The Mystery
William John Hocking
Table of Contents
The Mystery: Part 1
THE object of the author of this tract is to show that the “mystery” as used in the New Testament Scriptures has reference to God's calling out, during the time of Christ's rejection, a people from both Jews and Gentiles whose position, association, and hope are intimately connected with Christ on high. Of necessity therefore, he rightly condemns the traditional confusion of Old Testament and New Testament saints, which dates the church from the gates of paradise. Nevertheless he himself falls into serious aberration from the truth in regard to this very portion of the subject.
“The Old Testament Saints,” says Dr. B., “are a great burden to Expositors of New Testament Truth” (page 50). So he very kindly undertakes to relieve them of this embarrassment once and for all. While the church forms the body of Christ, we are now told the elect saints of the Old Testament constitute the bride of Christ, the Lamb's wife. He forbears to blame too severely those who have long held the identification of “the Body with the Bride,” owning that “there is certainly some little excuse for its having been so generally entertained” (page 49).
Having duly noted and acknowledged this gracious remark of Dr. B.'s, we proceed to consider the scripture he advances to show that the Bride is the elect of Israel, and not the church which is Christ's body.
On page 49 we read, “The Bride in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea, is Israel, or at any rate the elect of Israel.” This appears fair enough, save that his phrase, “elect of Israel,” has an air of novelty, which amounts to suspicion when it is further explained to be, “those who were partakers of the heavenly calling in Israel.” Dr. B. evidently wishes us to see that the O.T. prophecies concerning the Bride only contemplate a portion of the nation of Israel. He refers to Isa. 54:5-8; 62:4; Jer. 3:14; Hos. 2:16, 17; adding, “These and other passages clearly prophesy that an election of Israel shall be the Bride” (p. 50).
Now before passing on to the development of Dr. B.'s theory, a very slight consideration of the prophecies named will show that they speak of a time when Jehovah will re-assume the character of husband to her who is a widow—when in fact Israel will be brought again into relationship with Himself as an earthly people. There is certainly nothing in the prophecies adduced to indicate that the subjects of them were “partakers of the heavenly calling” (a phrase Dr. B. has appropriated from the New Testament, not the Old, to bolster up his theory). Take his first passage, Isa. 54:5. It says, “Thy Maker is thine husband” truly; but the very same verse gives Him another title, “The God of the whole earth.” What is this but earthly blessing in the millennium? So also in verse 3 of the same chapter, speaking of Israel, “Thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.” We are sure Dr. B., with the regard he continually avows for the congruity of figures, will not seriously connect “desolate cities” with the heavenly calling.
But neither does Isa. 62:4. yield real support. We have there not a celestial but a terrestrial sphere. “Zion” and “Jerusalem” in verse 1 locate the promised blessings, and “righteousness” and “salvation” are for the saints in the “land.” “Thy land shall be married” we read; and therein Israel shall enjoy the corn and the wine (verses 8-9). Does Dr. B. really expect us to credit that these prophecies refer to a heavenly Bride?
We turn now to Jer. 3:14., “I am married unto you.” This chapter treats of the still future restoration of the Jews to Palestine. We are unable to trace the slightest reference to “the partakers of the heavenly calling.” But treacherous Judah and back-sliding Israel repent and come to Jerusalem, the throne of Jehovah. They will come out of the land of the north to the promised land; and all nations even shall be gathered to Jerusalem (verses 17-18). Can there be any doubt that the figure of marriage is here applied to the re-establishment of God's earthly people, and has no sort of reference to the partakers of the heavenly calling?
Hos. 2 is no less conclusive that an earthly people is the subject of the Spirit of prophecy. Earthly judgments first fall upon that guilty nation (verses 9-15); and then Jehovah promises to make a covenant for her with the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven, and to break the bow and the sword, and to make them lie down safely. “And the earth shall bear the corn, and the wine and the oil, and they shall hear Jezreel” (verses 18-23). It is unquestionably pictorial of a scene of earthly blessedness under renewed relationship to Jehovah. The teaching therefore of the four O. T. prophecies to which Dr. B. makes reference is that a time is yet to come when Israel will be the “Bride” of Jehovah; and that time cannot be until the chosen nation is gathered into its own land under the sway of Jehovah and His Anointed.
