(Scripture Reading Exercise.)

CONFLICTING THEORIES.

NOTES.

1. The Greatness of the Dispensation of the Meridian of Time: With the period between Moses and John the Baptist spanned, we come to the Dispensation of the Meridian of Time. This dispensation begins with the preaching of John the Baptist in the wilderness. It was made glorious by the personal ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God; by His suffering and death, for the redemption of mankind; by His glorious resurrection from the dead; by His subsequent ministry among His followers, and His final ascension into heaven to the throne of His Father; by the faithful ministry of His Apostles, by whom the good tidings of man's salvation were published to the world; by the establishment of the Church as an agency through which the Gospel was to be more widely proclaimed, and those who accepted the Gospel more thoroughly instructed in its doctrines, guarded from error, and finally perfected in the Christian life. An inspired volume of Scripture, the New Testament, was also brought into existence, from the teachings of the inspired Apostles, in which the great fundamental truths of the Gospel were embodied and cast in a form that would be enduring, and to which men could appeal through all the ages to come, as an authoritative statement, not only of what Jesus said and what He did, but also a statement of what doctrines are to be believed; what precepts to be practiced; what ordinances to be observed. By thus embodying the chief doctrines of Christ in a volume of Scripture that should live forever, and be published in all the languages of the world, provision was made for such a dissemination of the knowledge of God, that the world would never again be wholly without that knowledge; and though the Church might become corrupted, as it afterwards did; though men ambitious of distinction and power might usurp authority and establish churches in which they taught for doctrines the commandments of men, as they certainly did; still in this volume of Scripture men henceforth would have at hand a standard of truth by which to test the utterances of would-be teachers, while at the same time it would keep above the horizon of a world's knowledge the great truths of the Gospel—the existence and character of God; the manifestation of Him through the person and character of Jesus of Nazareth; the relationship existing between God and man; the fall of man, and the redemption provided for him in the atonement of Jesus Christ. All this was achieved in the Dispensation of the Meridian of Time; a mighty work accomplished by the Son of God and His associates; a work sealed not only by the blood of Jesus Christ, but by the blood also of many faithful witnesses, which shall make their testimony of force in the world.

2. The Identity of the Dispensation of the Meridian of Time and the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times Considered: Owing to the phraseology of certain passages of Scripture, making reference to the coming of Messiah in the flesh, and to the work of God in those days, the Dispensation of the Meridian of Time is mistaken for the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times. In Mark's Gospel, for instance, John the Baptist is represented as saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the Gospel."^[A] The words in black type are usually understood to make reference to the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times. Again it is written: "But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law." ^[B] The words, "when the fullness of the time was come," are supposed to refer to the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times. Other passages of Scripture referring to the days of Messiah's personal ministry among men in the flesh, speak of them as the "last days." Paul, in the opening sentence of his letter to the Hebrews, does this: "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things."^[C]; So St. John, in addressing the Saints in his day: "Little children, it is the lost time: and as ye have heard that anti-Christ shall come, even now are there many anti-Christs; whereby we know that it is the last time."^[D] These, with two other special passages of Scripture, to be separately considered, constitute the authority upon which the Meridian Dispensation is confounded with the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times. And yet all these passages are susceptible of quite a different and more natural rendering. Without controversy it will be conceded that the Lord had an appointed time for His Son Jesus to come to earth in the flesh and perform the mission that had been assigned Him; to suffer; to die; to arise again from the dead. And when the fullness of this time was come, God indeed sent forth His Son into the world. As for those inspired writers who speak of the "last days," and the "last times"—they speak relatively; that is, with reference to former days and times; and, of course, the days and times in which they lived to them were the last days, and the last times; but they were not the last days of the earth's temporal existence; they were not the last days in any general sense at all, as there have been now some two thousand years of days since then. They were not the "last days" that are understood as immediately preceding the glorious coming of the Son of God.

[Footnote A: Mark i:15.]

[Footnote B: Gal. iv:4.]

[Footnote C: Heb. i:1, 2.]

[Footnote D: John ii:18.]

