Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth
ULTRA-DISPENSATIONALISM EXAMINED IN THE LIGHT OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
CHAPTER ONE
What is
Ultra-Dispensationalism?
"Study to show thyself approved unto God, a
workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth" (2
Tim. 2: 15).
PAUL'S exhortation to the younger preacher, Timothy, has
come home to many with great power in recent years. As a result, there has been
a return to more ancient methods of Bible study, which had been largely
neglected during the centuries of the Church's drift from apostolic testimony.
Augustine's words have had a re-affirmation: "Distinguish the ages, and the
Scriptures are plain." And so there has been great emphasis put in many
quarters, and rightly so, upon the study of what is commonly known as
"dispensational" truth. This line of teaching, if kept within Scriptural
bounds, cannot but prove a great blessing to the humble student of the Word of
God who desires to know His will or plan in His dealings with men from creation
to the coming glory. A careful examination of the volume of Revelation shows
that God's ways with men have differed in various ages. This must be taken into
account if one would properly apprehend His truth.
The word
"dispensation" is found several times in the pages of our English Bible and is
a translation of the Greek word "oikonomia." This word, strictly speaking,
means "house order." It might be translated "administration," "order," or
"stewardship." In each successive age, God gives to men of faith a certain
stewardship, or makes known to them a certain order or administration, in
accordance with which they are responsible to behave. A dispensation then is a
period of time in which God is dealing with men in some way in which He has not
dealt with them before. Only when a new revelation from God is given, does a
dispensation change. Moreover, there may be degrees of revelation in one
dispensation; all, however, having to do with a fuller unfolding of the will of
God for that particular age. This was very definitely true in the dispensation
of law, from Moses to Christ. We have the various revelations: of Sinai, both
the first and second giving of the law; then added instructions during the
wilderness years; the covenant with David; and the revelations given to the
prophets. The circumstances in which God's people were found changed frequently
during this age of law, but the dispensation itself continued from Sinai until
Jesus cried, "It is finished." It is important to have this in mind, otherwise
the vast scope of an ever unfolding dispensation may be lost sight of, and one
might get the idea that every additional revelation of truth in a given age
changed the dispensation, whereas it only enlarges it.
One may
illustrate a dispensation in a very simple way, remembering that the word
really means "house order," and I might add, the Greek word has been
Anglicized, and we know it as "economy." Let us suppose a young woman whom we
will call Mary, is going out into service. She obtains a position in a humble
home belonging to a good family of the working class. There are certain rules
governing that home which she must learn to observe. All perhaps is not plain
to her at once, but as time goes on, she learns more and more fully the desires
of her mistress. We will say she is to rise at five every morning and begin to
prepare the breakfast and put up the lunches for those who go out to work. At
six she is to ring the rising bell; at half-past six the family are supposed to
be at the breakfast-table; and at seven they leave for work. Dinner of course
is at a certain hour at night, and in the meantime she has her different duties
to perform in keeping the house in order. She learns quite thoroughly the
domestic economy of this particular home and becomes a well-qualified household
servant. Now let us suppose that later on she finds that a cook and housekeeper
is needed for the large mansion on the hill. She applies for the position and
is accepted. Moving in, her mistress undertakes to instruct her in the economy
of the new home, but Mary says, "You need not give me any instructions, Ma'am,
I know exactly how a house should be run. just leave it to me and everything
will be attended to properly. I have had some years of experience in
housekeeping and I would not have asked for the position if I did not know what
was required." Her mistress is dubious, but, for the time being, acquiesces.
The next morning, the waking-gong sounds at six o'clock. The family,
who are accustomed to banker's hours during the day and are given to very late
hours at night, are astonished and chagrined at being aroused so early. The
mistress calls down to the housekeeper, "What does this mean?" and learns that
breakfast will be on the table in half-an-hour.
"Why, Mary," she exclaims;
"we never breakfast here until half-past eight."
"But the breakfast is hot
and the lunches are all ready, Ma'am."
"No one carries lunches in this
home. You see, Mary, you do not understand the arrangement here. I shall have
to instruct you carefully today." And poor bewildered Mary learns the
importance of dispensational truth!
The illustration, I know, is
crude, but I think any one will see the point. God had one order for the house
of Israel. There is another order for the house of God, the Church of the
living God today. There will be a different order in the millennial age, and
there have been varying orders in the past.
All this comes out clearly
in the pages of Holy Scripture, and is certainly involved in the expression in
our English Bibles, "rightly dividing the Word of Truth." Of course, this
expression is not by any means to be limited to dispensational teaching. It
also implies putting each great doctrine of the Word in its right place. It has
been translated, "cutting in a straight line the Word of Truth," that is, not
confounding or confusing things that differ. It even suggests the thought of
honestly facing the Word of Truth.
It is right here then that we need
to be careful, and not read into the Word of God ideas out of our own minds
which are not really there. Through doing this, some have ignored
dispensational truth altogether. Others have swung to an ultra-
dispensationalism which is most pernicious in its effect upon one's own soul
and upon testimony for God generally. Of these ultra-dispensational systems,
one in particular has come into prominence of late years, which, for want of a
better name, is generally called "Bullingerism," owing to the fact that it was
first advocated some years ago by Dr. E. W. Bullinger, a clergyman of the
Church of England. These views have been widely spread through the notes of
"The Companion Bible," a work partly edited by Dr. Bullinger, though he died
before it was completed. This Bible has many valuable features and has been a
help in certain respects to God's servants who have used it conservatively, but
it contains interpretations which are utterly subversive of the truth. Some of
Dr. Bullinger's positions are glaringly opposed to what is generally accepted
as orthodox teaching, as, for instance, the sleep of the soul between death and
resurrection; and it is a most significant fact that while he did not
apparently fully commit himself to any eschatological position as to the final
state of the impenitent, most of his followers in Great Britain have gone off
into annihilation, and there is quite a sect in America who began with his
teaching who now are restorationists of the broadest type, teaching what they
are pleased to call universal reconciliation, which to their minds involves the
final salvation not only of all men, but of Satan and all the fallen angels.
These two views, diverse as they are, are nevertheless the legitimate offspring
of the ultra-dispensational system to which we refer.
The present
writer has been urged by many for years to take up these questions, but has
always heretofore shrunk from doing so; first, because of the time and labour
involved, which seemed out of all proportion to the possible value of such an
examination; and secondly, because of a natural shrinking from controversy,
remembering the word, "The servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle
unto all men, apt to teach, patient; in meekness instructing those that oppose
themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging
of the truth." But the rapid spread of these pernicious views and their evident
detrimental effect upon so many who hold them, has led to the conclusion that
it would be unfaithfulness to God and to His people if one refused to seek to
give any help he could in regard to these teachings.
Briefly, then,
what are the outstanding tenets of Bullingerism and its kindred systems? For
one needs to remember that a number are teaching these ultra-dispensational
things who declare that they are not familiar with the writings of Dr.
Bullinger, and repudiate with indignation the name of "Bullingerism." There are
perhaps six outstanding positions taken by these teachers:
First,
inasmuch as our Lord Jesus was "a minister of the circumcision to confirm the
promises made to the fathers," it is insisted that the four Gospels are
entirely Jewish and have no real message for the Church, the Body of Christ.
All might not put it quite as boldly as this, but certainly their disciples go
to the limit in repudiating the authority of the Gospels.
Secondly, it
is maintained that the book of Acts covers a transition period between the
dispensation of the law and the dispensation of the mystery; that is, that in
the book of Acts we do not have the Church, the Body of Christ, but that the
word "ekklesia" (church, or assembly), as used in that book, refers to a
different Church altogether to that of Paul's prison epistles. This earlier
Church is simply an aspect of the kingdom and is not the same as the Body of
Christ!
Third, it is contended that Paul did not receive his special
revelation of the mystery of the Body until his imprisonment in Rome, and that
his prison epistles alone reveal this truth and are, strictly speaking, the
only portion of the Holy Scriptures given to members of the Body. All of the
other epistles of Paul, save those written during his imprisonment and the
general epistles, are relegated to the earlier dispensation of the book of
Acts, and have no permanent value for us, but were for the instruction of the
so-called Jewish church of that time.
Fourth, the entire book of
Revelation has to do with the coming age and has no reference to the Church
today. Even the letters to the seven churches in Asia, which are distinctly
said to be "the things which are," are, according to this system, to be
considered as "the things which are not," and will not be until the Church, the
Body of Christ, is removed from this world. Then, it is contended, these seven
churches will appear on the earth as Jewish churches in the Great Tribulation.
Fifth, the Body of Christ is altogether a different company, according
to these teachers, from the Bride of the Lamb, the latter being supposed to be
Jewish.
Sixth, the Christian ordinances, having been given before Paul
is supposed to have received his revelation of the mystery in prison, have no
real connection with the present economy, and therefore, are relegated to the
past, and may again have a place in the future Great Tribulation.*
*As
to this, these ultra-dispensationalists differ. Most of them reject water
baptism entirely for this age. All of them are not prepared to go so far in
connection with the Lord's Supper, but many of them repudiate it too.
Besides these six points, there are many other unscriptural things which are
advocated by various disciples who began with these views and have been rapidly
throwing overboard other Scriptural teachings. Many Bullingerites boldly
advocate the sleep of the soul between death and resurrection, the annihilation
of the wicked, or, as we have seen, universal salvation of all men and demons,
the denial of the eternal Sonship of the Lord Jesus Christ, and, gravest of
all, the personality of the Holy Spirit. All of these evil doctrines find
congenial soil in Bullingerism. Once men take up with this system there is no
telling how far they will go, and what their final position will be in regard
to the great fundamental truths of Christianity. It is because of this that one
needs to be on his guard, for it is as true of systems as it is of teachers,
"By their fruits ye shall know them."
Having had most intimate
acquaintance with Bullingerism as taught by many for the last forty years, I
have no hesitancy in saying that its fruits are evil. It has produced a
tremendous crop of heresies throughout the length and breadth of this and other
lands, it has divided Christians and wrecked churches and assemblies without
number; it has lifted up its votaries in intellectual and spiritual pride to an
appalling extent, so that they look with supreme contempt upon Christians who
do not accept their peculiar views; and in most instances where it has been
long tolerated, it has absolutely throttled Gospel effort at home and sown
discord on missionary fields abroad. So true are these things of this system
that I have no hesitancy in saying it is an absolutely Satanic perversion of
the truth. Instead of rightly dividing the Word, I shall seek to show that
these teachers wrongly divide the Word, and that their propaganda is anything
but conducive to spirituality and enlightenment in divine things.
CHAPTER TWO
The Four Gospels and Their Relation to the Church
HOWEVER they may differ in regard to minor details of their various systems,
practically all ultra-dispensationalists are a unit in declaring that the four
Gospels must be entirely relegated to a past dispensation (in fact, according
to most of them, they are pushed two dispensations back), and, therefore, are
not to be considered as in any sense applying to this present age. It is
affirmed with the utmost assurance that the Gospels are wholly Jewish. Inasmuch
as we are told in the Epistle to the Romans (15: 8), that "Jesus Christ was a
minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made
unto the fathers," the position is taken that the records of the Evangelists
deal solely with this phase of things, and that there is nothing even in the
utterances of our Lord Himself in those books that has any special place for
the present dispensation.
