This appeals to me as a useful exposure of Mr. Mauro's fallacious teaching. It is useful in that it exposes his manifold contradictions and ridiculous efforts at interpretation to suit his theory; and it is a well-merited rebuke for his extravagant charges and wild statements about men more able than he from the standpoint of scholarship and spiritual discernment in the teaching of Scripture.
One's amazement increases when those long in the fellowship of so-called "Brethren" are carried away with such drivel, and one wonders why, when there is such an abundant supply of sound literature published on these subjects which the best advocates of the historical theory have never been able to prove unscriptural.
Mr. Mauro's views are not only destructive of a true understanding of prophecy, but they involve erroneous views as to the Church, the Kingdom, the Gospel, and the Law, as Mr. Pollock has pointed out.
Mr. Mauro is pleased to label dispensational views as "Modernism," though it would not be hard to show that these views must have been held by the early successors of the apostles-views of truth that, along with other truths concerning the Church, its divine order, spiritual constitution and heavenly destiny, were lost to God's people, and only restored to us together with correct prophetic interpretation about a hundred years ago. What was lost together was then restored together, and instead of being "Modernism," as Mr. Mauro falsely states, those views and their related truths are the only crushing answer to Modernism. In his striving after novelties Mr. Mauro would plunge us back into the theology and meaningless spiritualizing process belonging to the dark ages, much of which was carried over into Reformation days. Mr. Mauro is fond of charging dispensational teaching with the low spiritual state of the Lord's people today, and he thinks that what he now advocates will revive and restore spiritual tone and activity. One might reasonably ask him since what he advocates is from pre- and post-Reformation days, if the evidence of history supports his contention? Were those days so greatly characterized by spirituality and unworldliness?
On the other hand, with the revival of those lost truths already referred to, there came the greatest period of real missionary work since apostolic days. This continues to the present unabated and increasing. There also came that blessed deliverance from sectarian and denominational bondage as a result of which thousands of assemblies of God's people sprang up all over the world in which expression was once more given to the fellowship of saints according to the New Testament model. That the history of this movement bears many scars, and has suffered much from fleshly strife and the introduction of unscriptural forms of teaching, of which Mr. Mauro's is a sample, is sadly too true. But this might be expected, for as in the apostles' day, so again when what was so distinctively of them was mercifully revived by the Holy Spirit. Many now rejoice in fresh grace given to overcome even these last-day hindrances, and through the drawing together of many of the Lord's people long since separated, fresh spiritual energy in the activity of love, without compromising any vital truth, is found springing up in many places. This gives fresh courage to go on, while it stirs one's heart with determined purpose to resist such systems of teaching as that under review in this pamphlet, and also that of "Ultradispensationalism," or "Bullingerism," now raising its head in unexpected quarters to further disturb the Lord's people. Both these systems contribute to division and not unity, and so bear the stamp that requires us to refuse them and avoid those who actively propagate them. Both systems, though their advocates may not be aware of it, are subtle attacks upon the integrity of the Word of God, and upon the plain, simple, direct meaning of its Spirit-chosen words, even as this is also true of another modern revival of an ancient error the present-day denial of the Eternal Sonship of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The enemy's present effort seems more than ever directed against the written Word of God, and the truth of its verbal inspiration. While this is going on from so many quarters, it is encouraging to see how God is using the spade of the excavator to turn up in most unexpected places convincing testimony of its historical reliability, putting out of court the vaunted "results" of miscalled "Higher Criticism"; while fulfilled prophecy and the present condition of the world at large, and of the near East in particular, demonstrate the truth of its moral, spiritual, and prophetic teaching. It is not without meaning that when writing about these last days Paul urged upon Timothy the great importance of the Word of God, which alone can thoroughly furnish the man of God. We ever need to remember that when we handle the Scriptures we handle what the Holy Spirit has given in His own chosen words in the original autographs, and that we have the sense of those words mercifully preserved to us in such fashion that there need be no doubt about the mind of God. The minor variations with which the textual criticism of Scripture makes us familiar do not affect any important feature of truth. "Scripture cannot be broken."
-John Bloore.