3. Joel's Great Prophecy of the Dispensation of the Last Days: Of the special passages before referred to, and which I said would receive separate consideration, the first is Peter's quotation from the Prophet Joel, concerning the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon "all flesh in the last days." This quotation from Joel is regarded as identifying the days in which the Apostle was speaking, as "the last days;" and the dispensation in which he was living as the Dispensation of the Last Days and of the Fullness of Times. The conditions existing when Peter was speaking, and the prophecy of Joel, however, admit of no such interpretation. The circumstances were as follows: The Holy Ghost in an extraordinary manner rested upon the Apostles and gave them the power of speaking in other languages than those they had learned. Some in the listening multitude attributed this singular manifestation to drunkenness, whereupon the Apostle Peter arose and refuted the slander, saying: "These are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by the Prophet Joel; and it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy; and I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke: the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come: and it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved."^[A] "For," to finish the passage as it stands in Joel, but which is not in Peter's quotation, "for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call."^[B]

[Footnote A: Acts ii:15, 21.]

[Footnote B: Joel ii:28-32.]

Because Peter, referring to the Spirit that was then resting upon the Twelve Apostles, said, "this is that which was spoken by the Prophet Joel," etc., the very general opinion prevails that Joel's prophecy was then fulfilled; and hence the last days were come. This is an entire misapprehension of the purpose of Peter in making the quotation; as also of the quoted passage itself. Beyond all controversy, Peter meant only: This Spirit which you now see resting upon these Apostles of Jesus of Nazareth is that same Spirit which your Prophet Joel says will, in the last days, be poured out upon all flesh. Obviously he did not mean that this occasion of the Apostles receiving the Holy Ghost was a complete fulfillment of Joel's prediction. To insist upon such an exegesis would be to charge the chief of the Apostles with palpable ignorance of the meaning of Joel's prophecy. On the occasion in question the Holy Ghost was poured out upon the Twelve Apostles, who were given the power to speak in various tongues; Joel's prophecy for its complete fulfillment requires that the Spirit of the Lord, the Holy Ghost, shall be poured out upon all flesh; and undoubtedly refers to that time which shall come in the blessed millennium, when the enmity shall not only cease between man and man, but even between the beasts of the forests and of the fields; and between man and beast, as described by Isaiah in the following language:

"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp; and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrices' den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."^[A]

[Footnote A: Isaiah xi:6-9.]

Compare these conditions so vividly described with what Joel himself says of the period when the Spirit of the Lord shall be poured out upon all flesh, and it will at once be clear that the two Prophets are dealing with the same period, and not only dealing with the same period, but that the period itself is certainly far beyond in time the days of Peter; in fact, is still in the future; for the sum has not yet been turned into blackness; nor the moon into blood; nor have the stars withdrawn their shining. It is obvious that the events upon the day of Pentecost did not fulfill the terms of this prophecy, except in those particulars already pointed out. The mention in this prophecy, however, of those special signs which Jesus refers to as immediately preceding His own second and glorious coming, clearly demonstrates that Joel was speaking of the last days indeed, and not of a circumstance that occurred in connection with a period more properly designated as the Dispensation of the Meridian of Time. Immediately following his prediction of the outpouring of God's Spirit upon all flesh, Joel represents the Lord as saying: "And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come." And later: "The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the Lord will be the hope of His people, and the strength of the children of Israel."

Compare this with the Saviour's description of conditions in the earth that will precede His own second coming:

"Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."^[A]

[Footnote A: Matt. xxiv:29-31.]

The same wonders in heaven and earth; the same changes in sun, and moon, and stars; the same promises of the gathering of God's people as are found in the prophecy of Joel. There can be no question, then, but that the prophecy of Joel refers to the same "last days" that Jesus here alludes to—the days of the coming of the Son of Man—and not to the days of Peter and the other Apostles in the meridian of time.

The sum of the matter then is, that Peter was not living in the "last days;" that the prophecy of Joel was not in its entirety fulfilled in the outpouring of God's Spirit upon the Apostles on the day of Pentecost; that at no time subsequent to the days of the Apostles has there existed such conditions in the earth as amount to a complete fulfillment of Joel's prophecy; therefore in some time future from the days of the Apostles we may look forward to a universal outpouring of God's Holy Spirit upon all flesh, resulting in a universal peace and wide-spread knowledge of God, brought about, unquestionably, by a subsequent dispensation from that in which Peter wrought—the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times, in which God promises to "gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth; even in Him."^[A]

[Footnote A: Eph. i:10.]