Yet a careful consideration of the very
passage in which these words are found would seem to negative this entire
theory and prove that it is absolutely groundless, for when the apostle is
stressing true Christian behavior, he refers the saints back to the life and
ministry of our Lord Jesus when here on earth. Notice the opening verses of
Romans 15. We are told that the "strong should bear the infirmities of the
weak, and not seek to please themselves, but that each one should have in mine
the edification of his neighbor," having Christ as our great example, "who
pleased not Himself, but of whom it is written, The reproaches of them that
reproached Thee fell on Me."
We are then definitely informed that not
only what we have in the four Gospels, but what we have in all the Old
Testament is for us, "for whatsoever things were written aforetime were written
for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might
have hope." Here there is no setting aside of an earlier revelation as though
it had no message for the people of God in a later day simply because
dispensations have changed. Spiritual principles never change; moral
responsibility never changes, and the believer who would glorify God in the
present age must manifest the grace that was seen in Christ when He walked here
on earth during the age that is gong. It is perfectly true that He came in
exact accord with Old Testament prophecy and came under the law, in order that
He might deliver those who were under the law from that bondage. He was in
reality a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, not-observe-to
fulfil at His first coming the promises made unto the fathers, but to confirm
them. This He did by His teaching and His example. He assures Israel even in
setting them to one side, that the promises made beforehand shall yet have
their fulfilment.
But, observe, it is upon this very fact that the
apostle bases present grace going out to the Gentiles, for he adds in verse
9:
"And that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy; as it is
written: For this cause I will confess to Thee among the Gentiles, and sing
unto Thy name. And again He saith, Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with His people. And
again, Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles; and laud Him, all ye people. And
again, Esaias saith, There shall be a Root of Jesse, and He that shall rise to
reign over the Gentiles; in Him shall the Gentiles trust" (vers. 9-12).
Here, while not for a moment ignoring that revelation of the mystery
of which he speaks in the closing chapter, Paul shows that the present work of
God in reaching out in grace to the Gentiles, is in full harmony with Old
Testament Scripture, while going far beyond anything that the Old Testament
prophets ever dreamed of, and then he adds:
"Now the God of hope fill you
with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope through the
power of the Holy Ghost" (ver. 13).
While there is a change of
dispensation, there is no rude severing of Old Testament or Gospel revelation
from that of the present age. The one flows naturally out of the other, and the
ways of God are shown to be perfectly harmonious. This being so in connection
with the Old Testament, how much more does the same principle apply in
connection with the four Gospels. While fully recognizing their dispensational
place, and realizing that our Lord is presented in the three Synoptics as
offering Himself as King and the kingdom of Heaven as such to Israel, only to
meet with ever-increasing rejection, yet it should be plain to any spiritual
mind that the principles of the kingdom which He sets forth are the same
principles that should hold authority over the hearts of all who acknowledge
the Lordship of Christ. In john's Gospel the case is somewhat different, for
there Christ is seen as the rejected One from the very beginning. It is in
chapter one that we read, "He came unto His own and His own received Him not."
Then based upon that, we have the new and fuller revelation which runs
throughout that Gospel of grace, flowing out to all men who have no merit
whatever in themselves.
But in Matthew, which is preeminently the
dispensational Gospel, the Lord is presented as the Son of David first of all.
Then when it is evident that Israel will refuse His claims, He is presented in
the larger aspect of Son of Abraham in whom all the nations of the earth shall
be blessed. The break with the leaders of the nation comes in chapter twelve,
where they definitely ascribe the works of the Holy Spirit to the devil. In
doing this, they become guilty of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, the
crowning sin of that dispensation, which our Lord declares could not be
forgiven either in that age or in the one to follow. In chapter thirteen, we
have an altogether new ministry beginning. The Lord for the first time opens up
the mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven, revealing things that had been kept
secret from the foundation of the world, namely the strange and unlooked-for
form that the kingdom would take here on earth after Israel had rejected the
King and He had returned to Heaven. This is set forth in the seven parables of
that chapter, and gives us the course of Christendom during all the present
age.
As a rule, the ultra-dispensationalists would ignore all this and
push these seven parables forward into the tribulation era after the Church,
the Body of Christ, has been taken out of this scene. But this is to do
violence to the entire Gospel and to ignore utterly the history of the past
1900 years. just as in Revelation two and three we have an outline of the
history of the professing Church presented under the similitude of the seven
letters, so in Matthew 13 we have the course of Christendom in perfect harmony
with the Church letters, portrayed in such a way as to make clear the
distinction between the Church that man builds and that which is truly of God.
In chapter sixteen of Matthew's Gospel, the Lord declares for the first time
that He is going to build a Church or assembly. This assembly is to be built
upon the Rock, the confession of the apostle Peter that Christ is the Son of
the living God. How utterly vain it is to try to separate this declaration from
the statement in the Ephesian Epistle where we read,
"Now therefore, ye
are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and
of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and
prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the
building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom
ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit" (2:
19-22).
Here in the preeminent prison epistle of which so much is made
by the Bullingerites, you find that the Church then in existence is the Church
our Lord spoke of building when He was here in the days of His flesh. The
discipline of that Church is given in Matthew 18: 15-20:
"Moreover if thy
brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and
him alone; if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will
not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the -mouth of two
or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to
bear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let
him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. Verily I say unto you,
Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye
shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you, That if
two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it
shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven. For where two or three
are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them."
In
Matthew sixteen you have the assembly as a whole, comprising all believers
during the present dispensation. Here in chapter eighteen, you have the local
assembly in the position of responsibility on earth, and its authority to deal
with evil-doers in corrective discipline.
The complete setting aside
of Israel for the present age is given us in chapter 23: 37-39,
"O
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killst the prophets, and stonest them which are
sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a
hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your
house -is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see Me
henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the
Lord."
In the light of the words, "Your house is left unto you
desolate," how amazing the presumption that would lead any to declare, as
practically all these extreme dispensationalists do declare, that Israel is
being given a second trial throughout all the book of Acts, and that their real
setting aside does not take place until Paul's meeting with the elders of the
Jews after his imprisonment in Rome, as recorded in the last chapter of Acts.
The fact of the matter is that the book of Acts opens with the setting aside of
Israel until the day when they shall say, "Blessed is He that cometh in the
name of the Lord." That is His second glorious coming. In the interval, God is
saving out of Israel as well as of the Gentiles, all who turn to Him in
repentance.
In Matthew twenty-four, we are carried on to the days
immediately preceding that time when the Son of Man shall appear in glory, and
we find the people of Israel in great distress, but a remnant called His
"elect" shall be saved in that day.
I pass purposely over chapter
twenty-five as having no particular bearing on the outline, because a careful
consideration of it would take more time and space than is here available. The
closing chapters give us the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and then the commission of His apostles. People who have never investigated
Bullingerism and its kindred systems will hardly believe me when I say that
even the great commission upon which the Church has acted for 1900 years, and
which is still our authority for world-wide missions, is, according to these
teachers, a commission with which we have nothing whatever to do, that has no
reference to the Church at all, and that the work there predicted will not
begin until taken up by the remnant of Israel in the days of the Great
Tribulation. Yet such is actually the teaching. In view of this, let us
carefully read the closing verses of the Gospel:
"Then the eleven disciples
went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And
when they saw Him, they worshipped Him: but some doubted. And Jesus came and
spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. Go
ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end
of the world. Amen" (28: 16-20).
According to the Bullingeristic
interpretation of this passage, we should have to paraphrase it somewhat as
follows: "Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain
where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw Him, they worshipped Him: but
some doubted. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given
unto Me in heaven and earth, and after two entire dispensations have rolled by,
I command that the remnant of Israel who shall be living two thousand or more
years later, shall go out and teach the nations, baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them in that day to
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, but from which I absolve
all believers between the present hour and that coming age, and lo, I will be
with that remnant until the close of Daniel's seventieth week." Can anything be
more absurd, more grotesque-and I might add, more wicked-than thus to twist and
misuse the words of our Lord Jesus Christ?
In view of all this, may I
direct my reader's careful attention to the solemn statement of the apostle
Paul, which is found in I Timothy, chapter 6. After having given a great many
practical exhortations to Timothy as to the instruction he was to give to the
churches for their guidance during all the present age, the apostle says,
"If any man teach otherwise and consent not to wholesome words, even
the words of our Lord Jesus Christ' and to the doctrine which is according to
godliness; he is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes
of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, perverse
disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that
gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself" (I Tim. 6:3-5).
One
would almost think that this was a direct command to Timothy to beware of
Bullingerism! Notice, Timothy is to withdraw himself from, that is, to have no
fellowship with, those who refuse the present authority of the words of our
Lord Jesus Christ. Where do you get those actual words? Certainly in the four
Gospels. There are very few actual words of the Lord Jesus Christ scattered
throughout the rest of the New Testament. Of course there is a sense in which
all the New Testament is from Him, but the apostle is clearly referring here to
the actual spoken words of our Saviour, which have been recorded for the
benefit of the saints, and which set forth the teaching that is in accordance
with godliness or practical piety. If a man refuses these words, whether on the
plea that they do not apply to our dispensation, or for any other reason, the
Spirit of God declares it is an evidence of intellectual or spiritual pride.
Such men ordinarily think they know much more than others, and they look down
from their fancied heights of superior Scriptural understanding with a certain
contempt, often not untinged with scornful amusement, upon godly men and women
who are simply seeking to take the words of the Lord Jesus as the guide for
their lives.
But here we are told that such "know nothing," but are
really in their spiritual dotage, "doting about questions and strifes of
words." The dotard is generally characterized by frequent repetition of similar
expressions. We know how marked this symptom is in those who have entered upon
a state of physical and intellectual senility. Spiritual dotage may be
discerned in the same way. A constant dwelling upon certain expressions as
though these were all important, to the ignoring of the great body of truth, is
an outstanding symptom. The margin, it will be observed, substitutes the word
"sick" for "doting;" "word-sickness" is an apt expression. The word-sick man
over-estimates altogether the importance of terms. He babbles continually about
expressions which many of his brethren scarcely understand. He is given to
misplaced emphasis, making far more of fine doctrinal distinctions than of
practical godly living. As a result, his influence is generally baneful instead
of helpful, leading to strife and disputation instead of binding the hearts of
the people of God together in the unity of the Spirit.
The well-known
passage in the closing chapter of Mark's Gospel, which gives us another aspect
of the great commission, having to do particularly with the apostles, is a.
favorite battleground with the ultra-dispensationalists. Ignoring again the
entire connection, they insist that the commission given in verses fifteen and
eighteen could only apply during the days of the book of Acts, inasmuch as
certain signs were to follow them that believe. As the commission in Matthew
has been relegated by them to the Great Tribulation after the Christian age has
closed, this one is supposed to have had its fulfilment before the present
mystery dispensation began, and so has no real force now. They point out, what
to them seems conclusive, that in this commission, as of course that in
Matthew, water baptism is evidently linked with a profession of faith in
Christ. They are perfectly hydrophobic as to this. The very thought of water
sets them foaming with indignation. There must on no account be any recognition
of water baptism during the present age. It must be gotten rid of at all costs.
So here where we read that our Lord said, "Go ye into all the world and preach
the gospel to every creature; he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;
but he that believeth not shall be damned" (Mark 16: 15,16), which would seem
to indicate world-wide evangelism, looking out to the proclamation of the glad
glorious Gospel of God to lost men everywhere, this commission must
nevertheless be gotten rid of somehow. The way they do it is this: The Lord
declares that certain signs shall follow when this Gospel is proclaimed. These
signs evidently followed in the days of the Acts. They declare they have never
followed since. Therefore, it is evident that water baptism is only to go on so
long as the signs follow. If the signs have ceased, then water baptism ceases.