Turning to Dr. B. we are astounded at the position he takes up. He coolly asserts (for it is really without either scripture or argument to support it) that “the elect Saints of the Old Testament will form the Bride,” which is the “great City, the holy Jerusalem” of Rev. 21:9-27. This, he contends, “is the city for which all those who were partakers of the Heavenly Calling looked” (page 51); and he refers to Heb. 11:13-16.
As a matter of fact, after observing how many folks Dr. B. seeks to set right in his little treatise of rather less than sixty pages, we were scarcely prepared to fall upon such glaring inconsistency in the author himself.
For, observe, he will have it (page 50) that the saints of old who died in faith are those who form the heavenly Bride of the Lamb. But he quotes four prophecies (pp. 49-50) that refer to Israel's restoration to the land under the figure of marriage. And he knows these are yet to be fulfilled, because he tells us that Israel's blindness will come to an end (p. 10). When that is so, there will be the earthly Bride. So that if Dr. B.'s notions have any foundation, there will be two brides—a heavenly and an earthly. And he is found to hold the very thing that he himself condemns on page 49 (viz: that there are two brides), and sets himself to disprove. It has rarely been our lot to come across such an instance of thinly-disguised self-contradiction as this.
The truth is that there are two brides; only the heavenly one is the church, and not the saints who died in Old Testament times, as Dr. B. maintains without adequate support.
There were always, he says, those in Israel who lived “by faith” and “died in faith,” and were “partakers of the heavenly calling.” They looked for a heavenly country where God had prepared for them a city (Heb. 11:13-16). Abraham also looked for a city which hath foundations. Turning now to Rev. 21, we are reminded that the Bride is there introduced under the symbol of a city. Now, exclaims Dr. B. in emphatic capitals, “what are we to understand but that this CITY—which is declared to be the BRIDE, the Lamb's Wife, is the city for which all those who were partakers of the Heavenly Calling looked; and that these elect saints of the Old Testament will form the Bride” (page 51)? We do not, however, understand the same from these scriptures as Dr. B., even with the aid of his capitals. It surely does not follow that because “city” occurs in Hebrews. and in Revelation it necessarily symbolizes the same truth in both places. We had not yet learned that because we read of an “ark in Gen. 6 and Ex. 2 and in Ex. 25 of the ark of the covenant, the ark of bulrushes and Noah's ark were synonymous terms. Indeed we must remind Di. B. that on pages 13-15 he himself has shown that a single word (eeclesia) can be used in several senses. Why, therefore may not the word, “city,” be used to convey two different ideas in two books?
In Heb. 11 the word is used to portray that established and permanent abode in heaven for which the Old Testament saints looked in contrast with their temporary and uncertain residence upon earth. Abraham awaited the time when he should exchange his tent for a city, and so did the other patriarchs. But in Rev. 21 the city symbolizes the saints themselves, just as in Rev. 17., 18. another city, Babylon, sets forth corrupt Christendom in the last days. Here then the Bride is the city: while the Jewish saints hoped to be in a city, that is, a glorious dwelling place on high. But the holy Jerusalem which John sees seems emblematical rather of a seat of government than a habitation.
To be continued (D.V)
The Mystery: Part 2
In the following page (52) we encounter some extraordinary statements indeed. On the gates of the city Dr. B. finds the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, and in the foundations the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. We should have supposed that the names of all the twelve apostles would have satisfied even a divine of the nineteenth century that the holy city was the church of God. But they are no match for Dr. B.; with one stroke of his pen he cuts off the whole band. We are familiar with wholesale excommunications by arrogant popes; but even they were never bold enough to turn Peter and the eleven en masse out of the church of which they were the honored foundations (Eph. 2).
But Dr. B. is troubled by no squeamish scruples. What can he do with his theory about the Bride if the apostles form part of the body of Christ? With rare effrontery, urged on by overwhelming zeal for the offspring of his imagination, he declares that the twelve apostles are “separated off from the church!” The church is part of the Bridegroom, but the apostles form no part of the bride! There is therefore, according to our author, not the shadow of a shade of a doubt that those who have regarded Peter and John, for instance, as among those whom God set first in the church, have been the unfortunate victims of an egregious delusion!
