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A Criticism of Dispensational Truth Examined.
#1.
The Critic and Inspiration.
pp. 1 - 4
"The servant of the Lord must not strive", yet upon occasion he must be prepared to
withstand "Peter to the face". Such is our position at the moment. A servant of God
whose earlier writings have contributed to our understanding of the Word of God has for
some considerable time maintained an active and aggressive campaign against what we
commonly understand as Dispensational Truth. He has not refrained from speaking of
the teaching as unscriptural, inconsistent, absurd, erroneous, and as a mutilation of
Scripture, and as several have raised questions concerning these particular articles and
books, we feel constrained to examine them in these pages.
We wish it to be clearly understood that there is nothing of a personal character in
these notes, and although for some reasons we might have preferred to have spoken
openly of the writer, yet to avoid even the appearance of personalities we refrain. We
shall therefore refer to the book under review by the letters "G.P.K."; those who know the
book will recognize the title. When the necessity arises of referring to the author we shall
use the letter "M." and trust that by so doing we shall direct the attention not to the man
himself, towards whom we can entertain no feelings other than Christian, but to the
doctrine, which we feel is contrary to truth.
The first item with which we shall deal is not the writer's views of Kingdom or
Mystery, but the effect of those views upon his own appreciation of the inspiration of
Scripture. In 1909 "M." wrote an excellent booklet and in the introduction said:--
"It is manifestly of the very highest importance to insist unceasingly upon the
sufficiency, finality and completeness of the revelation given by God in His Word" (Our
italics).
By the "Word" the writer means the whole Bible as we possess it to-day, for he uses
"The Word" and "The Bible" interchangeably. Our object in quoting this passage is to
shew the change that has come over "M.'s" view of the completely and equally inspired
Scripture, since he took in hand the task of proving that the Kingdom of the Heavens and
the Church of the One Body are all one and the same.
In 1919 "M." wrote another book entitled "G.P.K.", and there express his more mature
thoughts concerning "All Scripture" which is given by inspiration of God. In the
following quotation, taken from pages 112, 113, we preserve unaltered the author's own
italics, so that he himself shall place his own emphasis upon his own words.
"We receive GOD'S communications through Paul and through other earthen vessels
as being truly `the commandments of the Lord', and to be reverenced and obeyed as such.
Yet we must carefully note the difference which the Scripture makes between Divine
communications given through the pens of fallible men, who received an occasional and
strictly limited inspiration for that particular purpose--men who, but for the