to the contrary. This is akin to Esau selling his birthright for a mess of pottage; such

apparently are willing to risk going back to all the spiritual slavery of pre-Reformation

days. Liberty is a plant of tender growth and does not survive automatically. Let us

never forget that the price of Christian liberty, as of all liberty, is eternal vigilance.

As we have seen, there must have been a landslide from truth before the Apostle Paul

died and through this, the truth and the glories of the Mystery of Ephesians, and

justification by faith were lost, the early fathers giving no clear testimony to either of

these precious doctrines. The literal Second Advent of Christ, which was taught by all

the Apostles, and His literal reign for a thousand years, was held fast for some two

centuries, but as the Lord tarried, the hope of His coming to set up the earthly Kingdom

began to fade away. Not understanding the truth for the present age revealed through

Paul's writings, the key to this problem was lost as well. The only way out seemed to be

to spiritualize the promises to Israel and the prophecies which deal with the setting up of

the earthly Kingdom. The Roman church seized upon these promises to Israel and

appropriated them to herself and regarded herself as the true Israel--the Israel of God,

the only visible expression of God's Kingdom on earth, disregarding the Scriptural fact

that there is only one visible organized church on earth, the literal nation of Israel. Alas!

that many Protestant expositors continue with Rome's error of spiritualizing and robbing

Israel of her Scriptural place in the outworking of God's purpose for the establishment of

His Kingdom in this world of ours.

After the Reformation, the truths that were made known through Paul's ministry

slowly began to be recovered. To expect a recovery of all the "good deposit" at the

Reformation is to expect too much. The wonder of it is that so much of the basic truth of

the gospel of God's grace was brought to light again, when we remember the terrible

spiritual darkness and bondage that had held sway for so long. It was the recognition of

the dispensational principle of interpretation of the Scriptures that played such a large

part in bringing back the deeper truths, culminating with the high water mark of

revelation--the truth of the Mystery connected with the joint-Body of Christ. This has

not been without misunderstanding and opposition, as we well know. The critics, who

have never really grasped the N.T. meaning of the word dispensation and its practical

outworking, charge this principle with being new-fangled, divisive and destructive of the

unity of the Bible, a product of Dr. E. W. Bullinger and Charles H. Welch.

They invent such terms as Bullingerism, and many who do so have no first-hand

knowledge of Dr. Bullinger's writings. The charges they make are completely false and

unworthy of anyone who professes to be saved and a true believer in the Lord Jesus

Christ, as we shall show. Even if it could be proved that dispensational teaching began

only recently, that would not of itself prove it to be wrong. As Dr. 100: 100: Ryrie rightly

says in his Dispensationalism Today: ". . . . . the fact that something was taught in the

first century does not make it right (unless taught in the canonical Scriptures), and the

fact that something was not taught until the nineteenth century does not make it wrong

unless, of course, it is unscriptural". Non-dispensationalists surely know that baptismal

regeneration was taught in the early centuries and yet many of them would not include

that error in their theological systems simply because it is ancient and historic. After all