02.02. E. W. Bullinger

[Now we proceed with some of the things that E. W. Bullinger wrote here] Had Israel repented in response to the call in Acts 3:18-19, then, What about Pentecost? What would it have been then? Had Christ come in His glory in “the Day of the Lord,” then, What about Pentecost and the Church? The fact is that then Joe 2:1-32 would have been (completely) fulfilled, for there Pentecost is distinctly declared to be the ushering in of the day of the Lord. In Acts 2:1-47 (the first part of) Joel was therefore fulfilled. The preliminary events before the Day of the Lord then took place. Everything was in readiness, and hence in Acts 3:1-26, as in Mat 3:1-17 the call went forth, Israel “Repent.” When the King had come it was “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” But they refused to repent, and rejected the Kingdom. Now, once again, on the (new) ground of (the) Atonement (already) made, the call goes forth in Acts 3:1-26, and it is the same as before - “Repent” - that the King may be sent (back to you, oh rejecters of him!) Again they refuse to repent, and reject the King. Thus the Acts of the Apostles, is (for the Jewish Nation) like the Gospels, a historical record of the rejection of the King and the Kingdom by Israel, and this explains how it was that God rejected Israel for a season, while He revealed and made known His secret purpose concerning the Church.

Don’t neglect or reject the teaching of the holy spirit given in the Pauline Epistles, which are expressly given for the guidance, teaching, blessing, and building up of the Church. All that Christians need of teaching concerning the work and power of the holy spirit is fully contained and revealed in the Epistles, which are written for that purpose.

1) THE SECRET OF THE ECCLESIA.

Before we consider the great secret of the Church, which is the Body of Christ [sometimes E. W. Bullinger calls it “The Christ Mystical”, but this term is not Biblical and the religions had used it to obscure the truth, so we will not use it], let us consider the usage of the word Ecclesia (also transliterated Ekklesia).

Even as our English word “Church” is used in various senses, so also is the word Ecclesia in the Word of God.

We speak of a particular Church (as the Church of Rome or England, Jerusalem or Antioch); we speak of a building as a Church; we use the word of the whole body of professing Christians, and also of the select portion of true believers amongst them.

So, in the Scriptures, the word Church (Ecclesia) is used, not indeed in the same senses of the previous paragraph, but in several different ways. The Greek word Ecclesia occurs seventy-five times in the Septuagint Translation of the Old Testament, and is used as the rendering of five different Hebrew words. As it is used to represent one of these, seventy times, we need not concern ourselves with the other four words. This Hebrew word is Cahal, from which we have our English word call. It means to call together, to assemble, or gather together, and is used of any assembly gathered together for any purpose. This Hebrew word Cahal occurs 123 times, and is rendered: “congregation,” 86 times; “assembly,” 17; “company,” 17; and “multitude,” 3 times. Its first occurrence is in Gen 28:3 - “that thou mayest be a multitude (margin, assembly) of people,” i.e., a called-out people. This is what Israel was, a people called out and assembled from all other peoples. In Gen 49:6 we read - “O my soul, come not thou into their secret (Council or Senate);

Unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united.”

Here the word Cahal is used not of all Israel as called out from the nations, but of the assembly of those called out to form the Tribal Council of Simeon and Levi.

