It is true that, even after the formation of the Church, by the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, divine mercy lingered over Jerusalem and her sons, unwilling to give them up, so long as any means of bringing them to repentance was left untried. The expression of this mercy in the special character of Peter's ministry to the Jews, has been already pointed out in the “Bible Treasury” (see p. 41). But connected with this peculiar ministry of the apostle of the circumcision were two remarkable facts. First, the numerous converts to Christ who were its fruit, instead of constituting the Jewish remnant, of which psalmists and prophets had so largely written, as passing through the final troubles in Judea, and emerging into the light and gladness of millennial times, were “added to the church” —to that new and unique assembly, which had begun to be formed on the day of Pentecost. Secondly, so distinct was this assembly from the Jewish nation, as such, that when Peter and John had been before the rulers, who had threatened the two apostles, and let them go, we read of these, that “being let go, they went to their own company, and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them.” There now existed within the Jewish community, Gentiles not having yet been called, a perfectly distinct body or corporation to which, as to their own, company, the apostles returned, when threatened by the rulers. The rejection of the apostles' testimony—in truth the testimony of the Holy Ghost—by the heads of the nation became, at the same time, increasingly distinct, until at last it was definitively declared in the murder of Stephen. But if Jerusalem and the earth thus close their ears and hearts against the testimony of the Holy Ghost, heaven opens to the dying witness for Jesus, and he sees the glory of God, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God. Death for Christ on earth, and glory with Christ in heaven, are thus shown to be thenceforth the portion of the Church. With the exception of the twelve, the faithful are scattered from Jerusalem, and go to Samaria and beyond, preaching Christ. By special revelation, Peter is sent to the Gentiles; Saul, the persecutor, converted by sovereign grace, when in the full career of opposition to Christ, becomes the apostle of the Gentiles; Antioch, where he is first introduced by Barnabas to the work, becomes itself a center from which the evangelizing testimony goes forth; Jerusalem thus gradually loses the metropolitan place which, even as to the gospel and the Church, it had held in the earliest days of apostolic ministry; and eventually every trace of difference between Jew and Gentile disappears, being swallowed up in that transcendent grace which gathers out from both those who form the one body of the earth-rejected but heaven-enthroned Christ.
No one can read the New Testament without perceiving, that it is to this new assembly, formed at Pentecost, and gradually developed by the power of the indwelling Holy Ghost, till it embraced Gentiles as well as Jews, that the word “Church” is familiarly and habitually applied. “And the Lord added to the church.” “And great fear came upon all the church.” “At that time there was a great persecution against the church.” “As for Saul, he made havoc of the church.” “A whole year they assembled themselves with the church.” “Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church.” “Prayer was made without ceasing of the church.” “The church that was at Antioch.” When they were come and had gathered the church together.” “Being brought on their way by the church.” “When they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church.” “Then pleased it the apostles and elders, with the whole church.” “When he had landed at Caesarea, and gone up and saluted the church.” “All the flock over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.” “The church of God which is at Corinth.” “As I teach everywhere in every church.” “Set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.” “Give none offense, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God.” “And God hath set some in the church.” “He that prophesieth edifieth the church.” “Beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it,” “Head over all things to the church.” “Christ is the head of the church.” “Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.” “Nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church.” “I speak concerning Christ and the church.” “He is the head of the body, the church.” “For his body's sake, which is the church.” “Nymphas, and the church which is in his house.” “The church of the Laodiceans.” “The church of the Thessalonians.” “The house of God, which is the church of the living God.” “The church in thy house.” “The church of the firstborn.” “Let him call for the elders of the church.” “Which have borne witness of thy charity before the church.” “I wrote unto the church.” “The church in Ephesus, Smyrna,” &c. Such are the occurrences of the word in the New Testament. We have not used a concordance in giving them, and the list may not, therefore, be quite complete. Where the word is used in the plural “churches” we have not given it. But can any one seriously glance through these passages, and deny that they speak of a body or community actually existing on earth, and which only began to exist on earth at Pentecost? Some speak indeed of that body in its totality, from the commencement to the close of its existence on earth: such, for instance, as style it, “the church of God,” “the church, which is his body,” viz., the body of Christ. Others treat of such a portion of this whole, as exists at any given time, in one place or district, and which forms “the church of God” or “the body of Christ” in that place. Some even contemplate the gathering of those who, in their particular sphere, constitute “the body the church,” in this or that believer's house. But where is there a passage which intimates, not to say affirms, that Old Testament saints, or saints on earth during the millennium, form part of the church? If any one maintain that this is the case, it is on him surely that the burden of proof rests. It is the more important to observe this, seeing that we are not aware of any who do maintain, that the Church existed as such, on earth, in Old Testament times; and as to millennial saints, most pre-millenarians would, at all events, allow, that the Church will be in some such sense complete at the beginning of the thousand years, as to be reigning with Christ throughout that period. If then the Old Testament saints are to form part of the church in glory; and if even millennial saints are ultimately to be incorporated therewith, it must be by some act, or acts, of divine power, apart from that which formed the Church on earth at Pentecost, and which continues the process of its formation throughout the present period. And where are we told in scripture of any such act of divine power? And if no such scripture testimony be produced by our brethren, how can we be expected to assent to their conclusions?