The signs are not here now, therefore no water baptism. How amazingly clear
(!!), though, as we shall see in a moment, absolutely illogical. The signs
accompanied preaching the Gospel. Why continue to preach if such signs are not
now manifest?
The Matthew commission makes it plain that baptism in
the name of the Trinity is to go on to the end of the age, and that age has not
come to an end yet, whatever changes of dispensation may have come in. Now what
of this commission in Mark? Observe first of all that our Lord is not declaring
that the signs shall follow believers in the Gospel which is to be proclaimed
by the Lord's messengers. The signs were to follow those of the apostles who
believed, and they did. There were some of them who did not believe. See verse
eleven: "And they, when they had heard that He was alive and had been seen of
her, believed not." Then again, notice verse thirteen: "They went and told it
unto the residue; neither believed they them." And in the verse that follows,
we read: "Afterward He appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and
upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed
not them which had seen Him after He was risen." Now our Lord commissions the
eleven, sends them forth to go to the ends of the earth preaching the Gospel to
every creature. There is nothing limited here. It is not a Jewish commission.
It has nothing to do with the restoration of the kingdom to Israel. It is a
world-wide commission to go to all the Gentiles, and to go forth preaching the
Word. Responsibility rests upon those who hear. They are to believe and be
baptized. Those who do are recognized among the saved. On the other hand, He
does not say, "He that is not baptized shall be damned," because baptism was
simply an outward confession of their faith, but He does say, "He that
believeth not shall be damned."
Then in verses seventeen and eighteen,
we have what Paul later called "the signs of an apostle."
"These signs
shall follow them that believe: In My name shall they cast out devils; they
shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink
any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and
they shall recover."
During all the period of the book of Acts, these
signs did follow the apostles. More than that, if we can place the least
reliance upon early Church history, the same signs frequently followed other
servants of Christ, as they went forth in obedience to this commission, and
this long after the imprisonment of the apostle Paul. We should expect this
from the closing verses of Mark:
"So then after the Lord had spoken unto
them, He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And
they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and
confirming the Word with signs following" (Mark 16:19,20).
In this
last verse, Mark covers the evangelization of the world (not merely a message
going out to the Jews), during all the years that followed until the last of
the apostles, John himself, had disappeared from the scene. I do not mean to
intimate that Mark knew this, but I do mean that the Spirit of God caused him
so to write this closing verse as to cover complete apostolic testimony right
on to its consummation. They preached everywhere, not simply in connection with
Israel. Yet in the face of this, the statement has been made over and over
again by these ultradispensationalists, that the twelve never went to the
Gentiles, excepting in the case of the apostle Peter and a few similar
instances. The statement has also been made that all miracles ceased with
Paul's imprisonment, that there were no miracles afterwards. What superb
ignorance of Church history is here indicated, and what an absurd position a
man puts himself in who commits himself to negatives like these! An eminent
logician has well said, "Never commit yourself to a negative, for that supposes
that you are in possession of all the facts." If a man says there were no
miracles wrought in the Church after the imprisonment of the apostle Peter, it
means, if that statement is true, that he has thorough knowledge of all that
has taken place in every land on earth where the Gospel has been preached, in
all the centuries since the days of Paul's imprisonment, and knows all the work
that every servant of Christ has ever done. Otherwise he could not logically
and rationally make such a statement.
What then is the conclusion? It
is wrongly dividing the Word of Truth to seek to rob Christians of the precious
instruction given by our Lord Jesus in the four Gospels, though fully
recognizing their dispensational place. It is an offense against Christian
missions everywhere to try to set aside the great commission for the entire
present age. It is not true that a definite limit is placed in Scripture upon
the manifestation of sign gifts, and that such gifts have never appeared since
the days of the apostles.
CHAPTER THREE
The Transitional Period
Is the Church of The Acts the Body of Christ?
HERE is perhaps nothing
about which the ultradispensationalists are more certain, according to their
own expressions, than that the book of the Acts covers a transitional period,
coming in between the age of the law and the present age in which the
dispensation of the mystery has been revealed. They do not always agree as to
the name of this intervening period. Some call it the Kingdom Church; others
the Jewish Church; and there are those who prefer the term Pentecostal
Dispensation. The general teaching is about as follows: It is affirmed that the
coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost and His baptizing the one
hundred and twenty and those who afterwards believed, did not have anything to
do with the formation of the Church, the Body of Christ. On the contrary, they
insist that the Church throughout all of the book of Acts up to Paul's
imprisonment was of an altogether lower order than that of the Epistle to the
Ephesians. Assemblies in Judea, Samaria, and the various Gentile countries,
were simply groups of believers who were waiting for the manifestation of the
kingdom, and had not yet come into the full liberty of grace. The ordinances of
the Lord's Supper and of baptism were linked with these companies and were to
continue only until Israel had definitely and finally refused the Gospel
message, after which the full revelation of the mystery is supposed to have
been given to the apostle Paul when he was imprisoned at Rome. From that time
on a new dispensation began. Surely this is wrongly confounding the Word of
Truth. How any rational and spiritually-minded person could ever come to such a
conclusion after a careful reading of the book of Acts, and with it the various
epistles addressed to the churches and peoples mentioned in that book, is more
than some of us can comprehend. Let us see what the facts actually are.
In the first place, it is perfectly plain that the Church, the Body of Christ,
was formed by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Very definitely this term is used
of that great event which took place at Pentecost and was repeated in measure
in Cornelius' household. In each instance the same exact expression is used.
Referring to Pentecost, our Lord says, "Ye shall be baptized with the Holy
Ghost not many days hence" (Acts 1: 5). Referring to the event that took place
in Cornelius' household, Peter says:
"Then remembered I the word of the
Lord, how that He said, John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be
baptized with the Holy Ghost. Forasmuch then as God gave them the like gift as
He did unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ; what was 1, that I could
withstand God?" (Acts 11: 16,17).
In 1 Corinthians 12: 12, 13, we
read:
"For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members
of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For by one
Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles,
whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit."
Here we are distinctly informed as to the way in which the Body has
been brought into existence, and this is exactly what took place at Pentecost.
Individual believers were that day baptized into one Body, and from then on the
Lord added to the Church daily such as were saved. It is a significant fact
that if you omit this definite passage in I Corinthians, there is no other
verse in any epistle that tells us in plain words just how the Body is formed;
although we might deduce this from Ephesians 4: 4, where we read: "There is one
Body and one Spirit." Undoubtedly this refers to the baptism of the Holy
Spirit, by which the Body is formed, in contradistinction to water baptism in
the next verse. But this is simply interpretation, and all might not agree as
to it. But there can surely be no question as to the application of the passage
in 1 Corinthians 12: 13. Yet, singularly enough, the very people who insist
that the Body is formed by the Spirit's baptism, declare that these Corinthians
were not members of the Body, nor did that Body come into existence until at
least four or five years afterwards.
A careful reading of the book of
Acts shows us the gradual manner in which the truth of the new dispensation was
introduced, and this is what has led some to speak of this book as covering a
transitional period. Personally, I have no objection to the term "transitional
period," if it be understood that the transition was in the minds of men and
not in the mind of God. According to God, the new dispensation, that in which
we now live, the dispensation of the grace of God, otherwise called the
dispensation of the mystery, began the moment the Spirit descended at
Pentecost. That moment the one Body came into existence, though at the
beginning it was composed entirely of believers taken out from the Jewish
people. But in the minds even of the disciples, there was a long period before
they all fully entered into the special work that God had begun to do. Many of
them, in fact, probably never did apprehend the true character of this
dispensation, as we shall see further on.
The position is often taken
that the twelve apostles were very ignorant of what the Lord was really doing,
and that their entire ministry was toward Israel. Have not such teachers
forgotten that during the forty days that the Lord appeared to His disciples
before ascending to Heaven, He taught them exactly what His program was, and
the part they were to have in it? In Acts 1: 3, 4, we read:
"He also showed
Himself alive after His passion by many in fallible proofs, being seen of them
forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God: and
being assem bled together with them, commanded them that they should no; depart
from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith He, ye
have heard of Me."
And it was then that He distinctly told them of the
coming baptism of the Holy Spirit. According to the divine plan, the Gospel
message was first to be proclaimed in Jerusalem,, then Judea, then Samaria, and
then unto the uttermost parts of the earth. This is exactly what we find in the
book of Acts. The earlier chapters give us the proclamation in Jerusalem and
Judea. Then we have Philip going down to Samaria, followed by John and Peter.
Later Peter goes to the house of Cornelius, and he and his household, believing
the Gospel, are baptized by the same Spirit into the same Body. The conversion
of Saul of Tarsus prepares the way for a world-wide ministry, he being
specifically chosen of God for that testimony.
But before Saul's
conversion, there were churches of God in many cities, and these churches of
God together formed the Church of God; churches signifying local companies, but
the Church of God taking in all believers. Years afterwards, Paul writes, "I
persecuted the Church of God and wasted it" (Gal. 1: 13). And again, "For I am
the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I
persecuted the Church of God" (I Cor. 15: 9). The Church of God was to him one
whole. It was exactly the same Church of God as that of which he speaks in 1
Timothy 3: 15, when, writing to the younger preacher, he says: "That thou
mightest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself 'in the house of God, which
is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." In the
meantime he had been cast into prison and had written all the rest of the
so-called prison epistles, with the exception, of course, of Titus, which was
written while he was at liberty, between his imprisonments, and 2 Timothy,
which was written during his second imprisonment.*
(* I make this
statement on the supposition that the note at the end of I Timothy is correct,
namely that the epistle was written from Laodicea, a place not visited by Paul
before his first imprisonment. If written earlier the argument does not apply,
except to show that Paul ever recognized the Church of God as one and
undivided.)
There is no hint of any difference having come in to
distinguish the Church of God which he says he persecuted, from the Church of
God in which Timothy was recognized as a minister of the Word. It is one and
the same Church throughout.
Going back to Acts then, we notice that
after his conversion, Paul is definitely set apart as the apostle to the
Gentiles, and yet everywhere he goes, he first seeks out his Jewish brethren
after the flesh, because it was God's purpose that the Gospel should be made
known to the Jew first, and then to the Gentile. In practically every city, the
same results follow. A few of the Jews receive the message; the bulk of them
reject it. Then Paul turns from the Jews to the Gentiles, and thus the message
goes out to the whole world. Throughout all of this period, covered by the
ministries of Peter and Paul particularly, both baptism in water and the
breaking of bread have their place. The signs of an apostle follow the
ministry, God authenticating His Word as His servants go forth in His Name.
However, it is perfectly plain that the nearer we get to the close of the Acts,
the less we have in the way of signs and wonders. This is to be expected. In
the meantime various books of the New Testament had been written, particularly
Paul's letters to the Thessalonians, the Corinthians, and the Romans. In all
likelihood, the Epistle of James had also been produced, though we cannot
definitely locate the time of its writing. The Epistles of Peter and of John
come afterward. They were not part of the earlier written ministry.