Then, it is used of the worshippers or those called out from Israel, and assembled before the Tabernacle and Temple, and in this sense is usually rendered “congregation.’ This is the meaning of the word in Psa 22:22; “in the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee”; and Psa 22:25 : “My praise shall be of Thee in the great congregation” This is the usage of the word in the Gospels, and even in the Acts of the Apostles before the new use, which the holy spirit was going to make of the Word, was revealed. When Christ said, “Upon this rock I will build my Ecclesia,” He did not use the word in the exclusive sense in which it was afterwards to be used, but in the older and larger use of the word, which would embrace the whole assembly of His people, while not excluding the future application and restriction of the word to the Body of Christ when that secret should have been in due season revealed. When the spirit by Stephen speaks of the Ecclesia in the wilderness (Acts 7:38), he means the congregation of Israel. When the Lord added to the Ecclesia daily (Acts 2:47), He added to the number of those who assembled themselves together for His worship. When Saul “persecuted the Ecclesia of God,” he persecuted the assembly of those who feared God, just as Jezebel and others persecuted them in times past. So when, in 1Co 15:9, the Apostle says that he “persecuted the Church of God,” the word Ecclesia is not used in the sense which it subsequently acquired, after he had received the special revelation concerning it: but in the sense in which it had been used up to that time. It means merely that he persecuted the people of God - the congregation of God. He is speaking of a past act in his life which took place before the revelation of the secret, and his words must be interpreted accordingly. We must not read into any of these passages that which was the subject of a subsequent revelation! And therefore the word Ecclesia in the Old Testament, the Gospels, and the Acts must be taken in the sense of its earlier usage as meaning simply the congregation or assembly of the Lord’s people, and not in the sense which it acquired, after the later and special signification had been given to it by the holy spirit. This brings us to consider:

(3) RIGHTLY DIVIDING THE WORD OF GOD.

We thus have a fourfold Key for the interpretation of the Old Testament, the Four Gospels, the Acts, and the Apocalypse. We are not (when interpreting Scripture) to read into it that which was the subject of subsequent revelation! This principle cannot be over-estimated in its power to clear our understanding of the Word of God. Why is there so much confusion in reading the Word? Why are there so many conflicting opinions? Why so many “schools of thought,” and divergent “views?”

It is because we do not “rightly divide” the Word of God (2Ti 2:15). That Word is, “the Word of Truth,” and this is why we are bidden to “rightly divide” it. If therefore we fail thus to divide it, it is impossible for us to have “truth”; and we cannot fail to have error.

We must “rightly divide” off the Old Testament, Gospels, (some parts within) Acts, and the Apocalypse from the teaching concerning the Church of God. We must not read Church-truth into the Old Testament. We must not read teaching concerning the “Mystery” into the Gospels and Acts.

If teachers had always thus divided the Word, we should never have confused Israel with the Church, or the Kingdom with the Church.

We should never have put the “extension of Christ’s Kingdom (to Israel)” for the spread of the Gospel (by the Church).

We should never have taken “the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven” as being synonymous with “the Gospel of the Grace of God;” or have supposed that the former is being, or could be, preached now, thus perverting Mat 24:14.

We should never have taken Mat 24:1-51 as referring to the Church of God; or have supposed that the Church would be on the earth during the great Tribulation therein described.

We should not have based our Missionary effort on Psa 2:8 or Mat 28:19-20, for we should have seen that “the great Commission,” as it has been called, was obeyed by those to whom it was first given (see Col 1:6, Col 1:23; Rom 10:18; Tit 2:11), and will be completely fulfilled in the time of Mat 24:14. The commission for the Church’s Missionary effort must be drawn from the Epistles which are specially written for the Church’s guidance and instruction, and not from the Gospels or any Scripture prior, at least, to Acts 3:1-26.

We are not speaking of Missionary labour in itself, but only as to the Scriptural ground on which it should, or should not be based. The closing verses of Mark would never have been mutilated by all its various readings (see R.V.) had they not been wrongly taken for Church-teaching (only). It was, we believe, the difficulties created by thus interpreting the verses, that led to the rejection of the passage rather than to the rejection of the false principle of interpretation. The fact being that the Commission in verse 18 was obeyed by those to whom it was given, and the signs predicted did (indeed) follow in those who believed. The Church afterwards took this Commission as specially given to itself to carry out, and not seeing those specific signs following, questioned the genuineness of the Scripture, which predicted them, rather than its own wisdom in thus misapplying it.

