The Beginning of the Church in Ultradispensationalism

Ultradispensationalists are certain that the church did not begin at Pentecost. The extreme group, which follows Bullinger, thinks that it began with the revelation of the mystery of the Body of Christ to Paul during his first confinement in Rome; that is, it began near or after the close of the record of the book of Acts. As a result, the ordinances are not valid for this age since they are not mentioned in the epistles written from that Roman imprisonment. The moderate group holds that the church began sometime before Paul wrote his first epistle, but exactly when is debated among those who hold this position.

O'Hair evidently believed that the church began with the pronouncement recorded in Acts 13:46—"We are turning to the Gentiles"—since after this event "there is no record that Paul or Peter, or any other messenger of the Lord, had divine authority to offer the prophesied kingdom to Israel, if that nation would repent." Stam holds that the church began before Acts 13, for to a degree the mystery was revealed to Paul at his conversion. "His conversion marked the beginning of the new dispensation." In other words, the church began in Acts 9. This is based on the fact that early in the book of Acts God was dealing with Jews and Peter was the chief spokesman. The church, they say, could not have begun until God was dealing with Gentiles and primarily through Paul. To be very accurate, one should say that the ultradispensationalist believes that the "Body church" did not begin until after Paul came on the scene. The Jewish church did begin at Pentecost, but that is different from the church, the Body of Christ.

The interpretation of the book of Acts, the relation of the Gospels, the ordinances, and the offer of the kingdom are all corollary subjects of the ultradispensationalists' doctrine of the beginning of the church. But, whereas they are germane to the full development of ultradispensationalism, they are not relevant to the purpose of this chapter and reluctantly must be omitted.

Errors of Ultradispensationalism

Normative dispensationalists believe that there are some basic errors in the ultradispensational system, and, therefore, they reject the system as diverse from their own and reject any implication that the two are similar.

Erroneous Concept of a Dispensation

In this book a dispensation has been defined as a distinguishable economy in the outworking of God's purpose. In relation to ultradispensationalism the definition raises this most pertinent question: Is something distinguishably different being done since Paul came on the scene that was not being done from Pentecost to the time of Paul? (It matters little whether "Paul's coming on the scene" means Acts 9, 13, or 28.) Were these features and characteristics and doctrine of the Body church before Paul?

What the ultradispensationalist fails to recognize is that the distinguishableness of a dispensation is related to what God is doing, not necessarily to what He reveals at the time, and least of all to what man understands of His purposes. It is certainly true that within the scope of any dispensation there is progressive revelation, and in the present one it is obvious that not all of what God was going to do was revealed on the Day of Pentecost. These are economies of God, not of man, and we determine the limits of a dispensation not by what any one person within that dispensation understood but by what we may understand now from the complete revelation of the Word. Actually, we are in a better position to understand than the writers of the New Testament themselves.

Ultradispensationalists fail to recognize the difference between the progress of doctrine as it was during the time of revelation and the representation of it in the writing of the Scripture. On this point Thomas D. Bernard has well observed:

There would be a difference between the actual course of some important enterprise—say of a military campaign, for instance— and the abbreviated narrative, the selected documents, and the well-considered arrangement, by which its conductor might make the plan and execution of it clear to others. In such a case the man who read would have a more perfect understanding of the mind of the actor and the author than the man who saw; he would have the whole course of things mapped out for him on the true principles of order.

The distinguishable feature of this economy is the formation of the church, which is Christ's Body. This is the work of God; therefore, the question that decides the beginning of this dispensation is, When did God begin to do this? not, When did man understand it? Only by consulting the completed revelation can we understand that God began to do this work on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 1:5; 11:15-16; 1 Cor. 12:13; Col. 1:18). Therefore, whether Peter and the others understood it then does not determine the beginning of the dispensation. Since the distinguishable feature of the present dispensation is the formation of the church and since the church began at Pentecost, there has been only one economy from Pentecost to the present. The ultradispensationalist can only offer the distinguishing feature of a Jewish church as over against a Gentile church, which is the Body of Christ, but such a distinction has no validity because there are Jews in today's Gentile church (even if it did not begin until after Pentecost) and because the baptism of the Spirit occurred in Jerusalem at Pentecost. Thus, the same economy has been operative since the Day of Pentecost.

