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the real tabernacle `heaven itself', to the heavenly country, and heavenly Jerusalem.
Heb. 12: 18-21 speaks of Moses, verses 22, 24 of `Jesus, the mediator of the new
covenant'. Connected with the latter is the perfecting of those who were sanctified.
There we see them, `the church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven'. These are
associated with `the spirits of perfect righteous ones' and the `innumerable company of
angels'. How any can confuse such a description with the right hand of God far above all
principality and power is beyond our understanding. So far as we are concerned we see a
decided difference and keep it so."
Our critic, when he penned a comment on Heb. 3: 1, saw a decided difference too;
he definitely says: "They (the Hebrews) have no part in the calling above." We stated
this twenty years ago, and we believe it to-day. Our critic said it himself some years ago,
yet calls our teaching hard names to-day. Of course he has every right to alter his opinion
completely if he believes further knowledge of the Scriptures calls for it. We trust we
shall do so whenever we see differently. But we cannot help but feel and regret that to
any unbiased reader our critic's testimony is damaged, and those who oppose any attempt
to apply II Tim. 2: 15 will be rejoicing.
#3.
pp. 148 - 152
Our readers know that we have drawn attention to the fact that while epouraniois
occurs in many books of the N.T., the phrase en tois epuraniois is limited to the Epistle
to the Ephesians. We have further drawn attention to the fact that the five occurrences of
this phrase indicate the sphere of blessing for the church as being:--
(a) At the Father's right hand
(b) Far above all principality and power, and consequently higher than the New
Jerusalem and all the heavenly host.
Criticising this teaching our critic speaks as follows:--
"A change in the grammatical form certainly does not change super-heavenly to
sub-heavenly!"
We certainly have never thought such transformation possible, but the ordinary reader
may receive the impression that we have done so. We have laboured to show that the
whole point of the references in Ephesians is that this company of believers are the only
ones who well ever enter into their blessings "up in heaven" or "in the super-heavens";
all others, though having "heavenly" blessings, will enjoy them elsewhere:--
"It is the same heaven, but the direction of the action is different. So the Ephesians
are going to heaven. The Hebrews get their blessings from heaven and enjoy them on
earth."
We feel tempted to give no hint as to the source of this last quotation. We believe it to
be true. It teaches what we ourselves teach as to the difference between the "heavenly