loss, if our calling is associated with `things above where Christ sitteth at

the right hand of God'.  If we attempt to spiritualize the promises made to

the fathers, we rob the word of promise of its truth.  If we misinterpret

Israel as of the Church; if we confound the Bride with the Body; if we preach

the gospel of the circumcision to the Gentile today; if we do any of these

things, we rob the Word of its Truth.

One glorious result of `rightly dividing the word of truth' is that

every statement of God may be taken without alteration.  For instance, in the

case of the promise, `the meek shall inherit the earth', a rightly divided

word has no need to substitute `heaven' for `earth'.

`Let us heed this word of exhortation.  If we are not occupied with

that part of God's purpose which has a present application, we shall

most certainly be ashamed of our work.  In other words, whether found

in Genesis, Romans, Ephesians or the Revelation, "Dispensational Truth"

is all the truth there is'.

Happy is the workman who, though suffering under the disapproval of

tradition, is approved unto God; that workman who will have no need to be

ashamed of his work, because he has obeyed the great all-covering principle

of interpretation -- `Rightly dividing the Word of Truth'.

Passing from the meaning of `Right Division' let us take an

illustration of the application of this principle from the ministry of the

Lord Himself.  In Luke 4:16-21 we read that the Saviour upon returning from

Galilee to Nazareth, entered the synagogue and stood up for to read.  He was

given the book of the prophet Isaiah and He found the place where it was

`The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to

preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the broken-

hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight

to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the

acceptable year of the Lord' (Luke 4:18,19).

According to Moses Maimonedes, a public reading of the Scriptures

should consist of some twenty to twenty-five verses, and had the Saviour read

the whole of Isaiah 61, even though it contained but eleven verses, no one

would have been surprised.  What He did, however, was something

extraordinary.  He read one verse, and one sentence of the second verse,

stopped, shut the book, and sat down.  The second verse of Isaiah 61 reads:

`To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance

of our God; to comfort all that mourn',

but had He continued His reading so as to include the reference to the day of

vengeance, He could not have said, as He did, this day is this Scripture

fulfilled in your ears, for the day of vengeance, even after nineteen hundred

years, has not yet come.  There is but a comma, in our English version,

between the two periods, yet that comma represents a gap of nearly two

thousand years.  In the original Hebrew or the Greek from which the Saviour

read, there would have been no punctuation mark at all.  The Lord by no means

set aside the dreadful fact of future judgment, He simply kept both

references in their true dispensational place.  This same gospel, at chapter

21 speaks of that future day, saying: `For these be the days of vengeance,