The fact that the names of the twelve apostles are seen in the foundations of the symbolical city of Rev. 22 receives explanation from the Epistle to the Ephesians (2:19-22). It indicates, in spite of Dr. B.'s reveries, that the apostles had a good deal to do with the church. So far from being outside of it, they are as closely connected with it as a foundation is with the building raised upon it. Saved Jews and Gentiles were and are being built upon a foundation which is not of the apostle Paul to the exclusion of the others, but “of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief corner stone.” This building under the workmanship of the Holy Ghost is growing unto a holy temple in the Lord. In that same word the Ephesian saints, with other believing Jews and Gentiles, are viewed by the apostle as forming God's house upon earth, God dwelling in it by His Spirit.
Here then in this Epistle, which specially treats of the mystery, the body of Christ is presented as a building having the apostles for a foundation, and growing to a temple in the Lord, but is even now God's habitation in the Spirit (cf. 1 Peter 2:5, 6); while in Rev. 21 a building is again presented to us, having foundations in which are the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Now what more simple and unstrained than to see in both places a figure of the church, the body and bride of Christ?
Nay, says the author of the “Mystery,” that cannot be. What are we to do with the promise of Christ to the apostles which has never been abrogated, that they should judge the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19:28) if they form part of the body of Christ (page 52)? But it is puzzling to see how membership of the body of Christ would hinder the apostles from judging the tribes of Israel, any more than it would hinder the Corinthian saints from judging the world (1 Cor. 6:2), or the overcomer in Thyatira from ruling the nations with a rod of iron (Rev. 2:26-27). Will Dr. B. amputate the body still further by cutting off the Corinthian saints and those in Thyatira? The sole justification for his monstrous excision of the apostles is a “comparison of Matt. 19:28 with Rev. 21:14.” Let wise men examine for themselves. What necessary connection is there between the names in the foundations and sitting on twelve thrones?
On page 54 Dr. B. sums up in very decided terms, “What is clear and certain is that the church is the body of Christ Himself, and that the members of the body being in Christ (mystical) are PART OF THE BRIDEGROOM, and cannot possibly, therefore, be the bride herself.”
Now it is hardly conceivable that our author is unaware of the common danger of confusing the sign with the thing signified. He surely knows also that it is a frequent and well-understood practice to compare an object in two perfectly dissimilar ways, for the purpose of illustrating two distinct qualities of that object.
We will give an example of this to make our point quite clear. Let us suppose that an impatient reader, referring to a treatise of inconsequential ideas and vain fancies, alludes to its author as “a goose,” and subsequently as “a mule.” By the first figure he would probably wish to convey the general vacuity of thought characteristic of the writer, and by the second his stubborn persistence in wrong notions. And though the figures might perhaps be more forcible than elegant, they would be perfectly admissible. But Dr. B. would contend that they must refer to two different persons. For, he would say, if a man is a goose how can he be a mule? One is a biped, the other a quadruped. One cackles, but the other kicks; and so on with other dissimilarities. But does he not forget that though a goose cannot be a mule, a man may be both a goose and a mule at the same time, inasmuch as it is quite possible for him to be not only foolish but obstinate as well?
Dr. B. keeps insisting that the body cannot be the bride, when the truth is that it is the church which is figured both as the body and the bride. While it is perfectly true that these figures are allied in character, they are nevertheless used to set forth distinct ideas. The “body” indicates that intimate degree of living unity existing between Christ and His members, and is used particularly of the church during its stay on earth. On the other hand, the foremost thought suggested by the “bride” is that of association. The church is to love and share Christ's glory, reigning with Him. Hence where the professing church is shown as the false bride (Rev. 18), she is seen taking her glory from the kings of the earth with whom she enters into unnatural alliance. But the true bride awaits the heavenly glory of Christ.
We must, however, say a word as to Dr. B.'s treatment of Eph. 5:28, 29, which is another instance of his pitiful trifling with these sacred themes. Here, he says, “the great secret is employed as an argument to the reciprocal duties of husbands and wives. In neither case is it said that the church is the wife or that Christ is the husband. But that as Christ loves His body (the church), so husbands ought to love their bodies (their wives)” (page 54). Now Dr. B. admits in so many words that a man's wife is here spoken of as his body, but where the question is the church as both the body of Christ and the Lamb's wife, he is completely boggled. He simply shuts his eyes, and says the only thing “clear and certain” is that it cannot possibly be.