Kingdom-Truth in the Sermon on the Mount would never have been taken as Church-teaching, and thus Infidels and the world would have been deprived of one their readiest weapons against the Bible. The Church would never have been put into the Judgment of Mat 25:1-46, which concerns only Gentile nations; and says nothing at all about resurrection. For even Infidels can plainly see (as the majority of (the blinded-by-religions) Christians cannot) that a judgment based on works can have no connection with a Church whose standing is in grace. The truth, instead of being “rightly divided” dispensationally, is thus made to become a source of error; and things, which differ and are each true in their proper place, are robbed of all their meaning by being confounded together.

We should have had clearer views of the Apocalypse, and have seen that it referred to the setting up of the rejected Kingdom with power and in judgment after the Church shall have been removed; and that the end of the Church being revealed in 1Co 15:1-58 and 1Th 4:1-18, it could have no part or place on the earth during the events which take place in “the day of the Lord.”

We should not go to the Gospels or Acts for passages concerning the coming of Christ, as “the hope of the Church,” while in the Epistles alone is that coming set forth as the Church’s hope.

We should never have substituted “a happy death” for “that blessed hope.”

We should never have made the death of man our goal, instead of the appearing of “Christ, our Life” (Col 3:1-25).

We should never have taken dissolution (in death) instead of Ascension as our hope (1Th 4:1-18), and then we should never have been driven to use Hymn-Books as the source of Christian Epitaphs, instead of the Pauline Epistles.

We should not have confounded the special Revelation of that resurrection which is connected with the Mystery in 1Th 4:1-18 and 1Co 15:1-58, with what is known as “the First Resurrection.” The first Resurrection was, as we have shown, no secret. The Old Testament clearly reveals it, and it would have taken place just the same (as it will yet take place), had Israel accepted the offer in Acts 3:18-19, and had there been no Church at all. The one is quite independent of the other, and they would never have been confounded, had the truth of the “Mystery” been discerned.

We should not have taken the “breaking of bread” in the Acts of the Apostles, and exalted into the place of the Lord’s Supper, had we seen that it has nothing to do with a Church ordinance; or had we known that it was and remains till to-day, the common and universal Hebrew idiom for partaking of an ordinary meal together.

We should never have taken John 6:1-71, as containing teaching as to the Lord’s Supper, which had not then been instituted, but, seeing that such an interpretation of the Gospels is incompatible with the doctrine of the Mystery, we should have studied that Scripture afresh, and scientifically in the light of figurative language, and have seen that the figures of Metonymy and Enallagé, and their Hebrew idiom as to eating and drinking, clearly explain it as referring to that spiritual receiving, partaking of, and “inwardly digesting” of Christ and His words as the bread or support of spiritual life.

And, as to the Lord’s Supper itself, have we not fallen into many errors, “not discerning the Lord’s Body (i.e., the Church of which Christ is its Head)?.” See 1Co 11:29. For “the bread which we break, is it not the communion of the Body of Christ?” (1Co 10:16.) This must refer to the Church “Body of Christ”, as the next verse goes on to explain - “For we being many are one bread (R.V. margin loaf) and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread (R.V. margin loaf).” That is to say the bread or loaf which we break sets forth our communion not with Christ personal (which is the source of all the errors connected with the Lord’s Supper), but the communion and fellowship of all the members of Christ’s Body. The one loaf setting forth the fellow-partnership of all the members with one another and with Christ the Head of the Body in glory, with whom we hope shortly to be, and hence “as oft as we break that brad, we “show forth the Lord’s death till He Come.” This is what is meant by “discerning the Lord’s Body.” Indeed, the words “the Lord’s” ought not to be in the text at all, and are rightly omitted in the R.V. with all the Ancient MSS and Critical Greek Texts (it is so, “discerning the Body”). Moreover, the R.V. margin has discriminating, as the “Greek” for “discerning.” So that this verse does not refer to the body of Christ Personal at all, but simply to the Church of “the Body,” which the members of the Body are to discriminate when they eat of that bread and drink of that cup.

These and many other mistakes would never have been made - had the true doctrine of the Mystery been preserved and held by the Church of God; and had “the Word of the Truth” been consequently rightly divided.