Erroneous Exegesis of Key Passages

Passages concerning the church

Whatever church is mentioned before Paul is said by the ultradispensationalist to be the Jewish church and not the Body church. This forces an artificial and unnatural interpretation of some very basic passages. Paul stated that before his conversion he persecuted the church of God (Gal. 1:13; 1 Cor. 15:9; Phil. 3:6). The natural understanding of these three references to the church is that it was the same church to which he and the converts won through his preaching were joined.

Furthermore, the first mention of the word church (Acts 5:11) in the book of Acts is described in terms of people being "added to the Lord" (v. 14 KJV). This cannot be a Jewish church since it is described in terms of its members being added to the Lord Jesus. As Harry Ironside said in commenting on this verse, "This was before Paul's conversion. Observe it does not simply say that they were added to the company of believers, nor even to the assembly alone, but they were added to the Lord. This is only by a baptism of the Holy Spirit." Similarly, the converts in Antioch were said to have been "added unto the Lord" (v. 24 KJV). It is significant to note that Stam has no comment on this phrase. He bases his argument that this church in Acts 5 was a Jewish one and not the Body church on the fact that they were gathered in Solomon’s porch! Such forced exegesis of these passages using and explaining the word church before Paul came on the scene is erroneous exegesis.

Ephesians 3:1-12

Ultradispensationalists are fond of using this passage to attempt to prove that to Paul exclusively was revealed the mystery of the church, the Body of Christ. If this is provable, then the mystery church, the Body, could not have begun until Paul came on the scene. The most pointed critique of their use of this passage has been written (though unfortunately buried in a footnote) by dispensationalist Erich Sauer:

In Eph. 3:3, Paul does not assert that he was the first to whom the mystery of the church had been made known. He says only that the secret counsel that there is no difference in the church between Jew and Gentile, and the equal rights of the believing Gentiles and believing Jews had not been made known in the time (not before him personally but in general) before his generation, as it had now been revealed to "the holy apostles and prophets through the Spirit." The plural "apostles and prophets" is to be noted as implying that the revelation was not to Paul alone, and it was made to them "through the Spirit," not first by the agency of Paul (ver. 5). The "as it has now been revealed" may indeed suggest that this mystery had been hinted at in the Old Testament, but under veiled forms or types, and only now was properly revealed.

What Paul does declare is that he had received this mystery by "revelation" (ver. 3). But he says no word as to the sequence of these Divine revelations or the question of priority of reception. The emphasis of ver. 3 does not lie on "me" but on "revelation." He does not use here the emphatic Greek emoi, but the unemphatic moi, and he places it (in the original text), not at the head of the sentence, but appends it as unaccented. On the contrary, to stress the word "revelation" he places it early in the sentence: "according to revelation was made known to me the mystery." Here (as in Gal. 1:12) he does not wish to declare any priority of time for himself or that the revelation was given to him exclusively, but only that he stood alone in the matter independently of man. Not till Eph. 3:8, does he use the emphatic emoi and place it at the head of the sentence. But there he is not dealing with the first reception of the mystery but with his proclamation of it among the nations. This, of course, was then in fact the special task of Paul. He was the chief herald of the gospel to the peoples of the world.

If one says: "I received this information from Mr. Jones himself," this does not assert that Mr. Jones had not formerly mentioned the matter to others.

Other Passages Concerning the Revelation of the Mystery

The extreme type of ultradispensationalism is easily refuted by several passages in which Paul says that he had been preaching the mystery long before the Roman confinement. In Romans 16:25-27 he makes the plain statement that throughout the years his preaching had been in accordance with the revelation of the mystery (Bullinger said that these verses were added to the epistle after he reached Rome several years later.) First Corinthians 12 is a detailed revelation of the mystery of the relationships of the Body of Christ. The epistle was written before the Roman imprisonment. The mystery of the Body church was clearly revealed, known, and proclaimed before Acts 28.

Arguments like these have forced many ultradispensationalists into the school of the moderates. However, certain other considerations make clear that Paul was not the first or only one to speak of the mystery. The Lord said, "I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they shall hear My voice; and they shall become one flock with one shepherd" (John 10:16). Furthermore, in the Upper Room, just before His crucifixion, He revealed the two basic mysteries of this church age. He told His disciples (Paul was not one of them), "In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you" (14:20). The "you in Me" relationship is that of being in the Body of Christ, of which Jesus is the Head. The "I in you" relationship is that of His indwelling presence (Col. 1:27).