Now the point in the verses is that a bride is a man's body, that he and his wife are mystically “one flesh.” This was literally true in the case of Adam and Eve; for the rib that God took from Adam He builded into a woman; and God called their name, Adam (Gen. 5:2). And these figures are applied by the apostle (we are not so concerned about “New Testament Expositors”), to Christ and the church. “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:32). So that the passage bases the love of the husband to the wife upon the identity (in figure) of his body and his bride; adding, that so it is with the Lord and the Church.
Dr. B.'s remarks on Matt. 25:1-13 afford another example of his riding a figure to death. The virgins cannot be the bride, because they are her attendant companions! We wonder if he objects in the same way to the Lord's similitudes of the kingdom of the heavens in Matt. 13. Does he say it is “clear and certain” that the great tree cannot be the leaven hid in three measures of meal, any more than the latter can be the same as the treasure, because it is likewise “clear and certain” the treasure was hid in a field and not in the three measures of meal? The Lord, however, likens the kingdom of heaven to all three, however they may differ when compared among themselves. In point of fact, just as the types of scripture cannot be understood until we know the truths they typify, in like manner, paradoxical as it may seem, the language of scripture cannot be correctly interpreted without knowing the underlying thoughts,
This the Lord said to the Jews, “Why do ye not understand my speech? (λαλιὰ) even because ye cannot hear my word” (λόγος) (John 8:43). The case of Nicodemus illustrates the same thing, for he utterly mistook the meaning of the Lord's words (John 3:4).
But why does Dr. B., dwelling upon the nonidentity of the bride and the virgins, her companions, reiterate the ruler's question, “How can these things be?” Is it not best first to ascertain the purpose of the parable? This is supplied in Matt. 25:13, “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour.” Now we can understand attendant virgins slumbering and sleeping; but how incongruous would it have been to represent a bride falling asleep on such an occasion? Do not the “Spirit and the bride say, Come?” (Rev. 22:17.) Beside half of them are shut out, a circumstance quite foreign to the figure of a bride, but faithfully illustrating the fate of the mass of professing Christendom, as we are taught in unfigurative language elsewhere. The ten virgins therefore set forth the mixed company of those who take the place of Christians, while the bride figures the church in glory associated with Christ in His public appearing and reign.
Dr. B. maintains (page 55) that Rebekah does not illustrate the church but the bride, that is, O.T. saints spoken of in Heb. 11. The sole reason given is that the bride (Rebekah) was not to be of “the Canaanites,” and “Gentiles were expressly shut out” in contrast with the church which embodies Jew and Gentile.” But Dr. B. overlooks that amongst those expressly named in the “great cloud of witnesses” (to which he refers in Heb. 11) Rahab is included (verse 31), who was both a Gentile and a Canaanite. We think this fact rather spoils the symmetry of Dr. B.'s argument; and it is undeniable that theories must give way to facts.
The “better thing” (Heb. 11:39, 40) is said by our author to refer to the position of greater glory and honor the body of Christ will have than the bride; whereas it refers to the present blessing of Christianity which God has now provided for us and which we enjoy already, while they had only unfulfilled promises. Nevertheless both they and we shall be perfected together in the first resurrection (compare the use of “better,” in Heb. vii, 19-22; viii. 6; ix. 23),
We have now examined the scriptures that Dr. B. has brought forward to show that the body of Christ is not identical with the heavenly bride of Christ; and we find that not one of them bears him out in his misshapen theory. Being over-occupied with the nature of the metaphors employed, he has missed the truth signified. The “body,” which indicates in a word the nature of present living unity betwixt Christ and the church, is characteristically found in the Epistles; while the “bride” signifying the future association of the church, when perfected and glorified with Christ, is appropriately used in the prophetic visions of the Apocalypse. What is first His body becomes His bride, as in the case of Adam and Eve (Gen. 2), which Eph. 5 authorizes as a picture of Christ and the church.
Until the nuptial day the church awaits with joyous anticipation. “The Spirit and the bride say, Come” (Rev. 22:17). How perverse to suppose that the Holy Ghost is moving the spirits of the departed saints of O.T. days, who are now on high, to cry, Come! The bride here can only refer to the church, which alone is the habitation of the Spirit. Besides it is the saints on earth, not those in the presence of Christ, who say, Come. The fact is Dr. B.'s theory does not accord with the truth as revealed. He has offered us bread, but we find it is a stone.
