How can we know what parts of the Bible apply to us today?

Very seldom indeed is Scripture quoted by the inspired writers for dispensational teaching, but almost invariably for moral application to those addressed. We must endeavour, therefore, to seek the present benefit of every Scripture, remembering there is a voice to us in all.

<*Let none infer from this that I mean to refuse the teaching from the Old Testament. Nothing can be farther from my mind, and I trust also from my practice. Mines of wealth are obtainable from that portion of God's revelation, especially when the New Testament is used as a light to it, guided of course by the Holy Ghost, who directs the simple, prayerful child of faith. But we are rightly to divide the word of truth. And the specific doctrines for Christians are in the New Testament, abundant illustrations for practice being found, with numerous principles, in the Old.>

'Do ye not listen to the law?' (Gal. 4:21). Paul rebuked the Galatians because they had not learned the moral lessons the law teaches to believers today who, although not under it, still can benefit from drawing spiritual instructions from it. At least two dangers exist in our days, just as there is a tendency in most things to go wrong in one of two opposite directions. On the one hand, we may refuse to listen to the object lessons of the Old Testament by saying they are not found in the New or are not confirmed by it. On the other hand, we may go beyond New Testament teaching and deduct authoritative doctrine from the Old Testament types or object lessons (for instance by making a rule to worship the Holy Spirit, based on the singing to the well in Numbers 21:16-18). This is an abuse of Old Testament scripture and of New Testament principles, and needs to be rejected. The types help us to put New Testament doctrine into practice - in that sense they teach (2 Tim. 3:16) - but they are not themselves the New Testament doctrine.

The text universally alleged to put us under the law is, "I am not come to destroy the law and the prophets, I am not come to destroy but to fulfil." Now what Christ's fulfilling the law has to do with putting me under it I never could understand. I should have thought that it would have rather been the contrary, and, if fulfilled, there was an end of the matter. Thus He fulfilled the sacrifices, and the rather as He speaks of the prophets, which gives to the word "fulfil," used as it is as to both, a force quite different from that sought to be made of it. It is a mere fancy, let me add here, that a Christian cannot use every word of Scripture for profit, law and all, without (that is) putting him under law. All that happened to Israel is written for our instruction, on whom the ends of the world are come, but that does not put us in the place they were in. All that reveals God to me, His mind, His will, His ways, is profitable to me, is light, without putting me in the place of those of whom I read.

Just as in our Lord's parables, He does not explain all, but gives sample explanations of a few, in order that, by exercise and diligent search, under the guidance of the Spirit, the others might be understood also; so the use made of Old Testament Scripture by inspired men is to serve as a model for all saints, who, in dependence upon the Spirit, study the Word.

"Now these things happened to them typically, and were written for our admonition, unto whom the ends of the ages have reached." There cannot be a more important canon for our intelligent and profitable reading of these Old Testament oracles. The facts happened to them, but they were divinely cast in systematical figures, or forms of truth, for admonishing us who find ourselves at so critical a juncture of the world's history. They contain therefore far more than moral lessons, however weighty. They do disclose man's heart, and let out God's mind and affections but they have the larger and deeper instruction of events which illustrate immense principles, such as sovereign grace, on the one hand, and pure law on the other, with a mingled system of government on legal ground, while mercy and goodness availed through a mediator, which came in when the people worshipped a calf at Horeb. There is thus an orderly, as well as prophetic, character in the mode these incidents are presented, which, when lit up with the light of Christ and His redemption and the truth now revealed, prove their inspiration in a self-evident way to him who has the teaching of the Holy Ghost. Israel only witnessed the facts, and the writer was enabled, by the Spirit of God, to record them in an order which was far beyond his own thoughts, or the intelligence of any before redemption; but now that this mighty work of God is accomplished, their figurative meaning stands out in the fulness of a wide system, and with a depth which reveals God, not man, as the true Author. Be it our happiness not only to know but to do the truth!

The ends of the age are come upon us, as the apostle speaks (1 Cor. 10:11); but we who are placed therein are not now receiving the same external exhibitions of God's will as Israel of old had; things happened to them, but words are written for us — from what happened to them we get admonitions. "Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples, and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." Wherefore it is "to God, and to the word of his grace," that we are commended, even in the worst of times — times both of wolves from without, and perverse men within. (Acts 20:30-32.) It is to the word that we are directed, as to "a light that shineth in a dark place" (2 Peter 1:19); and mindfulness of the words of the prophets, and the commandments of the apostles, is the saints' security in the last days of infidelity and scoffing. May the sword of the Spirit make a passage of light for us through the darkness, brethren. "Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit." (Eph. 6:17-18.)

1871 284 One may often get a principle for action out of the Old Testament, whilst living under the New. "No prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation." It does not exhaust itself upon the occasion of being written. It serves for other events and other times than those under which it was given. So too out of the New. Some of the Epistles of Paul, 2 Timothy for instance, were written in the forecast of the dark days of evil which were to come, the symptoms of which, undiscernible to an unpractised eye, were present to Paul who saw full well that they were to come to maturity in our present Christendom. Besides what was before his eyes, he also prophesies of the evil days (Acts 20:29-30; 1 Tim. 4; 2 Tim. 3) which were to come.

But, it may be said, it is difficult to act upon the truth; things are changed since this Epistle was written. Yes, but the principles of God do not change; we are not left to modify Scripture to suit the changed state of things. All the elements of failure were already at work in the Apostle's times. They have received a terrible development since, but we have the Word of God still to guide.

286 However abidingly true the blessed moral principles of these chapters may be, there is no real understanding them without taking them as addressed to the Remnant in the time in which the Lord spoke to them, and as applied to their position at that time.