The Divine Barrier

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Did you know that when God called Abraham, He placed a division between his descendants and all of the rest of humanity?

It was God Himself Who established the “barrier” between Jew and Gentile, Israel and the Nations. Paul called this division a “middle wall of partition” in Ephesians 2:14. The Concordant Version calls it “the central wall of the barrier.” The Dabhar Version renders it “the middle wall of the blockage.”

When reading the Scriptures, it is vitally important that you ask yourself the simple question: Is the middle wall of partition up, or is it down?

Recognizing and answering this crucial question is an important key in following Paul’s instruction found in II Timothy 2:15 of “rightly dividing” (KJV), “correctly cutting” (CV, 1976 – 6^th Edition) or “correctly partitioning” (CV, 1927 – 2^nd Edition) the “Word of truth.”

It’s not until you get to the pinnacle writings of Paul – Ephesians and Colossians – that you see the barrier removed. Read these letters that reveal the Secret Administration, and enjoy God’s truth for today.

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.
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Never Misappropriate Hebrew Prophecy

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We should never misappropriate any part of Hebrew prophecy bearing on Israel’s eventual deliverance, such as Matthew 24, and then assume mistakenly that our deliverance is somehow determined by theirs – or theirs by ours.

— Melvin E. Johnson (1897–1979)
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Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

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Let us not “rob Peter to pay Paul,” for Paul has no need of anything which belongs to Peter. Everything we steal from Peter impoverishes us. It hides and hinders the enjoyment of the transcendent celestial grace which Peter himself was never able to apprehend, much less enjoy.

A.E. Knoch (1874-1965)
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Recognizing Distinctions in Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth

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In order to rightly divide the Word of God, we must recognize that there is a great distinction between the promises of the Old Testament, including the Gospels, as compared with the revelations of God’s abundant Grace in Christ as revealed to and through the Apostle Paul, and contained in His Epistles.

H.W. Fry
Things to Come (1910)
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God’s Word Alone Is Truth

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Care should be taken to distinguish between truth and a set of our own opinions about truth. God’s Word is given us that our concepts of truth might be rectified respecting earthly things, and formed respecting heavenly things. We must ever go and keep going to it, lest the prejudices with which we are born and others which we have acquired obscure the light of truth as it is in fact and in God.

One difficulty with most people who would like to be students of God’s Word lies in their impatience to get everything all analyzed to a nicety, labeled and set up in rows on their mental shelves. They want to get their stock of truth in so that they can open up shop and do business. That is not always the most productive method, however; for truth does not always appear in one hundred percent purity. God’s truth is pure – His Word being the truth – but our concepts of it are usually colored more or less by teachers. We incline to look to this teacher and away from that one because this one speaks as though everything were crystal clear and that one says, “This will bear closer investigation,” “Here is a fruitful field for research,” etc.

The ability to discern fractional truths in teachers or groups of believers, to see and to say that “this man’s teaching is valuable and scriptural on that point but faulty and unsupported on this,” has only a heavenly reward in the present time; for certainly there will be no plaudits from men. People like to have their thinking dished out for them, predigested and ready to swallow.

The intimation on the part of a teacher that they should watch what they take into their mouths and that they should chew it well is right annoying – so annoying that they will likely hunt up another chef. People flock to those who speak as oracles, whether it be in politics or religion. Whoever says this man or that teaching is wholly right and the rest are wholly, hopelessly and irretrievably wrong, will find himself surrounded and supported in very visible manner; but to attempt to judge dispassionately and discriminatingly is to invite loneliness on the human side at least.

F.H. Robison (1885-1932)
Are Bride and Body Identical?
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Divine Purification

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The Greek word theion translated “brimstone” is exactly the same word theion which means “divine.” … The verb derived from theion is theioo, which means to hallow, to make divine, or to dedicate to a god (See Liddell and Scott Greek-English Lexicon, 1897 Edition). To any Greek, or any trained in the Greek language, a “lake of fire and brimstone” would mean a “lake of divine purification.” … Divine purification and divine consecration are the plain meaning in ancient Greek. In the ordinary explanation, this fundamental meaning of the word is entirely left out, and nothing but eternal torment is associated with it.

Charles Hamilton Pridgeon (1863-1932)
Is Hell Eternal, or Will God’s Plan Fail? (1920)
(Facsimile reprint available from Study Shelf)
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None Know Enough

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None of us know enough to be dogmatic. All that we wisest can say is, “At the present time, such and such appears to be true”; if we be wise, we add, “But fuller knowledge may make a change of opinion necessary.”

Miles Hanson
Post Office Mission #4 (1925)
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