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The Mystery was never a subject of Old Testament teaching, neither was it revealed
until Israel were dismissed in Acts 28: It links the original heavens with the future
when God will be all in all, and the Church of the One Body is seen to be the only
company of the redeemed whose sphere of blessing is directly connected with the
heavens of Gen. 1: 1 which never pass away. For similar reasons "principality and
power" rather than "angels" are named in association with this church.
#13. The Muniment Room (1: 3 - 14).
The Threefold Charter of the Church.
"Before the foundation of the world."
Part 4:
In which the objection that "the world" cannot refer to Gen. 1: 2
is refuted, and the opposite demonstrated and proved.
pp. 121 - 125
In the tenth article of this series evidence was given of the unanimous testimony of the
Septuagint version to the fact that kataballo ALWAYS means throw down, NEVER lay
or build or found in any sense whatsoever. We were at some pains to make the evidence
complete, omitting no reference and adding a list of the Hebrew words thus translated,
because we had in mind an attack which had been made upon the translation "overthrow"
in Eph. 1: 4 by a writer whose name we will not divulge, but refer to him as "X". He is
quite sure of himself, for he writes:
"The `Disruption' theory, so far as related to the New Testament, is another optical
illusion, a mirage which disappears the closer we look at it. Yet the theory has been
greedily ingurgitated by many ignorant souls who have been unable to refute the specious
arguments put forward. Every one of the passages wherein the word katabole occurs
deserts this clumsy yet alluring theory, and upon close examination reveals it as a fiction
and a mirage."
We await this writer's reaction to the publication of the testimony of the Septuagint,
particularly as he was at pains to quote Plutarch, Herodotus and other Pagan writers to
support his interpretation but made no attempt to enlighten "many ignorant souls" who
could not make the search, that the LXX was solidly against his views. The reference
made by "X" to an "optical illusion" arose out of his own experiences. Going home one
night he "suddenly encountered a real live ghost" he says, his "hair stood on end" when
suddenly "a large cow with a white head" made him realize that "the whole adventure
was due to an optical illusion". Well, we hope "X" will again be undeceived. At the
moment Plutarch and Herodotus have dazzled his mental eyes, but it is possible that after
pondering the twenty-nine witnesses provided by the LXX, his "illusion" will resolve
itself once again into a homely cow "with a white head bobbing up and down". The
unfortunate thing is, however, "many ignorant souls" will still believe in the "real live
ghost". While "X" was under this illusion he naturally had a distorted vision, and so he
set about proving that the "world" in the New Testament cannot refer to anything outside
human society, and that it never signifies a planet or a star. He writes: