This principle of discrimination is called "dispensational truth", simply because all

these differences are the result of changes in the developing purposes of God.

Now, Thirdly: After Israel had been set aside, as recorded in Acts 28:, we find

Paul still a prisoner at Rome, but free to receive all who would come to him, and in that

condition he remained for two years. From that prison he wrote four epistles, each

indelibly bearing the marks of his imprisonment in the body of the epistle. These four

epistles are Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon. Subsequently, he wrote the

second epistle to Timothy, in which he again refers to the fact and significance of his

These words make it clear that Paul, as the prisoner, had a special stewardship

regarding the Gentiles, and we read further that this stewardship relates to "a mystery"

revealed for the first time to men through Paul, and that it "completes" the Word of God

(Eph. 3: 3-11; Col. 1: 23-27). It is of the essence of a mystery that it should be "hid"

until the time arrives for it to be revealed, and these scriptures, cited above, show that this

mystery was "hid in God", "hid from ages and from generations" but has "now" been

made manifest through the exclusive ministry of Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ.

To the believer, brought up in orthodoxy, accustomed to the phrase "the church began

at Pentecost", taking to himself as a matter of course the words "we are the people of His

pasture, and the sheep of His hand" (Psa. 95: 7), the results of the application of "right

division" and the somewhat startling claims of "dispensational truth", may seem after all

to rest upon the somewhat uncertain basis of human deduction and inference. It may be

that if we can discover that those dispensational changes which subdivide the purpose of

the ages, have always been announced, and that spiritual deduction only finds its place

after, and not before, the announcement has been made public, the recognition of the

differences that claim attention and which are vital to the full acknowledgment of our

calling may be simplified.

In the endeavour to discern the changing dispensations, we may collect together

"things that differ", we may observe that one calling is associated with the period "before

the foundation of the world", and another with a period "from (or since) the foundation of

the world". We may observe that in one calling Christ is "King"; in another He is

represented as "Priest after the order of Melchisedec", in another He is denominated

"Head over all things to the church which is His body". We may observe that some

believers are "to inherit the earth", but that others find their place in the "New

Jerusalem", and yet others are blessed with all spiritual blessings "in heavenly places",

and that this sphere of blessing is "where Christ sits at the right hand of God". We might

moreover bring forward the prevalence of miraculous gifts and the persistence of the

hope of Israel, right through the Acts of the Apostles to the last chapter, and compare and

contrast this state of affairs with the teaching of "Prison Epistles". These, and many

other studies are a legitimate approach to the study of the Scriptures, and fulfil the