If Abraham had been like many Christians today, he would have failed to distinguish

between earthly and heavenly revelation, and would have missed the better things God

had in view for him.

To many, the meek who shall inherit the earth (Matt. 5: 5), and the citizenship that

now exists in the heavens (Phil. 3: 20), are all one and the same thing. The spirit of

discrimination that Abraham exercised is completely lacking in them. If this sort of

attitude is right, then we might as well give up all serious Bible study, for words have no

meaning. Others see the part and imagine it is the whole. There are systems of Bible

interpretation that envisage all the redeemed being blessed in future on the earth, while

another interpretation finally puts all the redeemed in heaven and has no place for an

earthly kingdom. Both are wrong and have only a part of the Divine picture. What they

need, and what we all need, is to have our minds stretched and enlarged to grasp more of

the fullness of God's mighty plan of redemption and reconciliation that touches the

highest heavens as well as the earth beneath (Col. 1: 20), finding its final fulfillment in

"new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness" (II Pet. 3: 13). The

understanding of many of us is clouded because of our poverty of conception. We have a

God that is too small, and a divine purpose that is little more than parochial.

When Paul urged Timothy to keep in the forefront of his mind the object of receiving

God's approval, he was told this was bound up with "rightly dividing the Word of Truth"

(II Tim. 2: 15), showing that the way we handle and interpret the Word of God is of

supreme importance, and God's future assessment of our Christian testimony and

whether we meet Him with joy or shame, depends upon our obedience to this command.

We believe that if we carry out the guiding principles before enunciated, we shall be

doing just this, and in doing so, we are allowing God's Word to mean exactly what it

says, and every statement of Scripture can be taken in the setting in which we find it

without alteration, addition or subtraction. It then ceases to be the word of man, but is in

truth the Word of God. The critic may say that such a system is "divisive", that it "chops

the Bible up into unrelated parts" and destroys the organic unity of Scripture. But rightly

applied, this is not true. One could retort that the critic who recognizes the division of the

Old and New Testaments, has chopped the Bible into halves. When we "rightly divide

the Word", we shall recognize the basic doctrine of redemption and the final Headship of

Christ that binds together the callings of the redeemed and the spheres of blessing, as well

as noting the distinctions that God has made.  Eph. 1: 10 looks forward to a future

dispensation of the fullness of the seasons when all heaven and earth are gathered under

the headship of Christ, expressing a unity that will be unbreakable and eternal. "United

yet divided" expresses the position, and to ignore one and hold to the other is unscriptural

and can only lead to imbalance, and a partial or clouded view of God's great goal. It is

quite pathetic to see how some expositors in their over-anxiety to overthrow

"dispensationalism", erect a great man of straw, someone's particular brand of

dispensational teaching, and then proceed with great show to knock it down, and imagine

when they have done this that the dispensational approach to the Scriptures has been

proved erroneous and overthrown. This is usually the attitude of the amillennialist, but

amillennialism is a denial of the historico-grammatical system of exposition, at least as

far as prophecy is concerned and, as such, it is an unsound and inconsistent method of