Everywhere that Paul goes, he preaches the kingdom as the Lord Himself has
commanded, and finally he reached Rome a prisoner. There, following his usual
custom, though not having the same liberty as in other places, he gets in touch
first with the leaders of the Jewish people, gives them his message, and then
tells them that even though they reject it, yet the purpose of God must be
carried out, and the salvation of God sent to the Gentiles. This is supposed by
many to be a dispensational break, but we have exactly the same thing in the
thirteenth chapter of Acts. There we read from verse 44 on, how the Jews in
Antioch of Pisidia withstood the Word spoken by Paul, and Paul and Barnabas
waxed bold, and said:
"It was necessary that the word of God should first
have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves
unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord
commanded us, saying, I have set Thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that Thou
shouldest be or salvation unto the ends of the earth."
I ask any
thoughtful reader: What difference is there between this account of Paul's
dealing with the Jews, the proclamation of grace going out to the Gentiles, and
that found in chapter 28 of this same book? In the light of these two passages,
may we not say that if Paul was given liberty, as we know he was, to preach for
several years after his first imprisonment, he undoubtedly still followed
exactly the same method of proclaiming the Gospel to the Jew first, and then to
the Gentiles? It is passing strange that these ultra-dispensationalists can
overlook a passage like Acts 13, and then read so much into the similar portion
in chapter 28. According to them, as we have pointed out, the dispensational
break occurred at this latter time, after which Paul's ministry, they tell us,
took an entirely different form. It was then that the dispensation of the
mystery was revealed to him, they say, which he embodied in his prison
epistles. He was no longer a preacher of the kingdom, but now a minister of the
Body. The theory sounds very plausible until one examines the text of Scripture
itself.
Let us look at the last two verses of Acts 28:
"And Paul
dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in
unto him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching those things which concern
the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him."
Now
observe in chapter one, verse three, our Lord is said to have spoken to His
disciples during the forty days of "the things pertaining to the kingdom of
God." In the very last verse of the book, after Paul's supposed later
revelation, he is still "preaching the kingdom of God;" certainly the next
phrase, "teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ," implies
continuance in exactly the same type of ministry in which he had been engaged
before. There is no hint here of something new.
Now let us go back a
little. In chapter 20 of the book of Acts, we find the apostle Paul at Miletus
on his way to Jerusalem. From there he sent to Ephesus for the elders of the
church. We have a very touching account of his last interview with them. Among
other things, he says to them:
"I have not shunned to declare unto you all
the counsel of God. Take heed unto yourselves and to all the flock over which
the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the Church of God which He hath
purchased with His own blood" (Acts 20:27,28).
And then he commends
these elders in view of the coming apostasy, not to some new revelation yet to
be given, but "to God and the word of His grace, which is able to build you up
and give you an inheritance among all them that are sanctified." Note
particularly the breadth of the statement found in verse 27. "All the counsel
of God" had already been made known through Paul to the Ephesian elders before
he went up to Jerusalem for the last time. There is not a hint of a partial
revelation, not a hint of a transitional period, but they already had
everything they needed to keep them until the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I venture to say that the better one is acquainted with the book of
Acts, the clearer all this will become. It is truly absurd to attempt to make
two Churches out of the redeemed company between Pentecost and the Lord's
return. The Church is one and indivisible. It is the Church that Christ built
upon the rock, namely the truth that He is the Son of the living God. It is the
Church of God which He purchased with the blood of His own Son. That Church of
God, Saul in his ignorance, persecuted. Of that same Church of God, he
afterwards became a member through the Spirit's baptism. In that Church of God,
Timothy was a recognized minister, not only before, but after Paul's
imprisonment.
In regard to the statement so frequently made that God
was giving Israel a second chance throughout the book of Acts, it is evident
that there is no foundation whatever for such a statement. Our Lord definitely
declared the setting aside of Israel for this entire age when He said, "Your
house is left unto you desolate. Ye shall not see Me again until ye say,
Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!" It was after that house was
left desolate that the glorious proclamation at Pentecost was given through the
power of the Holy Spirit, offering salvation by grace to any in Israel who
repented, and to as many as the Lord our God shall call, which, of course,
includes the whole Gentile world. Not once in any of the sermons recorded of
Peter and of Paul do we have a hint that the nation of Israel is still on
trial, and that God is waiting for that nation to repent in this age. On the
contrary, the very fact that believers are called upon to "save themselves from
that untoward generation" is evidence of the complete setting aside of Israel
nationally, and the calling out of a select company of those who acknowledge
the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ. By their baptism, they outwardly severed
the link that bound them to the unbelieving nation, and thus came over onto
Christian ground. To this company, Gentile believers were later added, and
these two together constitute the Body of Christ. It is perfectly true that the
Body as such is not mentioned in the book of Acts, and that for a very good
reason. In this book, we have the record of the beginning of the evangelization
of the world, which involves, of course, not the revelation of the truth of the
Body, but the proclamation of the kingdom of God, which none can enter apart
from the new birth.
A careful study of the epistles, taking particular
note of the times at which, and the persons to whom, they were written. will
only serve to make these things clearer.
CHAPTER FOUR
When Was the
Revelation of the Mystery of the One Body Given?
IT IS contended by
Bullingerites, and others of like ilk, that Paul did not receive the revelation
of the mystery of the one Body until he was imprisoned in Rome, 63 A. D.
Generally, too, the ground is taken that this revelation was given to him
alone, and that the twelve knew nothing of it. Let us see if these assertions
will stand the test of Holy Scripture.
We shall turn, first of all,
directly to the writings of the apostle Paul, and examine the passages in which
he refers to this subject. The first one is found in the Epistle to the Romans
which was written, according to the best authorities, in the year A. D. 60, at
least three years before Paul's imprisonment, and certainly some time before he
reached Rome, as in that letter he tells the Romans that he is contemplating
the visit to them, and asks them to pray that it might be a prosperous one. It
might seem as though his prayer was not answered inasmuch as he reached Rome in
chains, a prisoner for the Gospel's sake. But God's ways are not ours, and we
can be sure that in the light of eternity, we shall see that this was indeed
one of the most prosperous voyages that anyone ever made. Now in closing this
epistle to the Romans, the apostle says in chapter 16, verses 25 to 2 7:
"Now to Him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel,
and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery,
which was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest, and by
the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting
God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith: to God only wise, be
glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen."
Here we have the plain
statement that Paul's preaching throughout the years had been in accordance
with the revelation of the mystery previously kept secret, but at that time
made manifest. Moreover, he intimates that it had been already published abroad
in writing, for he says, "It is made manifest (not exactly by the Scriptures of
the prophets, as though he referred to Old Testament prophets, but) by
prophetic writings," that is, his own and others. And this proclamation of the
mystery had been made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.
Does anyone ask, How can any ultra-dispensationalist dare to say in the face of
such a Scripture as this, that the mystery had not been made known and had not
been previously preached before Paul was imprisoned at Rome? If a simple
believing Christian, he will probably be amazed at the answer. Dr. Bullinger
and others who follow him suggest that in all likelihood the last three verses
of the Epistle to the Romans were not written by Paul when he sent the letter
from some distant Gentile city, but that they were appended to the letter after
he reached Rome and received the new revelation. Is this unbelievable?
Nevertheless, it is exactly what these men teach. It is higher criticism of the
worst type and impugns the perfection of the Word of God. For, even supposing
their contentions were true, how absurd it would be for Paul to add these words
after he reached Rome, to an epistle purporting to be written before he got
there! And how senseless it would be for him to speak while he was in prison,
of a Gospel and a revelation which he was supposed to have preached in all the
world, if he had never yet begun that proclamation. Needless to say, the
contention of Dr. Bullinger is an absolute fabrication. It is the special
pleading of a hard- driven controversialist, bound to maintain his unscriptural
system at all costs, even to destroying the unity of the Word of God.
Error is never consistent, and even the astute Bullinger has overlooked the
fact that earlier in this very epistle, Paul declares the truth of the one Body
just as clearly and definitely as he does in Ephesians or any later letter.
Notice particularly Romans 12: 4, 5:
"For as we have many members in one
body, and all members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body
in Christ, and everyone members one of another."
Could we have a
clearer declaration than this of the truth of the mystery? What
ultra-dispensationalist will dare to say that this passage is an interpolation
added in after years in order to make Romans fit with Ephesians? God's Word is
perfect and always exact. These unspiritual theorists invariably overtook
something that completely destroys their unscriptural hypotheses.
When
then did Paul get this revelation of the truth of the one Body? He tells us he
had been preaching it throughout the world among all nations. The answer
clearly is, he received it at the time of his conversion, when he cried in
amazement, "Who art Thou, Lord?" and the glorified Saviour answered, "I am
Jesus whom thou persecutest." This was the revelation of the mystery. In that
announcement our Lord declared that every Christian on earth is so indissolubly
linked up with Him as the glorified Head in Heaven, that everything done
against one of them is felt by the Head. This is, the mystery-members of His
Body, of His flesh, and of His bones.
And moreover, this is in exact
accord with certain statements elsewhere made in the book of Acts. For
instance, in chapter 5, verse 14, we read:
"And believers were the more
added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women."
This was before
Paul's conversion. Observe it does not simply say that they were added to the
company of believers, nor even added to the assembly alone, but they were added
to the Lord. This is only by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Quite in keeping
with this, when we turn to chapter 11: 22-24, we read concerning the character
and ministry of Barnabas that,
"He was a good man, and full of the Holy
Ghost, and of faith: and much people were added unto the Lord."
Now no
one was ever added to the Lord in any other way than by the baptism of the Holy
Spirit. So that clearly we have the Body of Christ here in the Acts, although
the term itself is not used.
When we turn to 1 Corinthians, the only
epistle which gives us divine order for the regulation of the affairs of the
churches of God here on earth, we have the plain statement of this mystery as
we have already seen, in chapter 12: 12-14.
"For as the body is one, and
hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one
body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one Body,
whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all
made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many."
It is absurd to say, as these ecclesiastical hobby-riders do, that the
Body referred to here is not the same thing as the Body of Ephesians and
Colossians. It is a Body made up of those who formerly were Jews or Gentiles,
bond or free, but are now all one in Christ. And this Body has been formed by
the baptism of the Holy Spirit. In no other way was the Body of Christ brought
into existence. Objection has been raised that when the apostle goes on to
apply practically the truth of our responsibility as members of the Body in our
relation to each other, he uses the illustration of the eye and ear as members
of the head, which, they tell us, he could not use if he thought of Christ as
the Head of the Body, and was thinking of believers as one Body with Him. But
he tells us distinctly in the previous chapter that the Head of every man is
Christ. This could only be said of those who were linked with Him in this
hallowed fellowship and members of this divine organism. The great difference,
of course, between the Body as presented in Corinthians and as in Ephesians is
this: the Body in Ephesians embraces all saints living or dead as to the flesh,
from Pentecost to the Rapture, whereas the Body in Corinthians embraces all
saints upon the earth at any given time. Seen thus in the place of
responsibility, it is quite in keeping that the apostle should use the
illustration that he does. It is in vain for these ultra-dispensationalists to
fight against responsibility.
Recently I overheard a leader among them
make this statement: "Whenever you get commandments of any kind, you are on
Jewish ground, and you have given up grace." Yet in every epistle of the New
Testament, we have commandments and exhortations insisting upon the believer's
responsibility to recognize the government of God in this way. Grace and
government are not opposing principles, but are intimately linked together. He
who refuses the truth of responsibility does not thereby magnify grace, but
rather is in danger of turning the grace of God into lasciviousness and becomes
practically an antinomian, throwing off all restraint, professing to be saved
by grace, but refusing to recognize the claims of Christ.
