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#19.
The mystery that fills up the Word of God.
"The one hope of your calling" (Ephesians).
pp. 110 - 112
We have now considered the complete scriptural teaching concerning the second
coming of the Lord, with the exception of that of the prison epistles of Paul and of those
pastoral epistles which were written after Acts 28: One thing at least has been
established by this study--that the doctrine of the second coming is not by any means
peculiar to the New Testament. Indeed it has been forced upon us by the sheer weight of
the available evidence that there is not one N.T. reference to the second coming yet
noticed, that is not either a quotation from the O.T. or an expansion of its teaching. The
reader may find profitable study in traversing the ground already covered to discover the
O.T. links. They are manifestly on the surface in Matt. 24: and in the Apocalypse.
I Thess. 4: 16, 17 is not a new revelation; the mystery mentioned in I Cor. 15: 51
relates, not to the coming of the Lord, but to the "change" of the living believer at His
coming; and the mystery of Rom. 11: 25 refers, not to the coming of the Deliverer, but
to the duration of Israel's blindness.
The one hope of your calling.
If the prison epistles belong to the same dispensation as that which obtains throughout
the rest of the N.T., or even in that part of it which follows the Gospels, then the hope
will be the same, and will be expressed in similar terms. It will take place at the same
time, in similar circumstances, and in the same sphere. There need be no mystery about
our quest here; we have but to "search and see". While it is true that spiritual things can
only be spiritually discerned, it is also true that the spirit of wisdom and revelation is not
needed to count the number of times the parousia is mentioned in Ephesians, or to
determine whether or not the archangel's voice is said to arouse the members of the one
body.
In Eph. 1: 17-23 we have a wonderful prayer recorded. It was in the first instance the
prayer of the apostle Paul for the Ephesian saints, and he prays for nothing less than the
spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of "Him"--either of Him (the Lord) or
of it (the mystery) or probably of both, for they are inseparable (Col. 2: 2, R.V.). This
spirit is in the first instance that "ye may know what is the hope of His calling". Now if
the hope before the Ephesians had been already expounded in Paul's earlier epistles and
public ministry, why should teaching cease at Eph. 1: 16, and prayer for revelation
commence? The prayer includes three subjects, two of which are confessedly new:--
"The riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints" and
"The exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe . . . . . when He raised
Him from the dead . . . . . far above all."
The hope of His calling forms one of the seven features in the unity of the Spirit given
in Eph. 4:, where it is called "the hope of your calling". This one hope cannot be