We propose (D.V.) to examine some further points raised by Dr. B. in this tract.
The Mystery: Part 3
DR. B. informs us that the truth of the mystery, (that is, his explanation of the mystery) “removes another popular tradition—that the church dates from Pentecost! It is only a traditional interpretation on the part of man, and is destitute of any authority, unless it can be proved to be so from the word of God” (page 43). The reason he gives in support of his position is novel enough. It is a mistake, he says, to look for anything about the church in the Acts.
This notion of which the Dr. seems not a little proud crops up here and there throughout the tract. He refuses to allow that the church is referred to in either the Gospels or the Acts. Thus, “In the Gospels and the Acts we have the kingdom rejected In the Epistles we have the interval, but chiefly in its relation to the church” (page 11, and similarly on page 15). The Acts “records the transitional history between the rejection of the kingdom, and the setting up of the church” (page 42). The Acts “is like the Gospels, a historical record of the rejection of the King and the kingdom of Israel (page 43). From an expression on page 44 we hoped Dr. B. only meant to emphasize that the doctrine of the church is confined to the apostles; and that he would be ready to grant that in the Acts we have the history of the founding and practice of the church. His expression is, “We must not read teaching concerning the ‘Mystery’ into the Gospels and Acts” (page 44).
But when he proceeds to expel the twelve apostles from the church (page 52), we know not what to think, except that he really means what his words imply, viz., that the church dates from the close of the Acts. If he does not mean this, then his words are without point or force. It requires but little critical acumen to know that an historical book like the Acts is not the place for unfolding the doctrines. Paul, not Luke, is the exponent of “the mystery.”
Surely, however, Dr. B. knows that Paul wrote several of his Epistles during his missionary travels, which are recounted in the Acts. The two Epistles to the Thessalonians, the two to the Corinthians, that to the Romans and that to the Galatians, were all composed by him before his imprisonment at Rome. And if these Epistles do not reveal the doctrine of the mystery as is done in those to the Ephesians and Colossians, it is because they were written for other purposes. Even these, however, are not without sufficient references to show that the truth was known by the saints.
Rom. 16:25, 26 is one of Dr. B.'s “three important scriptures in which the ‘great' secret is specially and formally revealed” (page 16). This passage, without referring to others, tells us that then, at the time the Epistle was written, which was certainly before the close of the Acts, the mystery was being made known by prophetic writings. And it is Dr. B. himself who says, “amongst the prophetic writings may be included four Epistles, those to the Thessalonians and Corinthians” (page 17).
The fact is, therefore, that Paul (and others, too, receiving it from him) was making known by both voice and pen the doctrine of the mystery long before the period mentioned at the close of the Acts: This Dr. B. with characteristic incoherency allows or admits the possibility of. He is not certain, but he thinks “a special work connected with the mystery was about to be commenced,” (Acts 13:1, page 42).
Now this is unsettling the mind of the saints for no purpose whatever. The trumpet gives forth an uncertain sound, Of what value is it to declare the church did not begin at Pentecost, if he does not know when it began, and even makes such conflicting statements as have been referred to?
We propose to bring forward briefly one or two considerations, which indicate that the day of Pentecost was the birthday of the church, the body and bride of Christ.
In the first place, then, we find throughout the whole of the Acts that there existed a newly formed company of believers who were perfectly distinct and separate from both Jews and Gentiles. This company is called “the assembly of God, which he purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28).
At the very beginning (Acts 2) the assembly or church consisted of the disciples of the Lord Jesus, upon whom the Spirit of God was poured out baptizing them into one body. The same day three thousand souls received Peter's word of testimony and were added to this company already formed (Acts 2:41). And it became a daily event that the Lord was adding together such as should be saved (Acts 2:47).
