood was applied to the altar (Exo. 24:6; 29:12; Lev. 1:5) as well as the blood flowing from the offering. They were holy (Exo. 40:10) since they dealt with speaking to God via a sacrifice where a person’s sins were cleansed.

Presently in some churches such as the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, there still have altars. They exist because in those churches, the idea that the Lord’s supper is, in some way, the actual body and blood Christ. Therefore, when it is presented in the church service, it is considered is for the sacrifice, and sacrifices need altars.

The Bible does not mention pulpits (Latin pulpitum: platform) because Christians did not have established buildings and they were largely persecuted. Early preaching was done in open-air locations and sometimes in synagogues. The concept of a pulpit, or of a platform from which messages were delivered, was familiar to both the Romans and the Greeks of biblical times. But, it was not until the 300s that Christian church buildings became common in the Mediterranean area and pulpits became part of the construction. In Christianity, they have become places in churches where a pastor speaks from the word of God to the people. They usually have raised platforms and can be constructed of many different materials, shapes, and sizes. In Protestant Christianity, most often, they are at the front and center of a church, which symbolizes the centrality and importance of God’s word.