Coming back
then to consider the passage in I Corinthians, we have the truth of the Body
clearly set forth, and are shown how it was brought into existence in a letter
written at least four years before Paul's imprisonment; and he writes that
letter to a group of believers who had been brought to a knowledge of Christ
through his preaching some years before. To them he says in verses 2 6, 2 7:
"And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, or one
member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the Body of
Christ, and members in particular."
Verse 26 only emphasizes what we
have referred to above, that here we have the Body in the place of
responsibility on earth. Members in Heaven do not suffer. All members on earth
do. But it is objected again that in the Greek there is no definite article
before the word "body," and therefore the passage should simply read, "Now ye
are a Body of Christ," and so we are told this refers only to a local church.
This does not touch the question. Every local church in apostolic days was the
Body of Christ representatively in that place. It would be so today if it were
not for the fact that so many unsaved people have been received into the
membership of the local churches. According to the Word of God, there was only
the one Body, and in any city where the Gospel had been preached and believed,
that Body could be found as a local company.
When we pass on to 2
Corinthians, we find the same precious truth ministered by the apostle long
before he was imprisoned at Rome. He tells us, in chapter 5: 16,17:
"Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea though we have known
Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more. Therefore if
any man be in Christ, he is a new creature (or literally, this is a new
creation): old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
Could words more plainly set forth the truth of the mystery than
these? Old relationships ended and every believer brought into a new place
altogether before God, and a new condition, so that Christ is now his Head, and
he a member of the new creation. And this was part of the preaching that the
apostle had been declaring wherever he went during all the years of his
ministry.
We turn next to Galatians, a letter written, according to
the best authority we have, a year earlier than Corinthians, and the ultra-
dispensationalists are very sure that when Paul speaks of being baptized into
Christ in this letter, there can be no reference to water baptism, but that he
refers solely to the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I am not in agreement with
them on this; but allowing for the moment that they are correct, then notice
where it puts their theory. Note carefully chapter 3: 26-29:
"For ye are
all the children (sons) of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as
have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor
Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye
are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's then are ye Abraham's seed,
and heirs according to the promise."
Here again we are distinctly told
that all the children of faith, Abraham's seed spiritually, are sons of God,
and that all such as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ, and
that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor any of the other
distinctions according to nature, but all are one in Him. Is there anything in
the revelation of the mystery as given in Ephesians or Colossians that goes
beyond this? It is a clear definite statement of the absolute unity in Christ
of those who before their conversion occupied different positions here on
earth, some being Jews, some Gentiles, some free men, some slaves, some men,
some women, but every distinction now obliterated in the new creation.
If any are foolish enough to object, as some have, that Abraham's seed is
altogether different from the Body of Christ, then we turn to Ephesians itself,
the epistle which they claim, above all others supports their unscriptural
theory, and find their entire position is there completely disallowed. In the
first chapter of this glorious epistle, the apostle reminds the Ephesians of
things that they have learned through his ministry in days gone by. There is no
hint that he is opening up to them something new, but he simply puts down in
writing for permanent use, precious things already dear to them. He reminds
them that they have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies
in Christ; that they have been chosen in Him before the foundation of the world
in order that they might be holy and without blame before Him; that in love, He
has predestinated them unto the place of sons by Christ Jesus, having taken
them into favor in the Beloved. Theirs is redemption through His blood, sins
all forgiven according to the riches of I-Iis grace, and to them He has
abounded in all wisdom and prudence, having made known the mystery of His will
according to His good pleasure, which He hath purposed in Himself (see vers.
3-9). He points them on to the full consummation of this mystery when in the
administration of the completed seasons, that is, the last dispensation, He
will head up in one all things in Christ, both heavenly and earthly, and He
reminds them that we have already obtained an inheritance in Him, being
predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things according
to the counsel of His own will. We need to notice the pronouns used in verses
12 and 13. He first speaks of converts from Israel, when he says, "That we
should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted in Christ." Then he
refers to the Gentiles, such as these Ephesians had been, when in the next
verse he says:
"In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of
truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye
were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise which is the earnest of our
inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise
of His glory."
Now observe carefully, he is far from intimating that
he is at this time unveiling something of which they bad never heard before. He
carries them back in memory to the hour of their conversion, and declares that
these things were true of them then. And, because of this, he prays that they
may have deeper understanding, not of new truth about to be revealed, but of
blessed and wonderful things already made known. In the second chapter, he
deals specifically with the new creation, reminding them in verse 12 that they
in time past were Gentiles who were called uncircumcision, and were in
themselves without Christ and aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers
from the covenants of promise, having no hope and literally atheists in the
world. But now they have been made nigh by the blood of Christ. The result is
that they became members of that same Body into which their converted Jewish
brethren had already been assimilated. Notice carefully verses 14-18:
"For
He is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall
of partition between us: having abolished in His flesh the enmity, even the law
of commandments, contained in ordinances; for to make in Himself of twain one
new man, so making peace; and that He might reconcile both unto God in one body
by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: and came and preached peace to
you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through Him we both
have access by one Spirit unto the Father."
The distinction between
Jew and Gentile was abolished in ,the cross, not after Paul's imprisonment in
Rome. From that time on all who believed were brought into the Body of Christ
through the one Spirit of verse 18. What were the means used to effect this?
The preaching recorded in the book of Acts, for it is only that to which he can
possibly refer, when he says (vers. 16,17):
"That He might reconcile both
unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby, and came
and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh."
It was necessary that the message should first go to them that were
nigh, as it did in the early chapters of Acts, and then to those that were afar
off; but the result of that preaching was that all who believed were reconciled
to God in one Body.
In the last four verses of the chapter he shows
the unity of the Church from the beginning. The Church is the household of God.
It is also a great building, and he declares:
"Now therefore ye are no
more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the
household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and
prophets (New Testament prophets, of course), Jesus Christ Himself being the
chief corner stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth
(note the tense; it is not yet completed, it is still in process of
construction, but it is growing) unto an holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye
also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit."
How blind must he be who can see in such a passage as this,
disassociation of the Ephesian saints from the work which God began at
Pentecost! They are builded into the same temple and rest upon the same
foundation.
This is made even clearer in the next chapter, where Paul
gives us probably the fullest information concerning the one Body that we have
anywhere in the New Testament, and, therefore, we must devote considerable time
and space to it. First, he tells us that he was a prisoner of Jesus Christ
because of the Gentiles, and he explains that in the next few verses. It was
his devotion to the revelation of the mystery which is part of the dispensation
of the grace of God, that resulted in his imprisonment. He did not get this
dispensation after he was in prison. Then he insists that this revelation was
not made in previous ages unto the sons of men, that is, it was not made known
in Old Testament times. But he tells us it is "now revealed unto His holy
apostles and prophets by the Spirit." Now if I believed in over-emphasis as
some do, I should like to print these words in very bold type, but to do so
would be an insult to the intelligence of my readers. I simply desire to ask
their most careful attention to these words. The Bullingerites tell us that the
mystery was only made known to the apostle Paul, not to other apostles. The
apostle himself tells us here that "it is now revealed unto His holy apostles
and prophets." Note not only the plural, but that others besides apostles had
this revelation. How utterly absurd would words like these be if he were
referring to something that had just been secretly made known to him! But is it
true that other apostles and prophets had already known if the mystery? It is.
This he declares in these words. What is that mystery? Verse six is the answer.
"That the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same Body, and
partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel."
Thus they too
become Abraham's seed, because they are children of faith.
The mystery
then is not simply centered in the term "Body," but whatever expression may be
used, the mystery is that during the present age all distinction between
believing Jews and believing Gentiles is done away in Christ. Was this mystery
made known by other servants besides the apostle Paul? It was. The apostle John
makes it known in his account of our Lord's ministry as given in the tenth
chapter of his Gospel. There we read that the Lord Jesus, as the Good Shepherd,
entered into the sheepfold of Judaism to lead His own out into glorious
liberty. And cryptically He adds,
"Other sheep I have which are not of
this fold. Them also I must bring, and there shall be one flock and one
Shepherd."
This is perhaps the earliest intimation of the mystery that
we have. It was not committed to writing, of course, until some years after the
epistle to the Ephesians was written. But it shows us that John, as an apostle
of the Lord Jesus Christ, had received the revelation of the mystery even
before the apostle Paul did.
Then what of the apostle Peter? We dare to
say this same mystery was made known to him on the housetop of Simon's
residence in Joppa, when he had the vision of the descending sheet from Heaven
and saw in it all manner of beasts and creeping things, and heard the word from
Heaven,
"What God hath cleansed call thou not common," or unclean.
This was to him an intimation that in Christ the distinction between Jew and
Gentile was henceforth to be done away, and he makes it perfectly clear that
this was his conviction when he stood up to preach in the household of
Cornelius (Acts 10: 34 to end). Moreover, his epistles emphasize the same fact,
though not in the full way that those of the apostle Paul do. John and Peter
are apostles. Are there any prophets who give evidence of having in measure at
least understood this truth? The greatest of all the New Testament prophets is
Luke himself, and in his book of the Acts, the mystery is plainly made known,
though not taught doctrinally. We see God working in grace to unite Jew and
Gentile into one Body.
Turning back to Ephesians three, we find in
verse seven that the apostle tells us that he was made a minister according to
the gift of the grace of God for the very purpose of making known this mystery.
He says in verses eight and nine,
"Unto me, who am less than the least of
all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the
unsearchable riches of Christ; and to make all men see what is the fellowship
of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been bid in God, who
created all things by Jesus Christ."
This had been his great
responsibility throughout the years. Because of this, he had suffered bitter
persecution, on account of which he was even then in prison, but he is the more
concerned that after his death there should be left on record such a full
statement of this truth that no one could lose sight of it.
CHAPTER
FIVE
Further Examination of the Epistles
PASSING over for the
present the Apostle Paul's presentation of the sevenfold unity of Christianity
in Ephesians 4, and his identification of the Body and the Bride in chapter 5,
which we shall discuss later, we turn now to others of the prison epistles to
see if we can find the slightest intimation of a new revelation given after
Paul reached Rome. Unquestionably, Philippians was written during the Roman
imprisonment. But we search its four precious chapters in vain for the least
suggestion that he has received anything new to unfold. In chapter 1, where he
presents Christ as the believer's life, he shows how thoroughly the
evangelistic spirit had taken possession of him, so that even in his
prison-cell he was rejoicing that Christ was being preached whether in pretence
or in truth, and his own desire is that this same Christ may ever be magnified
in his body, whether in life or in ,death. He urges the saints to stand fast in
one spirit contending for the very faith which he had already made known to
them. There is not a hint that he has now something new to reveal; that is,
that the old dispensation to which they had hitherto belonged had come to a
close, and that a new one had begun. In chapter 2 he dwells on Christ as our
Example, and shows how he himself and Timothy and Epaphroditus during the years
had sought to follow in Christ's steps, and this is still before his soul. In
the third chapter he recounts his past experiences and self-confidence in the
old days before be was saved, and then shows how the change was brought about
by a sight of the risen Christ. From that moment on, he counted all things as
loss for the One who had won his heart, and he was pressing on toward the mark
for the prize of the calling of God on high in Christ Jesus. He calls upon them
whom he designates as "perfect" to be thus minded. "Perfect" here means
"mature," or we might even say well-rounded, or well-balanced. Nothing is
needed to give them this perfection in addition to what they already had.
