18. PARENTHESIS OF PRESENT DISPENSATION
Why did the Lord close the book at that point? The answer to this question is the revelation to us of the great principle which we are now, and here, insisting upon. The next sentence belonged, and still belongs, to a yet future dispensation. "The acceptable year of the Lord" had come. But "the day of vengeance of our God" had not (and has not even yet) come. The Lord divided these two Dispensations off by closing the book, and that is what we must do if we are not to join together, and thus confuse and confound, to our own great hindrance and loss, that which God has separated and distinguished. But alas! most Christians insist on keeping that book open, and refuse to learn the lesson here emphatically taught and enforced by the Lord.
There is no mark in the Hebrew text to indicate such a break, which involves an interval of nearly 2,000 years: and yet the break is surely there.
As to "the acceptable year of the Lord," Christ could and did say: "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears" (Luke iv. 21). But He could not have said it if He had read the next sentence, "and the day of vengeance of our God." And yet the whole of this present Church Dispensation, the present interval of the Dispensation of Grace, comes between those two sentences. Only a comma divides them in our English Translation.
This is because the Mystery (or Secret) of the Church was "hid in God," and had not yet been revealed to the sons of men. How then could mention be made of it? It was necessarily passed over. Hence the Lord "closed the book" and "sat down."
This was why the prophets who spoke and wrote "as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 Pet. i. 21) "enquired and searched diligently what, or WHAT MANNER OF TIME (concerning Christ) the Spirit which was in them could signify, when it testified beforehand of the SUFFERINGS of Christ, and the GLORY which should follow" (1 Pet. i. 10, 11). There was nothing to tell them what length of "time" should elapse between "the sufferings and the glory"; whether the glory should follow immediately on the sufferings; or whether there should be any interval of time at all between them. Hence, their enquiry, and their search. The prophets
III. RIGHTLY DIVIDING: AS TO DISPENSATIONS themselves revealed the sufferings; they saw them, and, just as it is when one views the outline of a nearer range of mountains, they saw the outline of another range beyond them as they testified of the "glory": but what distance separated those two mountain ranges, or what valleys and hills, and cities and lakes, lay between them they could not see. In like manner the events which lay between the "sufferings" and the glory that should follow was not revealed either to them, or by them. We know, now, that nearly 1,000 years have passed since the first coming and the "sufferings" of Christ; but the "glory" has not yet been revealed. Notwithstanding this, many treat these times and dispensations as of no account, and of no importance in their study of the Scriptures. The majority of Bible Students do not "enquire" at all; they neither search, nor "search diligently," as to these times; nay, they even reproach those who would thus search. Those who, like ourselves, would thus humbly search are derided; and this special time between the present and the coming Dispensation has been nick-named by them "the Gap theory." But it is no theory at all. The action of our adorable Lord in the Synagogue at Nazareth when He "closed the book" was no "theory." He showed that there was a gap, and that gap was a fact and not a fiction.
We are content to follow His example and share His rejection when at Nazareth. We would learn the lesson that He there taught. We would "open the book," the Bible, like Ezra, and search, and try and find out why the Lord "closed the book" of Isaiah; and, like the prophets of old, would search diligently as to "what manner of time" is taught by the Holy Spirit of God in these Scriptures of truth.
In the English Bible there is only a comma between the "sufferings and the glory" in 1 Pet. i. 11. See also 1 Pet. iv. 13; v. 1; and Luke xxiv. 20, where we have the same two "times" spoken of, with the "gap" of our present Dispensation passed over, as silently as though to the inspired speakers and writers this Dispensation of the Church of God were non-existent.
This is why the closing words of the Four Gospels do not lead us on into this present Dispensation, but leap