HIS FATHER

This is the part of the expression which we have just considered: and it is important.

Twice we have it in this book, spoken of Christ (i.6 and xiv.1), but not once in the Pauline, or Church Epistles.

There, in every one of the Epistles addressed to the Churches (seventeen times), it is always "OUR" Father. See Rom. i.7; 1 Cor. i.3; 2 Cor. i.2; Gal. i.4; Eph. i.2; Phil. i.2, iv.20; Col. i.2; 1 Thess. i.1,3, iii.11,13; 2 Thess. i.1,2, ii.16. Also in 1 Tim. i.2; Philem.3.

When we say that we have "His Father" in revelation, and never in the Epistles; and "our Father" in the Epistles and never in Revelation, we have said enough to show that we have here a further point, affording its cumulative evidence to our fundamental proposition that the Church of God is not the subject of the Apocalypse.