But it is time we turned to a more detailed examination of the two papers in the Quarterly Journal. The first begins by allowing that there are “great diversities of degree” among “the innumerable company of angels;” while the next paragraph makes the following important admission: “Analogous to these diversities in that race of unfallen beings, we find among the redeemed from among the fallen considerable diversity of rank and position.” The well-known parable of the talents is first cited; and then we read, “we find mention of the 'general assembly and church of the first-born,' as well as of the spirits of ‘just men made perfect,' even as we find in the Apocalypse, not only an innumerable company that no man can number, but also a special subdivision of that company, the 144,000 whose song none can learn.” It is not to canvass these statements that we quote them, but to show how much is admitted in favor of the principle, that all the redeemed have not necessarily the same place in the scene of future glory. How far the subsequent reasonings of our contemporary, especially in the second paper, can be reconciled with these primary admissions, is another question. It is satisfactory to find that these admissions are made. For more than a distinction between “the church of the first-born,” and “the spirits of just men made perfect,” we should scarcely ourselves contend. We are told, moreover, that “these distinctions in glory are subservient, no doubt, to the manifestation of divine sovereignty in the ages to come. New Jerusalem is not built on a flat plain, nor are its palaces all of one height, and after one model. The land of uprightness has its hills and mountains, its fields and its gardens. One star differeth from another star in glory.”
But this is not the whole of what the paper before us concedes. “As to the millennial day,” says the writer, “we see it quite consistent with the analogy of divine arrangement elsewhere and at other times, that there should be the risen saints above, and on earth a vast population, like the sea and its waves, who are holy and spiritual men, but are not glorified.” The difference is, in this case, attributed to the fact of the millennial saints serving on a different platform from “those who lived amid temptation when Satan was loose, and are therefore rewarded then with the rank of kings.” Whether these kings and subjects can both alike form the body of Christ (the one class, as this article puts it, being “raised up members of Christ,” and the other, “members of Christ who have not passed through death and resurrection); whether scripture speaks of both as “members of Christ,” is part of the question in debate. There can be no question as to the one class; and if scripture does anywhere speak of the other in such terms, nothing can be easier than to produce the passages. All that we now wish to point out is this, that our brethren admit the existence, for the whole millennial period, of differences between the millennial saints, and those whom we believe the New Testament calls “the church” —differences of no less magnitude than those which distinguish men in the flesh from risen and glorified saints. According to the “Quarterly Journal,” the saints of the present period, whom we believe to be what scripture terms “the Church,” will, throughout the thousand years, be reigning with Christ in glory, while multitudes of saints will be still on earth in bodies of flesh and blood. We contend for no such difference as this between “the Church,” and Old Testament saints. We believe that the latter will, with the former, be raised and glorified at the descent of Jesus into the air; and that both will reign with Christ throughout the millennial period. We believe them, nevertheless, to be distinct; and when the writer of this paper in the “Quarterly Journal” shows how the differences he admits between glorified and earthly saints are, for a thousand years, “consistent with the analogy of divine arrangements,” we will, by the self-same arguments, show the consistency therewith of such differences between the Church and Old Testament saints as scripture appears to us to recognize.