The Body church relationship was thus revealed by the Lord before His death, and it would be operative "in that day" (i.e., at the day when the Holy Spirit would come to be "in" them, John 14:17). When did this happen? It occurred on the Day of Pentecost. On the Day of Pentecost, then, they were placed in Him, and the Body church began. That they may not have understood it we do not question, but the dispensation began when God began to do His distinguishably different work, not when, or if ever, man understood it.

Baptism "in" the Spirit

Before His ascension the Lord promised the disciples that they would be baptized en pneumati ("in the Spirit," Acts 1:5). In 1 Corinthians 12:13 Paul explains that being placed in the Body of Christ is accomplished by being baptized en pneumati. Since the promise of Acts 1:5 was fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost (see 11:15-16), and if this is the baptism explained in 1 Corinthians 12:13 as effecting entrance into the Body of Christ, that is an irrefutable argument for the Body church's beginning on the Day of Pentecost. The ultradispensationalist realizes the strength of this argument, and he is forced to argue for two baptisms. Acts 1:5, he says, is a baptism "with" the Spirit for miraculous power, and "this baptism with the Holy Spirit was not, of course, the baptism of Jews and Gentiles into one body." The baptism of 1 Corinthians 12:13 is "by" the Spirit, and this is the one that forms the Body church.

Such a distinction is quite admissible as far as possible meanings of the Greek preposition en are concerned. The preposition does, at different times, mean "with," "in," and "by." That is not contested. What is contested is the artificiality of making it mean one thing in Acts and another in 1 Corinthians when it is used in exactly the same phrase with the word "Spirit."

For the sake of argument, let the ultradispensationalist face the possibility that in both instances it does mean the same and refers to the same baptism. Then his entire effort to make a separate dispensation of the early chapters of Acts of an alleged Jewish church crashes to the ground. It makes little difference how the en is translated. Translating it "in," "with," or "by" still refers to Spirit baptism, which began on the Day of Pentecost. The only normal and consistent way to understand these references to baptism en pneumati leads to the inescapable conclusion that the Body of Christ began at Pentecost and that there was no separate dispensation of a Jewish church from Pentecost to the time of Paul. Even the ultradispensationalist acknowledges this: If en is the same in all occurrences "then it is obvious that Spirit baptism first took place at Pentecost." However, he insists that it cannot be translated the same way in all instances, thus proving two baptisms.

Normative dispensationalists usually translate the en as "with" in all passages except 1 Corinthians 12:13, where they translate it "by." That makes Christ the agent of baptism in all but the 1 Corinthians passage, where the Spirit is the agent. But Acts 2:33 says that Christ is the ultimate agent of the Pentecostal Spirit baptism of the Spirit because He was the one who sent the Spirit. Furthermore, to support two baptisms on the basis that the Pentecost baptism is into the Spirit, whereas the Corinthians baptism is into the Body of Christ is tenuous. Both are true and both began at Pentecost, which is similar to the Spirit's ministry in sealing believers—He is both the Agent who seals and the sphere in which they are sealed. Similarly, the Spirit and Christ can both be the agents, and the spheres can be both the Spirit and the Body of Christ. And the complete package began at Pentecost.

Conclusion

These errors—in the basic concept of a dispensation, in exegesis of key passages, in understanding when the mystery was revealed, in the baptizing ministry of the Spirit—are the reasons dispensationalists reject ultradispensationalism. The argument has been based not on the history or practice of the ultradispensational movement but strictly on biblical evidence, for this is the evidence on which any school of thought ought to be judged. And on this basis ultradispensationalism is rejected.

It should be clear, too, that, on the basis of the evidence presented, dispensationalism and ultradispensationalism have very basic differences. While it is true that antidispensationalists can level similar charges against both groups, that does not make the teaching of both groups the same. After all, one can level quite similar charges against liberals and Barthians, but that hardly makes liberalism and neoorthodoxy similar doctrinal systems. The same is true of dispensationalism and ultradispensationalism.