is implied in Titus 1:10.

The record of gospel witness, is also a record of

Jewish `gainsaying'.

`But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and

spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and

blaspheming' (Acts 13:45).

`But when the Jews spake against it, I was constrained to appeal unto

Caesar' (Acts 28:19).

`As concerning this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against'

(Acts 28:22).

The outstanding characteristic of Israel during the period covered by

the Acts of the Apostles is summed up in Romans 10:21:

`But to Israel He saith, All day long I have stretched forth My hands

unto a disobedient and gainsaying people'.

That much more is implied in this term than mere verbal opposition is

discovered in Jude, who speaks of those who `perished in the gainsaying of

Korah' (Jude 11), as a reading of Numbers 16 will show.  For this

`contrariness', for their `forbidding' of the apostles to speak to the

Gentiles, Israel filled up their sins alway, and brought down wrath upon

themselves to the uttermost (1 Thess. 2:15,16).  Something of this antagonism

lingered in the breast of those Jews who had believed, very few seem to have

learned the lesson of the breaking down of the middle wall of partition.

`Unruly and vain talkers'.  Unruly is in the Greek anupotaktos

`insubordinate'.  Hupotasso and hupotage mean to set or place in order, to

subject.  These words are found in Titus 2:5,9; 3:1; and 1 Timothy 2:11 and

3:4, translated `obedient', `be subject' and `subjection', and while in many

cases the subjection is associated with rebellion and its suppression, this

is not necessarily so, for it is written of the Saviour that He was subject

unto His parents (Luke 2:51), and at the climax of the ages He will Himself

be subject unto Him Who put all things under Him (1 Cor. 15:28), so that the

insubordination of these vain talkers and deceivers of the circumcision in

Crete was a rebellion against a Divinely appointed authority.

`Vain talkers', mataiologos, must be read with `vain jangling' of 1

Timothy 1:6 where the Greek word is mataiologia.  `Neither give heed to

fables and endless genealogies which minister questions rather than godly

edifying' (or `a dispensation of God' Revised Version, 1 Tim. 1:4).  The true

reading of this passage is oikonomia `dispensation' not oikodomen `edifying'.

Any believer that had grasped in any degree of fulness the glorious position

of a member of the Body of Christ, potentially raised and seated together in

heavenly places, would find all such speculations and boastings vain jangling

indeed.  Perhaps the reader would appreciate the attitude enjoined upon

Timothy and Titus if this is retranslated in more modern terms.

To some, the question of whether baptism is by sprinkling

or by

immersion, is of supreme importance, but to the present writer,

it has ceased

to have any claim, for the One baptism of Ephesians 4 makes the

question of

sprinkling or immersing of no value; such questions belong to a

which is foreign to my calling.

To many the question of the Lord's supper, its administration, its

ingredients, its purpose are of supreme importance; indeed, many of the

martyrs that went to the stake in this country, did so in connection with