“But,” says the article before us, “nothing of all this affects the question we propose to consider. Does THE BRIDE include the Old Testament saints? That is, it does not necessarily affect that question: for there may be all these diversities, and yet all belong to the one bride,” &c. To this we reply, that the admitted existence of certain differences, is, of course, no proof that certain others exist. But if, as is the case in the second article, these other differences are denied, not on the ground of their separate and intrinsic character, but because all who are redeemed, justified, called, and belong to Christ, must therefore “have all things” — “the highest blessings,” which any of them enjoy—then the differences, admitted at the opening of this first paper, do most materially “affect the question.” They so far affect it that the one paper upsets the other. The reasonings of the latter article are as decisive against the admissions of the former, as against the views which both are intended to contravene. If, as the second article contends, “heaven is not made a transcript of they dispensational differences of earth,” how can “the general assembly and church of the first-born” “be distinguished, as the first paper admits it is, from “the spirits of just men made perfect” “Be it, if you please, that the writer of the first paper supposes them to be distinguished only as a part is distinguished from the whole. That is a very real distinction; and it is certainly, in this case, supposed to be “a transcript of the dispensational differences of earth.” If “the differences of earth, dispensational or individual, do not continue in heaven,” (second paper, page 105,) how can the author of such a statement reconcile it either with the admissions of the first paper, or with those he is himself compelled to make, where he says “there will, indeed, be difference of reward among the members of the one redeemed family, as is taught in the words, 'Be thou over ten cities: be thou over five cities?' “He cannot consistently make the exclusion of difference absolute against us, and partial in regard to such differences as he and the writer of the first paper allow. Differences in heaven are absolutely excluded on the grounds alleged by this writer, or they are not. If they are, he is proved inconsistent with himself, and the second paper absolutely subversive of the first. If they are not, their exclusion cannot be used absolutely against the particular difference in debate; and yet this writer argues thus when his object is to condemn, as subversive of foundation truth, the sentiments of those who hold it as dear and as sacred as he can do himself! But more of this anon. We only, at present, remark on the admissions made by the first writer, and the bearing they have on the question under review.
The first writer gives a list of arguments said by him to have been alleged against the thought of the Old Testament saints forming part of “the Bride.” At these and the writer's replies we will glance seriatim; but we would, in the first place, protest against the idea that we, or any of whom we know, are anxious to prove that the Old Testament saints will not form part of “the Church,” or “Bride of Christ,” in glory. In itself, this seems to us a very subordinate question: and any prominence which may have been given to it has arisen from the efforts made, first, to assume that Old Testament saints will form part of the glorified Church; and secondly, on this ground, to depress the standard of present Church privilege and enjoyment to the level of what was proper to Old Testament saints. It is this studied and laborious effort to depreciate the Church, or rather the grace manifested towards the Church, which is so evil in its character, and withering in its influence. Supposing its full place given to what God reveals as to the present standing, calling, portion, and hope of the Church, and questions yet entertained as to whether ultimately the Old Testament saints may not become part of it in glory, nothing could be happier than humbly and lovingly to inquire together, what foundation there is in scripture for such a thought. But to assume that the Old Testament saints will surely form part of the Church in glory, and to use this assumption, where it gains credit, to deny all that is at present distinctive of the place and portion assigned to the Church by rich and sovereign grace—this is what cannot be too firmly withstood.
We do not remember anywhere to have seen 1 Peter 1:1212Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into. (1 Peter 1:12) quoted to show that the Church will hold a place in glory distinct from that of Old Testament saints. It may have been quoted, and fairly, to show the superiority of the present dispensation to those of former times. Nor 2nd, do we remember Heb. 1, to have been so quoted. We have no doubt that “the heavenly calling” is an expression of wider import than “the church.” The fact is, that they against whom the arguments of the second paper are directed (and it is with these only that we are concerned), hold, and are often reproached for holding, that the mystery of the Church's unity by the Holy Ghost with Christ in heaven was specially revealed to Paul, and so not treated of by Peter, who was the apostle of the circumcision, nor even by Paul himself when writing to his Hebrew brethren. The truths ministered by Peter, James, and John, were all, we need not say, consistent with those specially revealed to Paul. Paul, moreover, writes on other subjects as no one would but he, to whom “this dispensation of the grace of God,” as he terms it, had been confided. But it is in Ephesians and Colossians that the subject is formally developed. And so we pass to the 3rd argument, said by the writer to be alleged against the thought of the Old Testament saints forming part of the Church. As it relates to a passage which has largely been discussed in connection with the question before us, we would consider it somewhat more fully. But let us hear the article under review.
