T h e K i n g ’ s B u s i n e s s
May 1928
271
o f the type o f life which many Modernists seem to live. Only recently a young man said to the managing editor, referring to a minister who is a notorious liberal, “ I can’t help being drawn to him because o f his noble life.” What an enigma is that to one who has soured upon the church because he has met so many who talk Fundamentalism by the pound and live it by the ounce! “Higher Fundamentalism” will never be a popular thing, but it ought not to be a thing objected to by those who stand in the places o f orthodox leadership. “A Masked PeriT’li-Says Dr. Panton W E have quoted in these columns a portion o f Dr. A . C. Gaebelein’s recent exposure of “ Bullinger- ism” as expressed through the medium of “ The Compan ion Bible,” a series o f books containing Dr. Bullinger’s
— the Mystical Body o f Christ, made up o f Jew and Gen tile; and that even of his Epistles, none but those written after Acts 28—namely, those he wrote in prison— are binding upon the Heavenly Body of Christ, the Church.” Space limits forbid our reproducing at this time all of Dr. Panton’s argument, but we cull the following impor tant paragraph: “ The theory at once receives its death-blow on the roof of a house in Caesarea. For the most graphic revelation God ever gave o f His Eternal Secret— the Church—was given, not to Paul, but to Peter, the Apostle o f the Cir cumcision. Before Peter praying on the house-top, a sheet, stamped all over with the world-number, descends, which is God’s vision o f the world : a sheet let down from the four winds: covering the four quarters of the globe; caught up at the four points o f the compass; and filled with the four divisions o f the animal world (Acts 11:6). In it are not all creatures, but some o f all: so John says,
interpretations a l o n g with the Scripture text. Dr. D. M. Panton, editor o f The Dawn, has now taken up the fight against this school of interpretation. We b e l i e v e Dr. Panton rightly characterizes the . system when he says: “ Such a system, claim ing to be peculiarly en lightened, and so criti cally, revolutionary as to free the w h o l e church from age-long bondage, stands forth as one o f the grave but masked perils o f the day.” What a spec
as he looks into the drawn-up net in Pat- mos, ‘I saw a great multitude- OUT o f all nations and tribes and peoples and ' tongues’ (Rev. 7 :9 ), who (our Eord says) ‘come from the east and from the west, and from the north and from the south’ (Luke 13:29). And the Most High describes them to Peter as ■ ‘what God h a t h CLEANSED ’ ( A c t s 10:15), and therefore what we are to receive: they are in the net solely because m a d e
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tacle it is, then, to see organizations which exist to refute religious cults, and especially Modernism, propagating “ Bullingerism” and urging upon all students of the Word to procure “ The Companion Bible” in order to get a cor rect view o f the Bible. Dr. Panton strikes at the roots of this system when he says: “ Any system o f interpretation which, by defining our Lord’s body of teaching as ‘Jewish,’ contracts the dis ciples o f Christ out from ‘under the law to Christ’ (1 Cor. 9 :21) is self-doomed. W e Christians are disciples to Christ or we are nothing. No apostle would, and no apos tle could lift us to a higher and more spiritual plane of teaching than our Lord’s. ‘One is your teacher, and all ye are brethren’ (Matt. 2 3 :8 ).” Bullingerism, solely the invention of the late E. W . Bullinger, was disseminated over the world by one o f the two monthlies started in the early nineties for the spread o f Second Advent truth— Things to Come. “ He sets out to prove,” says Dr. Panton, “ that the Church in the Pauline sense, did not exist before (in Acts 28) Paul turned finally from Israel; that thus the Church named before that event is a Jewish Ecclesia, or Hebrew con gregation to which— together with ‘Messianic Jews’ at the end of the age—belongs exclusively all our Lord’s teach ing, and that of all the apostles except Paul; that, there fore, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, together with such rules of conduct as the Sermon on the Mount, are not and never have been, applicable to u s ; that to Paul alone o f all the apostles was given the revelation of ‘the mystery’
clean by B lood ; once foul, they are now pure; and they are raptured in a moment— ‘immediately the vessel was received up into heaven.’ This marvelous picture of the Church immediately precipitates a dispensational crisis. Peter expostulates with his whole sou l: three times God as strongly rebukes Peter’s refusal to assimilate Gentiles: Peter capitulates; ‘and the Spirit bade me,’ he says, ‘go with them [Cornelius’s converted Gentiles], making no distinction’ (Acts 11:12). All distinctions therefore, be tween Jew and Gentile, in respect of Christian fellowship, are, from that moment, fundamental overthrows of this revelation of God.” . So far from this revelation being his only (Eph. 3 ), Paul explicitly states it is not: “ which in other generations was not made known unto the sons of men, as it hath now been revealed UNTO H IS HO LY APOSTLES AND PROPHETS ” ; and thus revealed “ in the Spirit” — that is, not through Paul, but by direct inspiration to themselves; “ the mystery which hath been hid from all ages and generations, but now hath' it been manifested TO HIS SA INTS ” (Col. 1:26). This Mystery was fore shadowed at the Ascension, when our Lord commanded the discipling of all nations; it came into actual operation at Caesarea with the first incorporation of Gentiles; its catholic gospel was put peculiarly, though not exclusively, into the hands o f Paul to un fold ; it continues its absorp tion o f Jew and Gentile into the Mystical Body of Christ throughout our Gospel Age.
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