world" (Matt. 25: 34). Some have sought to limit the phrase `eternal or age-long life' to

the Millennium and the restored people of Israel. This is unnecessary as, while the ages

run their course, members of the Body, as we have just seen, will need life in the

heavenlies. This still leaves intact the special usage of eternal life in the Gospels.

The Lord Jesus said in John 7: 6, 8, "My time (season) is not yet come", but in

Matt. 26: 18 it had come, for He now says "My time (season) is at hand (drawn near)".

This was the particular point of all time when He should offer Himself as the Antitype of

the Passover Lamb, with the consequence that the gospel of His grace can be proclaimed

and we can tell men and women that `now is the accepted time (season), now is the day

of salvation' (II Cor. 6: 2).

There is not only a season for truth, but also for the lie and its outworking. The

Apostle in II Tim. 3: 1 warns of perilous times (seasons) to come in the last days of this

age, a season when sound doctrine, the truth of God, will not be endured (II Tim. 4: 3).

This will lead on to the time or season when Antichrist shall be revealed (II Thess. 2: 6)

who will be destroyed by the revelation from heaven of the Lord Jesus (II Thess. 2: 8).

There is a season and a fitting time to every purpose under the heaven (Eccles. 3: 1) and

truth for this Gentile age, while Israel as a nation is laid aside in unbelief, is revealed by

the ascended Christ through Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles. This completes the Word

of God (Col. 1: 25).

So in Titus 1: 3 he refers to the proclamation (preaching) of the truth which had been

entrusted to him according to God's commandment. This was now manifested, because

`its own peculiar season' for its revelation had come with the rejection of Israel, the

covenant people.

Paul uses the same phrase in I Tim. 2: 6, "There is one God, and one Mediator

between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all to be

testified in due time". The Greek reads literally `the testimony (concerning His work as

Mediator) to be rendered in its own season". That season had arrived and Paul was the

channel through which it was made known. The essence of dispensational truth is that

recognition of the fact that there is a fitting time in the purpose of God for the revelation

of truth. This is decided by the all-wise God and confusion is bound to result if due

recognition is not given to this fact. If we read future truth into the past, or past truth into

the present or future, we shall cloud our own minds and those with whom we come into

The witness given by the Lord Jesus Christ through the Apostle of the Gentiles, after

Israel's apostasy, is essentially truth for the times. Now is the fitting season of its

revelation and the working out of that phase of Divine Plan which is made known therein.

This concerns God's purpose for the heavenlies and the Church of the Mystery which is

the glorious subject of Paul's Prison Epistles and the Pastoral Epistles written after

Acts 28: Let us search this treasury of truth afresh and seek the Spirit of wisdom and

revelation without which we can never get to know its unsearchable riches (Eph. 1: 17,

18; 3: 8 9).