“On no stronger grounds,” it says, “is Eph. 3:6,6That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel: (Ephesians 3:6) brought forward as excluding them, 'that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel.' It is assumed too often, that the 'mystery' was something else than the discovery of that hidden truth, that not Jew only, but Gentile, should share in what Christ had done, not Judea only, but in the end all the world. The promise of the inheritance was not meant here to be spoken of as peculiar to saints of New Testament times. The old saints sang in David's days, and David led the song, 'The righteous shall inherit the earth,' and that pointed to the inheritance which the bride has claim to.” This is the whole of what is said in reply to all that has been advanced, not only on the text quoted from Eph. 3 but on the doctrine of the epistle throughout. In reply we would observe, 1, You cannot depreciate the portion of “the bride,” without equally depreciating the inheritance of the Bridegroom. The very words, expressive of their relation to each other, imply the bride's participation in all that can be shared with her by her Lord. 2. Can then Christ's inheritance, as revealed in the Epistle to the Ephesians, be brought down to the measure of such Old Testament promises as the one here quoted, that “the righteous shall inherit the earth?” “That pointed,” we are told, “to the inheritance which the Bride has claim to!” Yes, and so does the sovereignty of Rutland belong to the Queen of Great Britain! But what would be thought of any one who, in treating of the dominions to which the Prince of Wales is heir, should say, “He is to have the sovereignty of Rutland?” The illustration may appear extreme, but the proportion between Rutland and the British Empire is far greater than between “the earth” and Christ's “inheritance,” as set forth in the Epistle to the Ephesians. We read there, of the good pleasure which God hath purposed in Himself, in the dispensation of the fullness of times, to gather together (or head up) in one “all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth” (1:10). We read of the working of the mighty power of God, “which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenlies, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things,” (observe it, dear reader!) “to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him which filleth all in all.” (1:20, 23). It is in this headship over all things in heaven as well as on earth, that the Church is associated with Christ, as His body, His fullness. 3. It is after having declared this, and treated of the breaking down of the middle wall of partition by the cross, Jew and Gentile becoming, in Christ Himself, “one new man,” even the Jewish sanctuary being superseded and replaced by this living temple, this “habitation of God through the Spirit” —it is after all this, that the apostle begins to treat of “the mystery.” 4. It has not been “assumed,” as the writer in the Quarterly Journal states, but largely proved, that the “mystery” was something else than the discovery, that not Jew only, but Gentile, should share in what Christ had done, not Judea only, but in the end all the world. Let any one read Eph. 3 and the latter part of Col. 1 and say whether the apostle does not evidently labor to express, that what had been revealed to him, and by him made known to others, was something new, unprecedented, unique, and previously unrevealed, unheard of, and unknown. But could the matter have been truly represented thus, if all that he meant by “the mystery” was, that Gentiles share in what Christ had done? So far from this being a mystery hid in God, there is nothing which had been more definitely revealed. Had it not been promised and sworn to Abraham, “In thee shall all families,” and “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed?” Had not Moses said, “Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people?” Had not both Psalms and prophets largely testified, that “all the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord"? that “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands to God"? that in the true Solomon, men shall be blessed, yea, and “all nations call him blessed?” Was he not to “sprinkle many nations,” and to be “a light to the Gentiles,” and God's “salvation to the ends of the earth?” As every one acquainted with the subject knows, such quotations might be greatly multiplied. How then can it be supposed by any, that it was a “hidden truth,” “the mystery” for the first time revealed in the apostolic age, that Gentiles “should share in what Christ had done?” 5. But while the Old Testament explicitly foretells that Gentiles should partake of salvation through Christ, it is always as distinct from Israel, and subordinate thereto, that they are represented in the ancient scriptures. “Ten men shall take hold, out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.” Jerusalem is to be called the throne of the Lord; the sons of strangers are to build up her walls, feed the flocks of her sons, and be their plowmen and vine-dressers; while they themselves are named “the priests of the Lord,” “the ministers of our God.”
Such are the conditions of Gentile blessing as revealed in the Old Testament, and to be accomplished in the ensuing dispensation. For though certain principles embodied in the prophecies on this subject may and do apply to the present period, it is in the millennium they are to be definitely fulfilled. But “the mystery,” of which Paul says so much in Ephesians and Colossians, is that of the present formation of a body, in which all distinction between Jew and Gentile is unknown, by virtue of the union and identification of both with a rejected and glorified Christ. The very verse, quoted in the article we review, speaks of Gentile believers, not only as fellow-heirs, but also “of the same body.” That they should be of the same body, even with Jews, had never been intimated: but that both should be of the same body with Christ, constituting the body of which He is the glorified Head, this was a mystery indeed, the existence and revelation of which amply justifies all that the apostle says.
We have no recollection of Luke 7:2828For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist: but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. (Luke 7:28) being used by any in proof of the special place and distinctive glory of the Church. This is the fourth passage alleged to have been so used. It may, like Peter 1:12, have been employed to show the superiority of the present over former dispensation's: but no one who understands the doctrine impugned in the two articles under review would urge this passage in its support. “The kingdom of God,” or “of heaven,” evidently includes the subjects of the heavenly rule thus designated. The members of the Church are doubtless individually, while on earth, subjects of God's kingdom; but the relation of the Church, as a whole, to Christ, is that of His bride, His body, whose place is to participate in His reign, instead of being its subjects.
(To be continued.)