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We therefore believe and teach that these prison epistles are the standard
given to us, using which we may read and profit by all scripture, without
attempting to take to ourselves instruction and promise that belong to others.
Again, we see in these prison epistles a complete statement concerning our
standing, our state, our calling and our hope. We refuse to import into this
unique revelation items of doctrine or practice that will not square with its
superlative teaching, and therefore leave ordinances, miraculous gifts,
Abrahamic and Davidic promises, the voice of the Archangel, the trump of God,
the law of Moses, and the heavenly Jerusalem where we find them, that is on the
other side of Acts 28:, and in Paul's earlier ministry.
Notes and fuller details will be found as follows:
The Prison Ministry of Paul . . . . .
Vol. 1: 4; 2:/3: 50; 11: 145; 18: 51.
For a general opening up of the prison ministry of Paul, the reader is directed to the
volume entitle: "The Testimony of the Lord's Prisoner."
#12. The unique character of the Dispensation of the Mystery.
pp. 199, 200
A number of fundamental differences that are observable between the calling of the
church during the Acts, and the calling of the church during the dispensation of the
mystery, make it utterly impossible that they can be the same company or even that the
relation between them could be that of child to adult. However different a full-grown
man may be from his infant stage, his origin remains the same, he cannot be said to have
had one birth-place when a baby, and another when grown up: that is absurd. In the
same way, the choice of the church of the mystery took place in a period denominated
"before the foundation (overthrow) of the world" (Eph. 1: 4), a period never associated
with any other company. The church of the mystery therefore has a calling that forms
part of the outworking of the divine plan that antedates all history, and about which very
little is revealed in the Scriptures.
Not only is there this unique period of its choice, but there is the equally unique sphere
of its blessing, "in heavenly places". Where these heavenly places are, and what are their
characteristics, Eph. 1: 20-23, 2: 6 and 3: 10 reveal. Again, no company of believers
ever entertained the hope of being blessed there or seated there. Such is the second
peculiar characteristic, that marks off the church of the mystery from all else.
Again, this church receives a title of such intimacy as to well-nigh overwhelm with the
sense of the fullness of its meaning:--
"The church which is His body, THE FULNESS of Him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1: 22, 23).