Surely, if anywhere, this was the place to show them that hitherto they were
but babes, and had only received an initial revelation, but that now he had
something for them of an altogether new character which would perfect them in
Christ. But there is no word of any such added truth. Nor yet in the last
chapter where he exhorts to unity and peace among themselves. May we not say
that Paul is singularly remiss in not sharing with his old converts at Philippi
the new revelation he had received, if such a thing were really true?
But it was not true:-all the reasoning of the ultra-dispensationalists to the
contrary notwithstanding;-for when we turn over to Colossians we find him once
more reiterating the same truths he had proclaimed for a generation. He shows
that two ministries had been committed to him from the first. He had been made
a minister of the Gospel. That Gospel has been preached in all the creation
which is under heaven. He had also been made a minister of "the mystery which
hath been hidden from ages and generations, but now," he says, "is made
manifest to His saints: to whom God would make known what is the riches of the
glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in (or, among) you,
the hope of glory: whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in
all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus: whereunto I
also labor, striving according to His working, which worketh in me mightily"
(Col. 1: 26-29).
Let it be carefully observed that he is here covering
his entire ministry. He had no such opportunity to preach to multitudes while
he was in his Roman, or as some think, his Caesarean prison at the time he
wrote this epistle. But he tells us what had characterized his ministry
throughout the years. Other saints there were whom he had not met personally,
as well as those at Colosse. He thinks of the Laodicean believers, and he longs
that they all may be brought into the knowledge of this mystery. But it is not
something new. It is that which has ever characterized his teaching.
The Epistle of Titus is not of course a prison epistle at all, but it was
written later than any of those that are so designated, excepting Second
Timothy. In this letter Paul instructs the younger preacher, Titus, as to the
divine order for local churches, the work of a true pastor, and the testimony
committed to the servants of God. Surely here, if anywhere, we should expect
him to put before Titus the fact that the "transitional period" has now come to
an end and Titus must ring the changes as the ultra- dispensationalists do
to-day, on "body truth," "closed doors," "Jewish Gospels," "Kingdom Age," etc.,
etc., ad nauseam. But, no; none of these terms so frequently used and played
upon until one is wearied, are suggested to Titus. He is simply to go on
preaching and teaching the very same things that have been taught during his
earlier association with the Apostle Paul.
The brief letter to
Philemon we may pass over, as we would hardly expect to find anything doctrinal
in it; and yet even here if Paul's heart were throbbing with the joy of some
absolutely new opening up of truth, we would almost wonder how be could help
saying a word about it, at least to his friend Philemon.
Hebrews was
undoubtedly written very shortly before the apostle's martyrdom, granting that
it is from the pen of Paul. That this is so, I have tried to make clear in my
book on the Epistle to the Hebrews, and I shall not attempt to go into it now.
But in any case, it was undoubtedly written very shortly before the destruction
of Jerusalem, and here if anywhere, one might expect these Hebrew believers to
be told that the "kingdom age" is now over, "the transition period" has now
been finished, and it is for them to accept the new revelation of "body truth."
But we search in vain for anything of the kind. It is simply a normal
presentation of the precious things of Christ, showing how completely Old
Testament types have had their fulfilment in Him and His finished work, and
that all who believe now come under the blessings of the new covenant.
Probably later than Hebrews is the second letter to Timothy. It was penned
during Paul's second imprisonment, very shortly before his death. As this
occurred in A. D. 66 or 67, we may see how far along we have come and still no
mention of any new revelation. So far as the truth that is dealt with is
concerned, Second Timothy might have been written any time before the first
imprisonment. It is in perfect harmony with all the apostle's previous
ministry.
But now there are other Epistles to be considered. We have
already seen that Paul makes no claim to being the sole depository of the
revelation of the mystery. He says it was made known to Christ's holy apostles
and prophets by the Spirit, and so we turn to consider the writings of other
apostles and prophets asking, "Have we in them any intimation of a new
revelation after Paul went to Rome?"
We may dismiss the Epistle of
James as not touching on this question. It is addressed definitely to the
twelve tribes scattered abroad, and is God's last word, as it were, to those of
Israel who were still more or less linked in spirit to the synagogue.
Bullingerites generally tell us that James was the first epistle to be written
but this is absurd on the face of it. It is quite evident that James is a
corrective epistle. It must have been written after the doctrine of
justification by faith, as proclaimed by Paul, had been widely preached, for
James writes to check those who were abusing that doctrine and using it as an
occasion for the flesh. No one can read chapter 2 thoughtfully without seeing
that it is based upon, and has in view throughout, Paul's teaching in Romans 4.
James does not contradict Paul in the slightest degree, but he does show that
there is another justification than that of which Paul speaks. The great
apostle to the Gentiles deals particularly with justification by faith before
God. James, the apostle to the twelve tribes, emphasizes justification by works
before men.
First Peter was probably written before Paul's second
imprisonment. Second Peter was certainly written afterwards, and all of Paul's
letters were already in circulation when this epistle was penned. Note Peter's
own words: "And account that the long- suffering of our Lord is salvation; even
as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath
written unto you; as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these
things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are
unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their
own destruction" (2 Pet. 3: 15, 16). It is impossible to understand these
verses excepting in the light of the fact that all the Epistles of Paul were
already in circulation. Does Peter then tell us that a new dispensation had
come in, and that the middle wall between Jew and Gentile having now for the
first time been broken down and the one Body formed, the believers to whom he
writes, who were of Jewish extraction, are to recognize this new revelation?
Not at all. Peter has never heard of any such thing. He puts Paul's writings on
the same plane as the other Scriptures, but warns against the danger of
misunderstanding, and so wresting them.
Long years after all the other
apostles had gone home to heaven, we find the aged John still preserved in life
and caring for the churches of God. According to apparently reliable Church
History, he made his home in Ephesus, and moved about in old age among the
other churches mentioned in the first three chapters of the Book of the
Revelation, those churches which the Bullingerites declare never existed in the
past but are still to arise as Jewish Assemblies in the Great Tribulation!
Could anything be much more grotesque?
John's Epistles were written,
according to the very best authority we have, some time in the last decade of
the first century of the Christian era. Weigh this well. Paul had been in
heaven for nearly thirty years. John was an inspired apostle, and surely would
know, if any one did, of the new revelation and its importance. But we search
his letters in vain for the least reference to anything of the kind. In fact,
we find the very opposite. False teaching had come in, and he writes to
garrison the hearts of the saints against it. In order to do this, he refers
them back to that which was from the beginning, namely, to the teaching of our
Lord Jesus Christ Himself and His apostles, as a careful reading of his first
Epistle makes abundantly clear. There is not the slightest basis for the
thought that a fuller unfolding of truth had been vouchsafed to Paul and others
about thirty years after Christ's ascension. It is the message that they had
heard from the beginning which he again commends to them.
Let us
imagine the late Dr. Bullinger, or some of his lesser satellites, living, not
in the twentieth century, but in the closing days of the first century of the
Christian era. Filled with their ideas of a new revelation given to Paul in
prison, can you by any stretch of the imagination think of them writing
epistles or treatises in which no reference whatever is made to the supposedly
new doctrines? The fact of the matter is that these men today can scarcely open
their mouths without speaking of these things. No matter what text they begin
to expound, they almost invariably wind up with something about their system of
rightly dividing the Word of Truth, and the importance of making the fine
distinctions which they imagine they see in the Word. Yet inspired men like
Peter and John, and without particularly going into it, we may add Jude, can
expound and apply the Truth of God in the fullest possible way without any
reference to anything of the kind. What is the only legitimate conclusion? It
is that this whole ultra-dispensational system is an idle dream unsupported by
the testimony of the inspired writings.
Error is never consistent. It
always over-emphasizes some point generally unimportant and fails to recognize
other things of great importance. Heresy is simply a school of opinion in which
something is particularly pressed out of proportion to its logical place. Who
would dare to say that this system we have been attempting to refute is not
therefore heretical? Mark, I do not mean to class it with what Peter calls
"damnable heresies," but it is certainly schismatic, and its votaries
constitute a special school of opinion within the professed Church of God, a
school that attaches great importance to something which after all is not
evident to the vast majority of devoted and godly believers. That the effect of
this can only be division and harmful, is not only self-evident, but has been
abundantly manifest in many places. The Holy Spirit says, "A man that is an
heretick after the first and second admonition reject; knowing that he that is
such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself" (Titus 3: 10, 11).
This is as certainly the Word of God as anything else revealed in the Scripture
of Truth.
CHAPTER SIX
Is the Church the Bride of the Lamb?
ONE of the first positions generally taken by the ultra-dispensationalists is
that it is unthinkable that the Church should be the Body of Christ, and yet at
the same time be identified with the Bride of the Lamb. They insist that there
is a mixing of figures here which is utterly untenable. How, they ask with
scorn, could the Church be both the Bride and a part of the Body of the
Bridegroom? Some even go farther and suggest that Christians who all down
through the centuries have had no difficulty as to the two figures (recognizing
the fact that they are figures, and therefore that there need be no confusion
in thought when it comes to harmonizing both), are actually guilty of charging
Deity with spiritual polygamy! I would not put such an abominable thought in
writing, but it is their own expression which I have heard again and again.
They point out, what all Bible students readily admit, that in the Old
Testament, Israel is called the bride and the wife of Jehovah. "Then," they
exclaim, "how can the Lord have two wives without being guilty of the very
thing that He Himself condemns in His creatures here on earth?"
In
view of such absurd deductions, it will be necessary to examine with some care
just how these figures are used. In the first place, we find God using a number
of different figurative expressions in speaking of Israel. He declares Himself
to be their Father, that is, the Father of the nation, and Israel is called His
son. "Out of Egypt have I called My son" (Hosea 11: 1), and, "Let My son go,
that be may serve Ale" (Exod. 4: 23). In other places similar expressions are
used, and yet the prophets again and again speak of Israel as the wife of
Jehovah, and the later prophets depict her as a divorced wife because of her
unfaithfulness, some day to be received back again, when she has been purged
from her sins. But it is important to see that a divorced wife can never again
be a bride, even though she may be forgiven and restored to her wifely estate.
What incongruity do we have here if we are to interpret Scripture on the
principle of the Bullingerites. Here is a son who is also a wife. What utter
absurdity!
Then again we have Israel depicted as a vine. "God brought
a vine out of Egypt" (Ps. 80: 8), and, "Israel is an empty vine; he bringeth
forth fruit for himself" (Hosea 10: 1). In many other places, the same figure
is used. Elsewhere we have this favored nation spoken of as the priests of the
Lord, occupying a special position throughout all the millennium, as though
they were intermediaries between the Gentiles and Jehovah Himself. Other
similitudes are used, but these are enough to show that there is no attempt
made in Scripture to harmonize every figure. Each one is used as suits God's
purpose for the moment. So the nation which at one time is viewed as a son is
seen on another occasion as a vine, and elsewhere as a wife, and again as a
nation of priests.
This being so in connection with Israel, why need
we be surprised if a similar diversity of terms is used in connection with the
Church? When our Lord first introduces the subject of the new order, He speaks
of the Church as a building: "Upon this rock I will build My Church" (Matt.
