THE object of the author of this tract is to show that the “mystery” as used in the New Testament Scriptures has reference to God's calling out, during the time of Christ's rejection, a people from both Jews and Gentiles whose position, association, and hope are intimately connected with Christ on high. Of necessity therefore, he rightly condemns the traditional confusion of Old Testament and New Testament saints, which dates the church from the gates of paradise. Nevertheless he himself falls into serious aberration from the truth in regard to this very portion of the subject.
“The Old Testament Saints,” says Dr. B., “are a great burden to Expositors of New Testament Truth” (page 50). So he very kindly undertakes to relieve them of this embarrassment once and for all. While the church forms the body of Christ, we are now told the elect saints of the Old Testament constitute the bride of Christ, the Lamb's wife. He forbears to blame too severely those who have long held the identification of “the Body with the Bride,” owning that “there is certainly some little excuse for its having been so generally entertained” (page 49).
Having duly noted and acknowledged this gracious remark of Dr. B.'s, we proceed to consider the scripture he advances to show that the Bride is the elect of Israel, and not the church which is Christ's body.
On page 49 we read, “The Bride in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea, is Israel, or at any rate the elect of Israel.” This appears fair enough, save that his phrase, “elect of Israel,” has an air of novelty, which amounts to suspicion when it is further explained to be, “those who were partakers of the heavenly calling in Israel.” Dr. B. evidently wishes us to see that the O.T. prophecies concerning the Bride only contemplate a portion of the nation of Israel. He refers to Isa. 54:5-8; 62:4; Jer. 3:14; Hos. 2:16, 17; adding, “These and other passages clearly prophesy that an election of Israel shall be the Bride” (p. 50).
Now before passing on to the development of Dr. B.'s theory, a very slight consideration of the prophecies named will show that they speak of a time when Jehovah will re-assume the character of husband to her who is a widow—when in fact Israel will be brought again into relationship with Himself as an earthly people. There is certainly nothing in the prophecies adduced to indicate that the subjects of them were “partakers of the heavenly calling” (a phrase Dr. B. has appropriated from the New Testament, not the Old, to bolster up his theory). Take his first passage, Isa. 54:5. It says, “Thy Maker is thine husband” truly; but the very same verse gives Him another title, “The God of the whole earth.” What is this but earthly blessing in the millennium? So also in verse 3 of the same chapter, speaking of Israel, “Thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.” We are sure Dr. B., with the regard he continually avows for the congruity of figures, will not seriously connect “desolate cities” with the heavenly calling.
But neither does Isa. 62:4. yield real support. We have there not a celestial but a terrestrial sphere. “Zion” and “Jerusalem” in verse 1 locate the promised blessings, and “righteousness” and “salvation” are for the saints in the “land.” “Thy land shall be married” we read; and therein Israel shall enjoy the corn and the wine (verses 8-9). Does Dr. B. really expect us to credit that these prophecies refer to a heavenly Bride?
We turn now to Jer. 3:14., “I am married unto you.” This chapter treats of the still future restoration of the Jews to Palestine. We are unable to trace the slightest reference to “the partakers of the heavenly calling.” But treacherous Judah and back-sliding Israel repent and come to Jerusalem, the throne of Jehovah. They will come out of the land of the north to the promised land; and all nations even shall be gathered to Jerusalem (verses 17-18). Can there be any doubt that the figure of marriage is here applied to the re-establishment of God's earthly people, and has no sort of reference to the partakers of the heavenly calling?
Hos. 2 is no less conclusive that an earthly people is the subject of the Spirit of prophecy. Earthly judgments first fall upon that guilty nation (verses 9-15); and then Jehovah promises to make a covenant for her with the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven, and to break the bow and the sword, and to make them lie down safely. “And the earth shall bear the corn, and the wine and the oil, and they shall hear Jezreel” (verses 18-23). It is unquestionably pictorial of a scene of earthly blessedness under renewed relationship to Jehovah. The teaching therefore of the four O. T. prophecies to which Dr. B. makes reference is that a time is yet to come when Israel will be the “Bride” of Jehovah; and that time cannot be until the chosen nation is gathered into its own land under the sway of Jehovah and His Anointed.
Turning to Dr. B. we are astounded at the position he takes up. He coolly asserts (for it is really without either scripture or argument to support it) that “the elect Saints of the Old Testament will form the Bride,” which is the “great City, the holy Jerusalem” of Rev. 21:9-27. This, he contends, “is the city for which all those who were partakers of the Heavenly Calling looked” (page 51); and he refers to Heb. 11:13-16.
As a matter of fact, after observing how many folks Dr. B. seeks to set right in his little treatise of rather less than sixty pages, we were scarcely prepared to fall upon such glaring inconsistency in the author himself.
For, observe, he will have it (page 50) that the saints of old who died in faith are those who form the heavenly Bride of the Lamb. But he quotes four prophecies (pp. 49-50) that refer to Israel's restoration to the land under the figure of marriage. And he knows these are yet to be fulfilled, because he tells us that Israel's blindness will come to an end (p. 10). When that is so, there will be the earthly Bride. So that if Dr. B.'s notions have any foundation, there will be two brides—a heavenly and an earthly. And he is found to hold the very thing that he himself condemns on page 49 (viz: that there are two brides), and sets himself to disprove. It has rarely been our lot to come across such an instance of thinly-disguised self-contradiction as this.
The truth is that there are two brides; only the heavenly one is the church, and not the saints who died in Old Testament times, as Dr. B. maintains without adequate support.
There were always, he says, those in Israel who lived “by faith” and “died in faith,” and were “partakers of the heavenly calling.” They looked for a heavenly country where God had prepared for them a city (Heb. 11:13-16). Abraham also looked for a city which hath foundations. Turning now to Rev. 21, we are reminded that the Bride is there introduced under the symbol of a city. Now, exclaims Dr. B. in emphatic capitals, “what are we to understand but that this CITY—which is declared to be the BRIDE, the Lamb's Wife, is the city for which all those who were partakers of the Heavenly Calling looked; and that these elect saints of the Old Testament will form the Bride” (page 51)? We do not, however, understand the same from these scriptures as Dr. B., even with the aid of his capitals. It surely does not follow that because “city” occurs in Hebrews. and in Revelation it necessarily symbolizes the same truth in both places. We had not yet learned that because we read of an “ark in Gen. 6 and Ex. 2 and in Ex. 25 of the ark of the covenant, the ark of bulrushes and Noah's ark were synonymous terms. Indeed we must remind Di. B. that on pages 13-15 he himself has shown that a single word (eeclesia) can be used in several senses. Why, therefore may not the word, “city,” be used to convey two different ideas in two books?
In Heb. 11 the word is used to portray that established and permanent abode in heaven for which the Old Testament saints looked in contrast with their temporary and uncertain residence upon earth. Abraham awaited the time when he should exchange his tent for a city, and so did the other patriarchs. But in Rev. 21 the city symbolizes the saints themselves, just as in Rev. 17., 18. another city, Babylon, sets forth corrupt Christendom in the last days. Here then the Bride is the city: while the Jewish saints hoped to be in a city, that is, a glorious dwelling place on high. But the holy Jerusalem which John sees seems emblematical rather of a seat of government than a habitation.
To be continued (D.V)