The recognition of some such gap is important when reading passages

like 1 Peter 1:11, or the quotation of Joel 2:28 -32 in Acts 2.  Peter, who

was a minister of the circumcision, refers to the testimony of the prophets,

as though `the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow' had

no interval of centuries between them.  The outpouring of the Spirit on the

day of Pentecost is linked with the blood and fire and vapour of smoke that

usher in the great and notable day of the Lord, even though Pentecost took

place nineteen hundred years ago and the day of the Lord has not yet come

(see Pentecost, p. 160).

We shall discover that the whole purpose of the ages is a series of

`gaps' each filled by a succeeding dispensation, which in its turn lapses,

until the central dispensation, that of the Mystery, is reached, which,

though it has had a central period of darkness and ignorance yet is not

succeeded by any other, as the other dispensations have been.  All that

follow the Mystery are resumptions of the dispensations which had come to a

temporary halt.

This peculiar and central dispensation is occupied by the Church, which

alone of all companies of the redeemed is called `the fulness of Him that

filleth all in all' (Eph. 1:23).

The word translated fulness is the Greek pleroma, and its first

occurrence in the New Testament places it in contrast with a `rent' or a

`gap'.  The two references are:

`No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that

which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is

made worse' (Matt. 9:16).

`No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment: else the

new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is

made worse' (Mark 2:21).

The parallel passage in Luke is Luke 5:36 which must be added, though

it does not use the word pleroma.

`No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise,

then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of

the new agreeth not with the old' (Luke 5:36).

The words that call for attention are:

`That which is put in to fill up'.  This is the translation of the

Greek pleroma a word of extreme importance in the epistles, and there

translated `fulness'.  In contrast with this `fulness' is the word `rent'

which in the Greek is schisma.  The word translated `new' in Matthew 9:16,

and in Mark 2:21 is agnaphos, not yet fulled, or dressed, from gnapheus, a

fuller.  (See New, p. 105).

In place of `put into' or `put upon' used in Matthew 9:16 and Luke

5:36, we find the word `to sew on', epirrhapto employed in Mark 2:21.  One

other word is suggestive, the word translated `agree' in Luke 5:36.  It is

the Greek sumphoneo.