16:18). The apostle Paul views the Church in the same way in 1 Corinthians 3:
9, 10), "I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. Ye are God's
building." Again in Ephesians 2: 19-22: "Now therefore ye are no more strangers
and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of
God: and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus
Christ Himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building fitly
framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are
builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit." In regard to
this passage, please take note that if the Bullingerites are correct, we have
here a building suspended in the air with a great gap between the foundation
and the superstructure; for this building is said to rest upon the foundation
of the apostles and prophets, but according to the views of those we are
discussing, we must separate in a very definite way the New Testament apostles
and prophets of the book of Acts from the Ephesian church, which is supposed to
be a different company altogether. The absurdity of this becomes the more
apparent as we see how we would have to do damage to the picture of the
building as used here by the apostle Paul. The fact is the Church of Acts and
that of the prison epistles is one and indivisible. In I Timothy 3: 15, he
speaks of "the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar
and ground of the truth." The apostle Peter looks at the Church in exactly the
same way, as a company of living stones built upon the Living Stone, our Lord
Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 2: 5).
We have already seen that the figure of
the Body is used in a number of Paul's writings, not only in the prison
Epistles, but in Romans and 1 Corinthians, to set forth the intimate
relationship subsisting between Christ in glory and His people on earth,
whereas the house expresses stability, and tells us that the Church is a
dwelling place for God in this world, as the temple was of old. The Body speaks
of union with Christ, by the indwelling Spirit. But Paul sees no incongruity
whatever in changing the figure from that of the Body to the Bride. In the
fifth chapter of Ephesians he glides readily from one to the other, and no
violence whatever is done to either view. He shows us that a man's wife is to
be regarded as his own body. And in the latter part of that chapter, where he
goes back to the marriage relationship as originally established by God, he
says:
"Therefore as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be
to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ
also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it; that He might sanctify and
cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present it to
Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but
that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as
their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet
hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the
Church: for we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. For
this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto
his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak
concerning Christ and the Church. Nevertheless let every one of you in
particular so love his wife even as himself: and the wife see that she
reverence her husband" (vers. 24-33).
Surely nothing could be plainer
than that we are to understand the relationship of Adam and Eve at the very
beginning was intended by God to set forth the great mystery of Christ and the
Church. Writing to the Corinthians at an earlier date, he said, "I have
espoused you as a chaste virgin unto Christ," and Christian behavior is shown
to spring from the responsibility connected with that espousal. The Church is
viewed as an affianced bride, not yet married-, but called upon to be faithful
to her absent Lord until the day when she will be openly acknowledged by Him as
His Bride. It is this glorious occasion that John brings before us in the
nineteenth chapter of the book of Revelation. It is of no earthly bride he is
speaking, but of the heavenly. After the destruction of the false harlot,
Babylon the Great, the marriage supper of the Lamb is celebrated in the
Father's house, and all saints are called upon to rejoice because the marriage
of the Lamb has come and His wife hath made herself ready. At the judgment-seat
of Christ, she receives from His hand the linen garments in which she is to be
arrayed at the marriage feast. Notice that on this occasion we have not only
the Bride and the Bridegroom, but we read, "Blessed are they that are called to
the marriage supper of the Lamb." These invited guests are distinguished from
the Bride herself. They of course are another group of redeemed sinners,
namely, Old Testament saints, and possibly some Tribulation saints who have
been martyred for Christ's sake. These are the friends of the Bridegroom who
rejoice in His happiness when He takes His Bride to Himself.
All down
through the Christian centuries believers have revelled in the sweetness of the
thought of the bridal relationship, setting forth, as no other figure does, the
intensity of Christ's love for His own. How truly we may sing:
"The
bride eyes not her garment,
But her dear Bridegroom's face;
I will not
gaze on glory,
But on my King of grace;
Not at the crown He giveth,
But on His pierced hand;
The Lamb is all the glory
Of Immanuel's
land."
How much we would lose if we lost this! And yet one is pained
sometimes to realize how insensible Christians who ought to know better, can be
as to its preciousness. I remember on one occasion hearing an advocate of the
system we are reviewing exclaim, "I am not part of the Bride; I am part of the
Bridegroom Himself. I belong to Christ's Body, and His Body is far more
precious to Him than His Bride." I replied, "You mean then that you think far
more of your own body than you do of your wife! " He was rather taken back, as
he might well be.
But after all, if Israel is a divorced wife to be
restored some day, and the Church is also a bride, is there not ground for what
some have called "spiritual polygamy?" Certainly not. Similar figures may be
used in each dispensation to illustrate spiritual realities; and then it is
important to see that Israel is distinctively called the wife of Jehovah,
whereas the Church is the Bride of the Lamb. Israel's nuptial relationship is
with God Himself apart altogether from any question of incarnation. The Church
is the Bride of the Incarnate One who became the Lamb of God for our
redemption. Who would want to lose the blessedness of this?
In the last
chapter of the book of the Revelation, we have added confirmation as to the
correctness of the position taken in this paper. In verse 16, our Lord Jesus
declares Himself as the Coming One, saying, "I am the Root and Offspring of
David, the Bright and Morning Star." In the very next verse we are told, "And
the Spirit and the Bride say, Come." Here we have the Church's response to our
Lord's declaration that He is the Morning Star. The morning star shines out
before the rising of the sun. It is as the Morning Star Christ comes for His
Church. Unto Israel, He will arise as the Sun of Righteousness with healing in
His wings. And so here the moment the announcement is made which indicates His
near return, the Spirit who dwells in the Church, and the Bride actuated by the
Spirit, cry with eager longing, "Come," for the word is addressed to Him. How
truly absurd it would be to try to bring Israel in here as though the earthly
people were those responding to the Saviour's voice during this present age!
But so determined are these ultra-dispensationalists to take from the
Church everything that is found in the book of Revelation, that they even
insist that the letters addressed to the churches in chapters 2 and 3 are all
for Israel too. Ignoring the fact that the apostle John had labored for years
in the Roman proconsular Province of Asia, that he was thoroughly familiar with
all these seven churches, they nevertheless even go so far as to deny that some
of these churches had any existence in the first century of the Christian era,
when John wrote the Apocalypse, although Sir William Ramsay's researches have
proven the contrary. On the other hand ' they declare that all of these
churches are to rise up in the future after the Body has been removed to
Heaven, and that then the seven letters will have their application, but have
no present bearing upon the consciences of the saints. I cannot conceive of
anything more Satanic than this. Here are churches actually raised up of God
through the preaching of the Gospel. Ephesus we know well. Laodicea is
mentioned in the letter to the Colossians. The other churches we may be sure
existed at the time and in exactly the state that John depicts, and the risen
Christ addresses these churches in the most solemn way, and seven times over
calls upon all exercised souls to give heed to what he says to each one,
crying, "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the
churches." In these letters, we have depicted every possible condition in which
the churches of God can be found from Apostolic days to the end of the
Christian era. More than that: we have in a mystic way the moral and spiritual
principles of the entire course of Church History portrayed. All this should
have immense weight with us as believers, and should speak loudly to our
consciences; but along comes the Bullingerite and, with a wave of his
interpretative wand, dismisses them entirely for the present age, airily
declaring that they have no message for us whatever, that they are all Jewish,
and will only have their place in the Great Tribulation after the Church is
gone! And thus the people of God who accept this unscriptural system are robbed
of not only the precious things in which these letters abound, but their
consciences become indifferent to the solemn admonitions found therein. Surely
this is a masterpiece of Satanic strategy, whereby under the plea of rightly
dividing the Word of Truth, the Scriptures are so wrongly divided that they
cease to have any message for God's people today, and the Word of the Lord is
made of no effect by this unscriptural tradition. And yet the Lord in
instructing John, says, "Write the things which are." It is the present
continuous tense. It might be rendered, "The things which are now going on."
"Not at all," exclaims the Bullingerite. "These are the things which are not
going on, neither will they have any place so long as the Church of God is on
earth." Others may accept this as deep teaching and advanced truth. Personally,
I reject it as a Satanic perversion calculated to destroy the power of the Word
of God over the souls of His people.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Do Baptism and
the Lord's Supper Have Any Place in the Present Dispensation of the Grace of
God?
IT is most distressing to one who has revelled in the grace of God
for years, but has recognized on the other hand that grace produces loving
obedience in the heart of the believer, to read the puerile and childish
diatribes of the ultra-dispensationalists, as they inveigh against the
Christian ordinances as though observance of these in some way contravened the
liberty of Grace. Insisting that Paul had a new ministry revealed to him after
Acts 28, and that this ministry is given only in the so-called prison epistles,
they make a great deal of the fact that in these epistles we do not have any
distinct instruction as to the baptizing of believers, or the observance of the
Lord's Supper.
We have already seen, I trust clearly, that Paul
himself disavows any new revelation having been given him after his
imprisonment, but insists that the mystery was that very message which he had
already made known to all nations for the obedience of faith. It was but part
of that whole counsel of God which he had declared to the Ephesians long before
his arrest. These brethren, by a process of sophistical reasoning, try to prove
that baptism belonged only to an earlier dispensation and was in some sense
meritorious, as though it had in itself saving virtue, but that since the
dispensation of grace has been fully revealed, there is no place for baptism,
because of changed conditions for salvation. To state this argument is but to
expose its fallacy.
Let one point be absolutely clear: No one was ever
saved in any dispensation on any other ground than the finished work of Christ.
In all the ages before the cross, God justified men by faith; in all the years
since, men have been justified in exactly the same way. Adam believed God and
was clothed with coats of skin, a picture of one becoming the righteousness of
God in Christ. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for
righteousness. Nevertheless, afterwards he was circumcised; but that
circumcision, the apostle tells us, was simply a seal of the righteousness he
had by faith. And throughout all the Old Testament dispensation, however
legalistic Jews may have observed the ordinance of circumcision and thought of
it as having in itself some saving virtue, it still remained in God's sight, as
in the beginning, only a seal, where there was genuine faith, of that
righteousness which He imputed. The difficulty with many who reason as these
Bullingerites do, is that they cannot seem to understand the difference between
the loving loyal obedience of a devoted heart, and a legal obedience which is
offered to God as though it were in itself meritorious. No one was ever saved
through the sacrifices offered under law, for it is not possible that the blood
of bulls and of goats should take away sin. Nevertheless, wherever there was
real faith in Israel, the sacrifices were offered because of the instruction
given in the Word of God, and in these sacrifices the work of Christ was
pictured continually.
When John the Baptist came in the way of
righteousness, he called on men to confess their sinfulness and their just
desert of death by baptism, and so we read that the publicans and sinners
"justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John." There was no merit in
the baptism. It was the divinely appointed way of acknowledging their
sinfulness and need of a Saviour. Therefore it is called a baptism "unto
repentance for the remission of sins." They were like men in debt, giving their
notes to the divine creditor. A note does not pay a debt but it is an
acknowledgment of indebtedness. Christ's baptism was simply Ms endorsement of
all of these notes. When He said to John, who would have hindered Him from
being baptized, "Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil all
righteousness," it was as though He said, "In this way I pledge Myself to meet
every righteous demand of the throne of God on behalf of these confessed
sinners." And this is surely what He had in mind when, three years later, He
exclaimed, "I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till
it be accomplished!" (Luke 12: 50). On the cross He met the claims of
righteousness and thus fulfilled the meaning of His baptism.
Christian
baptism has its beginning in resurrection. It was the risen Christ about to be
glorified who commissioned His apostles to go out, not simply to Jews, observe,
nor yet to proclaim a second offer of the kingdom, as some say, but to carry
the Gospel to men of all nations, baptizing those who professed to believe, in
(or, unto) the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. This
we see them literally doing throughout the early days of the Church, as
recorded in the Book of Acts. Wherever the Gospel is preached, baptism is
linked with it, not as part of the Gospel, for Paul distinctly says, "Christ
sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel," but as an outward expression
of faith in the Gospel. It is evident in the Book of Acts that there is a
somewhat different presentation of this, according as to whether the message is
addressed to Jews in outward covenant relation with God or to Gentiles who are
strangers to the covenants of promise. Paul calls these two aspects of the one
Gospel, the Gospel of the circumcision and the Gospel of the uncircumcision.
