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is necessary that we should acquaint ourselves with it, so that we shall perceive the true
place with Philippians has in regard to the Church.
The hope of the Church cannot be taught from Philippians. There is no room for the
words, "If by any means I might attain" in connexion with our blessed hope. Philippians
deals with those things which accompany salvation, and is therefore rightly associated
with a prize, with pursuing, with examples unto perfection or perdition.
No.4.
"In Son."
pp. 189 - 194
"God, Who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers
by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son" (Heb. 1: 1, 2).
Many pages have been written in the attempt to express accurately the meaning of
"sundry times" and "divers manners", but so far as we are concerned, all we need to
remember is that the Old Testament Scriptures wherein God spake to the fathers were
given over a long period of time through the ministry of many prophets, and that a variety
of means was adopted, law, prophecy and type bulking large. Let it suffice, with Moffatt,
that "many were the forms and fashions" that God employed, or with Weymouth "in
many distinct messages and by various methods" or even with Theodoret (386A.D.) "in
various dispensations, pantodapas oikonomias", God has spoken. What is important is
that in Heb. 1: 2 we are compelled to face a wondrous change and focus our attention on
one glorious Person:
"Hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son."
The transition being easily visualized as follows:
A | In sundry times (i.e. in earlier dispensations).
B | Unto the fathers.
C | By the prophets.
A | In these last days (i.e. in the opening of the New Testament).
B | Unto us (The Hebrews).
C | By His Son.
It is interesting to see that Theodoret uses the word "dispensation" and the reader may
be further interested to know that Clement of Alexandria (192A.D.) uses the word at least
fifty times in his writings. The way many believers speak today of "Dispensationalism"
one would think that it was some newly invented catch-word of modernism; or even the
copyright slogan of The Berean Expositor!
"In these last days." When Paul refers to the last days in his epistles to Timothy, he
is looking down the centuries to the closing days of the present dispensation; here in