43
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 amiss 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
41
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
43
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
40
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 heretic 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.
VB.NET PDF: Basic SDK Concept of XDoc.PDF You may add PDF document protection functionality into your VB.NET program. to edit hyperlink of PDF document, including editing PDF url links and quick
clickable links in pdf from word; adding links to pdf
42
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
me" (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
43
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
43
established by God, he says:
"Therefore as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be
to their own husbands in every thing. 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
42
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 piercèd 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
44
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
Documents you may be interested
Documents you may be interested