The Jew being already a member of a nation which, up to the cross, had been
recognized as in covenant relationship with God, was called upon to be baptized
to save himself from that untoward generation. That is, to step out, as it
were, from the nation, no longer claiming national privilege, nor yet being
exposed to national judgment. With the Gentile, it was otherwise. He was simply
called upon to believe the Gospel, and believing it, to confess his faith in
baptism. And this abides to the end of the age as our Lord Himself clearly
declared in the closing verses of Matthew 2 8. There has never been any change
in the order.
It has been said that the baptism of the Holy Spirit
superseded water baptism, but Scripture teaches the very contrary. Cornelius
and his household were baptized with the Holy Spirit when they believed the
Word spoken by Peter. But the apostle, turning to his Jewish brethren,
immediately asks: "Who can forbid water that these should not be baptized which
have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?" And they were at once baptized by
authority of the Lord Jesus, which is what the expression "in the name of"
involves. This was not a meritorious act. It was a blessed and precious
privilege granted to this Gentile household upon the evidence of their faith in
Christ.
It has been objected that the apostle Paul himself makes light
of baptism and was really glad that he had not baptized many at Corinth. It is
surely a most shifty kind of exegesis that would lead any one to make such a
statement. In the record in Acts, where we read of Paul's ministry in Corinth,
we are told that many of the Corinthians hearing, believed and were baptized.
Paul did not himself do the baptizing, save in a few instances, but he
certainly saw that it was done, and the Holy Spirit evidently quotes the record
with approval. Why then did Paul thank God in First Corinthians 1, that he had
baptized so few? The answer is perfectly plain. Because the Corinthians were
making much of human leaders and he saw the tendency to glory in man. He knew
that if there were many there who had been baptized by him, they would be
likely, under the prevailing conditions, to pride themselves upon the fact that
he, the apostle to the Gentiles, had been the one who baptized them. But far
from making light of baptism, when he chides them for their sectarian spirit,
he shows them that the only name worthy of exaltation is the name of the One by
whose authority they had been baptized.
As to the various disputed
scriptures in Romans 6: 3, 4; Colossians 2: 12; Ephesians 4: 5; and Galatians
3: 27, where baptism is mentioned without any definite indication as to whether
it is water or Spirit, one thing at least is perfectly clear. Water baptism is
necessarily implied, because Spirit baptism is but a figurative expression, and
water baptism was the act upon which the figure was based. This comes out in
the first mention of Spirit baptism. "I indeed," says John, "baptize you with
water" (this then was the actual literal baptism), "but He shall baptize you
with the Holy Spirit and with fire." It is not literal baptism in the Holy
Spirit. It is not literal fire, but figurative. If this be but kept in mind,
there would be no confusion. Baptism in water pictures both burial and
resurrection. On this Paul bases his instruction in Romans 6 and Colossians
2:12. Thus water baptism marks people out as belonging to Christ by profession,
and therefore is the basic thought in Galatians 3: 27, even though it is by the
Spirit's baptism that people are actually united to Christ.
There has
been much disputation regarding the passage in Ephesians 4, but without laying
special stress on the importance of water baptism, it is very evident that the
passage would have no meaning if water baptism, as well as that of the Spirit,
were not in view. Let me try to make this plain. In the opening verses, the
apostle calls upon the Ephesian believers, and of course all Christians, to
walk worthy of the vocation wherewith they have been called, and he lays stress
on the importance of endeavoring to keep the Spirit's unity in the bond of
peace. Then he explains this unity as being sevenfold. In verse 4 he emphasizes
three special things, one Body, one Spirit, and one hope. Now there can be no
question that the Spirit is brought in here as forming the Body, and the Spirit
forms the Body by what is called elsewhere the baptism of the Spirit. Then in
verse 5 we have another trio, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Here it seems
to me clearly enough we have, not a duplication of what we have already had in
verse 4, but something that is more outward. One Lord in whom we believe; one
faith that we confess; and one baptism by which we express our allegiance to
that Lord and that faith. In verse 6 we have God Himself as the Father of all,
the Founder of this blessed unity.
Now without going into any
disputation as to whether the term "one baptism," is to be confined to the
baptism of the Spirit, or the baptism of water, it is certainly evident that it
at least implies water. No man confesses his faith in Christ by the baptism of
the Holy Spirit alone, for millions have been baptized by the Holy Spirit, and
yet the world knows nothing of it. On the other hand, of course, many have
faith in Christ who have never been baptized in water, but that does not alter
the fact that, according to the Lord's own instructions, water baptism should
follow confession of Christ. The Lord has never rescinded this order, and for
men to attempt to do so is but to substitute human authority for divine.
The statement has been made that inasmuch as all carnal ordinances
were abolished in the cross, this includes baptism and the Lord's Supper.
However, to merely state this is to refute it, inasmuch as Christian baptism
was not given until just before the Lord's ascension, and the Lord's Supper was
given from heaven to the apostle Paul by special revelation, long after
Christ's ascension (1 Cor. 11: 23, 24). To read into such a passage as Hebrews
6: 1, 2 any reference to Christian baptism, is ignorance so colossal that it
does not even deserve an answer. The apostle there is definitely referring to
Judaism in contrast with Christianity. The "doctrine of baptisms" is the
teaching of washings under law.
To the lover of the Lord Jesus Christ
there can be nothing legal about baptism. It is simply the glad expression of a
grateful heart recognizing its identity with Christ in death, burial, and
resurrection. Many of us look back to the moment when we were thus baptized as
one of the most precious experiences we have ever known.
All
ultra-dispensationalists do not reject the Lord's Supper, but those who are
rigidly tied up to the prison epistles and have practically no other Bible, set
this blessed ordinance aside in the same curt way that they dismiss water
baptism. We are told that in a spiritual dispensation there is no place for
outward observances. And yet, singularly enough, these brethren meet together
for worship and prayer, and that very frequently upon the first day of the
week, though they are almost a unit in denying that this is the Lord's Day.
They insist, though the Holy Ghost has Himself changed the term; that the
Lord's Day is identical with the Day of the Lord; and so the observance of the
first day of the week is with them simply gross legality. Think of parting with
all the holy privileges of the Lord's Day on the plea that it is a mark of
higher spirituality to make this a common day like any other. I know that some
quote as authority for this, Paul's words in Romans 14: 5: "One man esteemeth
one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be
fully persuaded in his own mind." But an examination of the entire passage in
which this verse is found, will make it clear that the apostle is here
referring to Jewish distinctions between clean and unclean meats, and holy and
common days, and he would have Gentile believers respect even the legal feeling
of their Jewish brethren in these matters. The enlightened Christian of course
in a very real sense esteems every day alike, that is, every day is devoted to
the glory of God, but this does not mean that he fails to differentiate between
days on which he participates in the ordinary activities of the world, and the
first day of the week, which is largely set aside for spiritual exercises. We
have known men to glory in their liberty, as they called it, who could take
part in Christian service on Lord's Day morning and spend the afternoon
golfing, or in some other more worldly way, and this on pretence of a higher
spirituality than that of those who are supposed to be legal, because they use
the hours of the entire day either for their own spiritual upbuilding or for
the blessing of others.
It is strange that many, who insist that there
are no ordinances or commandments connected with the dispensation of pure
grace, should take up collections in their services and urge people to give as
unto the Lord to support their ministry. logically, they should tell people
that giving is legal and belongs to the old dispensation, but has no place in
the present age, when we simply receive but give nothing in return! The passage
already referred to in 1 Corinthians 11 makes it clear that though the apostle
Paul did not receive his instruction concerning the observance of the Lord's
Supper from the twelve, it was given to him by special revelation from heaven,
thus indicating what an important place it has in this age. Surely one is
guilty of gross perversion of Scripture who dares to teach that since Paul's
imprisonment, the Lord's Supper should no longer be observed, when the Holy
Ghost has said, "As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show
the Lord's death till He come."
The most sacred hours that many of us
have ever known have been those spent with fellow-believers seated at the table
of the Lord, recognizing in the broken bread and poured-out wine, the memorials
of our Saviour's death, and thus in a new way entering into and appropriating
the reality of which the symbols speak. We may be thought legal, because we
refuse to surrender such precious privileges at the behest of some of our
self-styled expositors of pure grace, but we remember "that the grace of God
salvation bringing for all men, hath appeared, teaching us that denying
ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in
this present world, looking for that blessed hope and the appearing of the
glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ," and until He come, by His
grace, to remember Him in the way of His own appointment.
Concluding
Remarks
IN closing this review of the system of teaching which we have had
before us, I do not think it necessary to go into the questions at any length
of Soul-sleeping and Annihilation (conditional immortality), or the opposite
view of the final restoration of Universalism. As already mentioned, the
followers of the late Dr. E. W. Bullinger have largely taken up with the first
type of teaching in Great Britain; whereas in America many of them have
supported Universalist views. But these heretical teachings have been so ably
answered on many different occasions by other writers, that it would seem like
a work of supererogation to go into them now. I only mention them, in fact, as
a warning to those who are dabbling with this system, for that which looks so
innocent in the beginning often ends up in complete departure from "the faith
once delivered to the saints."
One who was a leading advocate of
Bullingerism on the west coast for many years, has put out literature recently
which denies the Eternal Sonship of the Lord Jesus Christ, the true personality
of the Holy Spirit, and many other important truths. In order to support his
restoration system, he has put out a private translation of the New Testament
which, by his disciples, is generally accepted as absolute authority. Making no
pretence to scholarship myself, but simply seeking to be a reverent student of
the English Bible with whatever help I have been enabled to glean throughout
more than forty years of studying the Word, I hesitated to pronounce upon many
of the peculiar translations in this new New Testament, but several years ago
it was my privilege to spend some time in company with the late Dr. A. T.
Robertson, undoubtedly the foremost Greek scholar in America, and possibly
without a peer elsewhere. I asked him if he had ever examined the Version in
question. With a look of disgust, he said, "I certainly did. The editor had the
impertinence to send me a copy, and asked me to commend his ignorance to
others."
I said, "Doctor, would you give me in a few words your real
estimate of this work, and give me the privilege of quoting you as occasion may
arise?"
He replied, "I can give it to you in two words, Piffle and Puffle,
and you may tell any one that that is my estimate of this vaunted translation."
In giving publicity to this conversation, my desire is to warn those
who are carried away by great pretence to learning, who may not themselves be
familiar with the original languages in which the Bible was written, and are
therefore easily impressed by a parade of assumed scholarship.
Generally speaking, I have sought to avoid personalities in this discussion.
Many otherwise excellent men have taken up these new views. I have no quarrel
with men. I do not desire to reflect upon or belittle any of them. It is the
Truth of God that is in question, and my appeal is therefore to the Word
itself.
Singularly enough, since these papers began running serially,
I have received abusive letters from a number of different teachers accusing me
of attacking them. One such writes that he is neither a Bullingerite nor an
ultra-dispensationalist, and resents being so designated. Each one must draw
his own conclusions as to whether he holds the views I have endeavored to
refute. "I speak as unto wise men. judge ye what I say."
In bringing
these papers to a close, I would urge interested readers to remember the
exhortation of the apostle, "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."