Where was the tabernacle before Solomon built the Temple?
The tabernacle was constructed in the wilderness of Sinai, carried through the forty years of wandering and into the Promised Land, and for years afterward it remained a temporary tent pitched north of Jerusalem until Solomon built the permanent Temple.
Les explains that God gave Moses instructions for building the tabernacle while the Israelites were still in the wilderness of Sinai. When the tabernacle was finished, the Shekinah glory came down upon it, and every time the glory lifted and moved, they took down the tabernacle and followed it. After the forty years of wilderness, they brought it into the Promised Land. For years it sat as a temporary little tent north of Jerusalem. Eventually God gave David, and then through his son Solomon, permission to build a permanent dwelling place, which was Solomon's Temple. That was all part of the giving of the Law to the nation of Israel, not to the Gentiles.