Thus there was a new society formed altogether apart from the men of Israel whom Peter exhorts to repent (Acts 3). It is true that these believers were as yet drawn solely from the ranks of Jews and proselytes. But they were nevertheless severing connection with the ancient people of God. When Peter and John were dismissed from the presence of the Jewish council, they proceed at once to “their own company” (Acts 4:23). [In Acts 5:11, these saints are expressly called “all the church.” Compare ch. 8:3; 9:31 (especially in the critical text); 11:26; 12:1, 5; 13:1; 14:23, 27; 15:22; 16:5; 18:22; 20:17, 28.] Further additions are made to this company (Acts 5:14); and the number of disciples multiplied (ch. 6:1-7) to the alarm of the Jewish authorities. The persecution comes and those of “the assembly” in Jerusalem are scattered abroad to strange cities. But wherever they are, they remain distinct from their former brethren according to the flesh, so that Saul can go off to Damascus to apprehend them.
Next, Samaritans are received (chap. 8.) and Gentiles (chap. 10). This is all the work of “the twelve"; and then Paul takes up the work (chap. 13.) after the formal admission of the Gentiles. In this we see the wisdom of God. As soon as Gentiles and Jews were brought to meet together in one common assembly, Paul is commissioned to unfold to them the purpose of God in thus bringing them together. In this new relationship national distinction was obliterated, and Jew and Gentile were united to form one mystical “man,” the church of which Christ is Head. This was called the “mystery,” because it had not been before revealed that Jew and Gentile should be made sit together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.
This doctrine the apostle doubtless taught all the believers wherever he went, and not merely the new converts. Dr. B. seems to think that those who believed before the revelation of the mystery did not participate in its blessed truth, not even the twelve apostles. But this notion is only another specimen of his unwarrantable mystification of the mystery. Paul tells us himself that he went up to the apostles at Jerusalem and communicated to them the gospel he was preaching to the Gentiles (Gal. 2:2). They gave him the right hand of fellowship in his work. And when afterward at Antioch Peter would have denied the equality of Jews and Gentiles by withdrawing from eating with the latter, Paul withstood him to the face. Whether he preached the “mystery” or not, the apostle of the circumcision was as much bound to act upon it as any.
It is idle to suppose that Peter, James, and John knew nothing of the “mystery,” because no writings of theirs on the subject remain. It was not committed to them to unfold it, but to Paul. Each apostle had his line of things given him; and in those days every man did his own work, but each of course in co-operation with his fellows.
However, from what is above, it is surely clear that in the Acts there are the plainest indications of the formation of a special assembly of people, composed first of Jewish believers to which Samaritans and Gentiles are added at later stages.
Now what is this company, if not the church? Oh, Dr. B. will say, they are in a transitional state like the disciples in the days of the Lord (pp. 42, 43). Nay, Dr. B.; you have overlooked a most important differentiating fact. In Gospel times the Holy Ghost was not yet given. On the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended to abide. And His habitation is the church (Eph. 2:22). No doctrines (not even that of the “mystery”) ever made the church, any more than the church ever made the doctrines. But the Holy Ghost is the raison d'être of the church. As long as He is here, so long will the church be here.
When He came, it was to unite believers to Christ in glory. Thus the church dates from Pentecost, because of the presence of the Holy Ghost. Ananias and Sapphira are solemn proofs that He was then dwelling in the church (Acts 5:3).
There is the development of the peculiar features of the church as Gentiles are admitted; but this in no degree affects the truth that Pentecost was the date of the inception of the church. To hold otherwise is to dissociate the Holy Ghost from the formation of the church, an historical circumstance which is indicated with notable distinctness in the opening of the Acts; and also to confuse the fact of the establishment of the heavenly relationship of the saints with the revelation of that relationship. Would Dr. B. maintain that no one is a member of the body of Christ, unless he knows the truth of “the mystery?” And yet the sum and substance of his reasoning is to show that the date of the revelation of the mystery must be the date of the formation of the church: a conclusion for which no scriptural warrant can be found.
There are other points of error in the tract, but those already noted will suffice to show that the whole structure of the theory is raised upon an unscriptural basis. We trust, therefore, that Dr. B. will re-consider the whole subject; for we assume from the title of another tract of his, that he agrees with us as to “the importance of accuracy in the study of Holy Scripture.”
W. J. H.
Courtesy of BibleTruthPublishers.com. Most likely this text has not been proofread. Any suggestions for spelling or punctuation corrections would be warmly received. Please email them to: BTPmail@bibletruthpublishers.com.