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the truth. The Man of Son sets himself up "as God" and will one day have his "parousia"
(coming) with its preliminary "lying wonders" (II Thess. 2: 9).
There is a possibility that the correct reading of Isa. 11: 4 should be as follows:
"With righteousness shall He judge the poor and reprove with equity for the meek of
the earth: and He shall smite the Oppressor (ariz instead or `earth", erez) with the rod of
His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall he slay the wicked."
The manifestation and the destruction of this Man of Sin were fully known to the
prophets. That which has an end must obviously have had a beginning, and that which
finally dares to come out into the light of day may well begin secretly at first. In all this
there is nothing that goes beyond the testimony of the Law and the Prophets.
We have now examined the various mysteries that are found in Paul's early ministry,
and have discovered nothing in any one of them that goes beyond what "the Prophets and
Moses did say should come".
#9.
Is the "Church" within the testimony
of the Law and the Prophets?
pp. 146 - 149
We have now considered Paul's teaching in connection with the gospel, the inclusion
of the Gentile, the hope, the gifts of the Spirit, and the mysteries, and have found in all
these instances the words used in his defence before Agrippa to be literally true. There is
no need to lengthen this investigation unduly, and we believe that the most exacting of
our readers will be satisfied with the list of subjects examined, if we conclude with some
consideration of the church and its relation to O.T. prophecy. By the church here we
mean, of course, the church of the early Acts and Paul's earlier epistles, and not the
church of the One Body as revealed in Ephesians.
It is common knowledge that the word translated "church" is the Greek ekklesia, from
ek, "out of", and kaleo, "to call". The term is used mainly in a New Testament setting,
but Stephen does not hesitate to speak of the nation of Israel called out from Egypt in the
fulfillment of God's purposes as the "church in the wilderness" (Acts 7: 38). Stephen
was fully justified in the choice of this word, for both the Septuagint Greek and the O.T.
Hebrew contain the Greek and Hebrew equivalents in abundance.
The N.T. writers did not invent the title of the "church" neither did they invest it with
entirely new attributes and associations. The meaning of the word will, therefore, be
clearer if we examine some of its O.T. occurrences.
The Septuagint Version of the O.T. in Greek contains no less than 70 unquestioned
occurrences of ekklesia, and there may be several more. There are also six occurrences