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"And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of
wisdom declaring the MYSTERY of God,"
and then goes on to reveal something of the cause of his anxiety. Apparently the
Corinthians, like many others, were desirous of having their ears tickled with high
sounding phrases, but, said the Apostle, I resolved to limit my message among you, to
"Jesus Christ and Him crucified", even though he knew that by so doing he would arouse
their antipathy. "Howbeit", he continued, "we speak wisdom among them that are
perfect . . . . . we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery". In chapter three he returns to
this limitation which he had imposed upon himself saying:
"And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even
as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk and not with meat" (I Cor. 3: 1, 2).
The subject matter of Inspired Scripture is so vast that the reader, in order to
comprehend with any clearness both the matter and the application of its teaching,
naturally and rightly subdivides the material before him, arranging the teaching of the
Word under such headings as:
(1)
Doctrinal Truth, e.g. "Justification by faith".
(2)
Practical Truth, e.g. "Walk worthy of the vocation".
(3)
Prophetic Truth, e.g. "The coming of the Lord".
(4)
Church Truth, e.g. "The church which is His Body".
(5)
Kingdom Truth, e.g. "The kingdom of heaven".
We can well understand that both those who agree with us and those who do not, may
say "Where in this list is DISPENSATIONAL TRUTH? why is that omitted?" It has
been omitted with intent, for Dispensational Truth cannot share with any of these
subdivisions, for ALL Truth is Dispensational, there is no other, and unless and until
doctrine is correctly related with the dispensation which at the moment obtains, such a
doctrine will be rendered false. Practice flows out of doctrine. Practice is the fruit of
which doctrine is the root. I cannot "walk worthy of the vocation" of Ephesians, until I
know wherein that vocation consists, and to know that, I must know its dispensational
setting, otherwise I shall, as a member of one calling, attempt to put into practice the
walk that is worthy of another, and end in confusion.
The bulk of prophetic truth pertains to Israel as a people, to Israel's Messiah, and to
the land and kingdom associated with the promises made to Abraham and to David.
Until I, as a Gentile, an alien from the commonwealth of Israel, and a stranger from the
covenants of promise, having no "fathers" in the Scriptural sense, see my true
dispensational place, I shall be tempted to appropriate prophetic statements to myself, to
distort the Scriptures so that where they say "Israel" I shall say "church" (as the headings
of some chapters in the prophets of the A.V. actually do), and refer to chapters such as
Matt. 24: and I Thess. 4:, or passages in Daniel and the Revelation, as though they all
speak of the blessed hope of the church of the parenthetical dispensation of the Mystery.