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If the position of the believing Gentiles is truly described as a graft into the olive tree,
it follows that when at Acts 28: the tree was cut down, a very drastic change must
have come over the world of Gentile believers. Pentecostal conditions will be resumed
only when the time for Israel's restoration draws near, and in consequence the present
interval is marked by other characteristics.
This brief note is, of course, entirely inadequate as an examination of this second
position, but we write for those who are fully acquainted with the whole argument. The
bearing of I Cor. 12: also has been discussed in these pages, and it is obvious to all who
have eyes to see and who refuse to accept substitutes for realities that the conditions of
I Cor. 12: do not exist to-day.
3. Are believers to-day blessed under the terms
of the new covenant?
Equally with the covenant made with Abraham, this covenant, while finding in Christ
the complete ratification of all its terms, nevertheless necessitates a restored Israel as a
nation before the Lord. This can be seen by reading the original terms of the new
covenant given in Jer. 31: 27-49.
The new covenant was in operation during the Acts, as II Cor. 3: and 4: indicate,
but, like the covenant with Abraham, its full outflow awaits the day when all Israel shall
be saved.
4. Are believers in Christ, who do not believe the
revelation of the mystery, necessarily "Christendom"?
This is difficult to answer, for "Christendom" is not a scriptural name, and
consequently we can never be sure that we use it exactly as another may intend.
Speaking broadly, Christendom stands for that great mass of professing Christians,
largely leavened with false doctrine and finally developing into the apostacy, that
precedes the end. Accepting this definition we are compelled to say that it would be most
uncharitable as well as untrue unceremoniously to sweep aside all those men of God who
fail to see the truth of the mystery, and who indeed are sometimes antagonistic to it. Just
as it was not necessarily true during the Acts that if Paul was right Peter was wrong, so it
does not follow that every believer to-day should be a believer of the truth of the
mystery--he cannot be unless chosen of the Lord, and his calling and election may place
him in an entirely different company. This, of course, remains to be proved.
5.
Are all believers to-day members of the church which is
His body, whether they know it or not?
To refute this position we should have to reprint the bulk of the last twenty years'
witness concerning the dispensation of the mystery. We cannot find justification for
assuming that any believer is a member of the body of Christ unless he believes the Word