19
No. 6
"Try the things that differ".
What would you think, my reader, of the following argument?
"Englishmen eat, drink and sleep. Frenchmen eat, drink and sleep, therefore Englishmen are Frenchmen".
You would not think very highly of the intelligence of anyone who would put forward such trifling statement as
a serious argument. You would need no training in formal logic to set it aside as ridiculous. You might even go
further and say, "Why waste precious time by speaking of it at all?" The reason is, that the truth of God in one great
particular is sometimes attacked with as foolish an argument as that given above.
You may have been exercised in your reading of the Scriptures as to the evident differences that are to be found
in the Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles and the book of the Revelation, for example, differences as to spheres of
blessing, such as: "The meek shall inherit the earth", and "All spiritual blessings in heavenly places". You may
have discerned a real difference between "The Kingdom" and "The Church", or between "The Bride" and "The
Body", and then someone has demolished the whole of your conception of truth by saying something like this:
"All the redeemed are saved by the same precious blood, they receive the same gift of life, they read the same
inspired book, they worship the same God, they own and are owned by the same Father, therefore all these
so-called differences are fanciful and highly dangerous".
Now while you readily perceive the fallacy in the argument about Englishmen being Frenchmen because both
eat, drink and sleep, you may not so readily perceive the self-same fallacy in the argument that denies all the
differences concerning different companies of the redeemed taught by the Scriptures, simply because such
companies have some things in common.
Let us see whether this figure of the two nationalities will help us in appreciating what is known as
"dispensational truth".
Things that are the
Things
same
that
differ
Englishmen
England is a
Monarchy.
Eat,
ENGLAND
English money
Drink,
standard is the £.
Sleep.
English rule of the
road is: "Keep to the
left".
English Channel
Frenchmen
France is a Republic.