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A CRITICISM
DEALT
WITH.
"The Super-heavenlies",
"The Three Spheres", and
"Far above all".
An attempt to help all critics who "frankly do not know
what the Berean Expositor teaches."
#1. pp. 109 - 112
There is a true proverb that "two wrongs do not make one right", and in contending
for the faith we must ever pray to be preserved from putting out our hand to stay the ark
of God, and from using carnal weapons for spiritual ends. This is specially so in the
realm of criticism, and perhaps most of all when we seek to refute charges such as those
made against us by A.E.K.
At the outset, therefore, we charge ourselves before the Lord to remember that truth is
His, and ours is but a stewardship; to remember that in many things we offend all; also
to realize that where erroneous charges are made against us, they injure those who
entertain them far more than they can injure us. The believer has no warrant, so far as we
can see, for attempting his own exoneration--he must leave that, as Paul did, in the hands
of the Lord--but stewardship involves the faith of many others, and silence under
criticism might be misconstrued. For the truth's sake, therefore, and not for personal
victory or vindication, we take up a criticism that is being circulated concerning part of
our teaching. A manner of life worthy of the gospel of Christ includes a striving for the
faith of the gospel (Phil. 1: 27). May the truth of God prevail.
Those who criticizes what we have written in connection with the expression en tois
epouraniois used in Ephesians, seem either to have ignored or to have overlooked a very
definite statement published in Volume VII of The Berean Expositor in 1917, which
gives in brief an indication of all that has been written since.
Closely associated with the translation "super-heavenlies" is the question of "the three
spheres". On this matter we quote a statement put forward by our critic:--
"To begin with, the Word of God knows nothing of the so-called `three spheres'. In
the beginning it commences with two, the heavens and the earth. There is no such
`sphere' as the super-heavenlies. It is non-scriptural, unscriptural and misleading."
Would it not be thought that anyone with a knowledge of the Bible would remember
that, subsequent to the creation of Gen. 1: 1, the heaven of Gen. 1: 8 came into
existence? Now let us ask our critic to say, after reading Gen. 1: 1-8, whether there are
still but two spheres? Is not the heaven of Gen. 1: 8 something lower and destined at
length to pass away? Yet even that heaven cannot be limited to the aerial heavens, where