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"My kinsmen according to the flesh: who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the
adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of
God, and the promises, whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ
came, Who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen" (Rom. 9: 3-5).
The Apostle could still pray that Israel might be saved, and spoke of the attitude of the
Lord towards them throughout the period covered by the Acts of the Apostles, as:
"To Israel, He saith, All day long I have stretched forth My hands unto a disobedient
and gainsaying people" (Rom. 10: 21).
The time for their rejection was drawing near, "blindness in part" had already
happened unto Israel (Rom. 11: 25), and into the place forfeited by the unbelieving of
Israel, the Gentile believer was engrafted, like a wild olive contrary to nature, with the
intention that Israel may be provoked to jealousy, if that were possible. For the moment
our only comment on this passage is, how could the Apostle use such an illustration, if at
the self-same time, the Gentiles were:
"Fellow heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the
gospel" (Eph. 3: 6).
One cannot be, at the same time, a wild olive graft contrary to nature into an olive
tree, and also a fellow member of One Body on absolutely equal terms with every other
fellow member. Not only must Rom. 11: be circumvented if Acts 13: is to be held as
the beginning of the Mystery, the hope of the church as defined by the Apostle in
Rom. 15: 12, 13 must also be ignored. Let it be observed that the word "trust" in
Rom. 15: 12 is the Greek elpizo, and the word "hope" of verse 13 is the word elpis. Is
this the "one hope of our calling"?
"There shall be a root of Jesse, and He that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles; in
Him shall the Gentiles HOPE. Now the God of THAT HOPE (tes elpidos) fill you with
all joy and peace in believing."
This Millennial hope is indeed blessed, but is it the hope of the Church of the
Mystery? If Acts 13: be the inception of that Church, then Paul's last word here in
Romans must comprise the hope of that Church, but this is not believed even by those
who advocate the position of Acts 13: which we reject. The Apostle makes it clear
that the dispensation of the Mystery was revealed and entrusted to him when he became
the prisoner of the Lord. This, coinciding with the dismissal of Israel at Acts 28:,
and followed in a few years by the destruction of Jerusalem, shows that nowhere else in
the N.T. can be found a moment that so fully fulfils all the Scriptural conditions as
Acts 28: as the dispensational boundary.
THE DOCTRINAL FOUNDATION AND
THE DISPENSATIONAL SUPER-STRUCTURE.
In conclusion, we draw attention to the need to distinguish between Doctrine, which is
the Foundation and does not change with the advent of Dispensational alterations. The