THE DISPENSATIONS (1)
[p. 384] THE DISPENSATIONS (1)
Genesis 5: 1, 2; Genesis 6: 9 - 22
JT I was thinking of something on dispensational lines, that we might get some understanding of them. We have an expression in 1 Timothy, “God’s dispensation, which is in faith”. We are in that, but there were others, and there will be another, and it is thought that we might get help, by the Scriptures, as to them. They are all said to come on us, “upon whom the ends of the ages are come” (1 Corinthians 10: 11), and it is important to have the general thought of dispensations in our minds. The final one is in Ephesians, the dispensation of the fulness of times. I thought we might begin with Genesis and end in Ephesians.
The idea of dispensation in general refers to God operating in relation to His house, and the thought runs through from the beginning. The passage quoted from 1 Corinthians, “upon whom the ends of the ages are come” is clearly to be understood by us, for this one is the greatest of them; this is the day of the Spirit in relation to the assembly, which is God’s house, and it is thought that we should become more conversant with it and know how to function in it, for that is the divine thought. It is proposed now that we should consider the antediluvian order of things and later the patriarchal, and then the mediatorial under Moses, and running down to the coming of the Lord and then our own dispensation, which is called the dispensation of God which is in faith, and then the “dispensation of the fulness of times” which is the millennium. The thought of dispensation is perhaps not so clear in 1 Corinthians 10 as in other scriptures, but it is there, especially in Noah who built something corresponding to the idea of a house. We have God’s relations with man after sin came in, in order to [p. 385] bring about His thoughts in spite of sin and its activities. God was in relation to Adam before sin came in according to covenant, but Adam transgressed the covenant and God resumed relations with man through redemption. There were certain relations involved in this first passage read, “This is the book of Adam’s generations”. Through redemption. God owns him, so that chapter 5 is full of the thought of what God was in relation to that world. Noah coming in after Enoch shows there was some idea of dispensation current but especially in Noah according to Genesis 6 and Genesis 9.
CAM The house idea is a very large thought. Would you say that it is confirmed in that scripture, that “he who has built all things is God”, Hebrews 3: 4?
JT Yes, the thought is there. The universe is His house. How far we can touch that is a question, because angels must come into it, and all the worlds must come into it. All is now worked out or concentrated in our own dispensation in which the Spirit is directly operating. Jesus being made Lord and Christ in heaven. The Spirit is directly operating in us, not at a distance, but in the most direct and intimate way. God is operating now and Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10: 11, “Now all these things happened to them as types, and have been written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come”. It is a present thing, and we are supposed to be intelligent as to them.
JWD You mean that all that these antediluvian saints had we have in our own dispensation?
JT I think that is the way it stands; having the Spirit of God, John says, ye know all things. The anointing enables us to know all things, to go back and see how God intended them for us. Those who lived then came into them in some degree, but not in the sense that we come into them. Therefore [p. 386] these chapters become very interesting for us, for we see how God began things with Adam’s generations.
JWD Is it your thought that these give us a record of certain features of blessing which, if we did not enter into them in the light in which they are presented in the Old Testament, we would not get in the New.
JT Well, quite so. God spread them out; He spread out His thoughts, awaiting redemption being fully accomplished, awaiting the economy that He has set up in Christ. The Holy Spirit is down here and it is a time of knowing all things. The antediluvian world was not such a time; even the prophets did not fully understand what they prophesied themselves, all pointing to the time of knowing all things, which is our dispensation. God had in mind a time, a dispensation, when all things would become known. What would God be revealing things for, if they were not to become known at some time or another? Paul expresses how much he knew of the mystery. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hid in the mystery, and in this dispensation everything is distributed in the place it belongs spiritually.
CAM Would this word ‘generation’ in Genesis 5: 1, have significance in relation to the fulness of times?
JT It is a word by itself used about ten times in Genesis and two or three times elsewhere. There are two words for generation in Genesis, but this word refers to origin. It does not refer to Adam simply, but Adam’s descendants; that is to say, one’s forefathers do not end in the person spoken of. The idea of forefathers runs down to all the descendants, so that the book of Adam’s generations would run down in its course to all that follows, and I suppose works out in the dispensation of the fulness of times, that is, in the millennium. It is remarkable that we have the word ‘book’ here for the first time. It means that there is an account kept of the history of man as it runs down. There are many subdivisions, but it is all one great idea.
ANW The dispensation seems to run along the histories of men as you were suggesting, but do “histories” in chapter 2 form a dispensation?
JT Well, they do. You cannot say that each of the ten generations in this book forms a dispensation. I think that the word would mean that you get a full account of any great thing you ought to know about. Even though persons may die (as recorded in Genesis 5, all died except Enoch) the ‘generation’ is to run on; it is not to stop as individuals may die. The ends of the ages are come into our time; and that is what is meant, a way of following things up at any given time, what God is doing with it.
AR Is that why God says to Jacob, “I am Jehovah, the God of Abraham, thy father, and the God of Isaac”? The thing is carried forward. Then the Lord brings forward the thought of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in Luke.
JT Yes, Isaac has a generation, Abraham has not, Terah has, then Isaac, Ishmael, and in a negative sense Esau has, then Jacob has, so the great roots in Genesis run down. “Book of the generation of Jesus Christ, Son of David, Son of Abraham”, Matthew 1: 1. Well, the thing is all interwoven so that faith follows it, and as having the Spirit a christian is anointed and knows all things.
HB Is that principle seen in Stephen’s testimony in that he began with Abraham and goes down to David and Solomon, and so on?
JT Stephen was thoroughly versed in this idea of generations; he was a master in it, and he shows the importance of being instructed. Enoch comes in as a type of all this, a learner; he was the seventh [p. 388] from Adam; he would understand the book of the generations of Adam, he would come into it indeed. Stephen fills it out in the New Testament; he was a master of that order of things, that order of instruction — missing nothing from his predecessors. The word ‘generation’ means that you learn of what has been before you and look on to what is coming prophetically. Scripture does not leave us in the dark; it looks on to the end prophetically.
Ques Is that the effect in connection with the two to whom the Lord spoke? They did not believe all that was written concerning Christ.
JT Yes, the Lord took up the thread. “And having begun from Moses and from all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself”, Luke 24: 27.
WL The thoughts of God are not bounded by dispensation.
JT They all culminate by what we may call a refining process, as we go on, and all merges in an eternal state of things, which is not a dispensation, but finality. Finality is eternal, a spiritual state of things, and time has nothing to do with it. Dispensations are in time. It is the learning time when God is working things out for us. Enoch learns through discipline. God puts you into circumstances where things become subjective in you. It is a question of discipline because anything I have apart from discipline I am not an exponent of. Discipline makes it real to me. That is what God means by it. The antediluvian world was a period of old men. How much did they gain by their age?
JWD Are we to look at these dispensations typically or as giving us light as to what God actually had in that period? Is it typical of us or are we given intelligence as to what God had for Himself in that very long [p. 389] period?
JT God was working out something that no doubt Noah and Enoch represent, what was pleasing to God in a man’s experience. Enoch is not said to be a preacher like Noah, but in the New Testament he is said to have prophesied. He does not represent gift like Noah. Noah is qualified to carry things through. It would mean how the dispensations link together; they are not isolated. One enters into another and all is carried through. Noah represents that character. He is a man of great endurance and a man who can do things. He is said to be five hundred years old when his age is first given to us. He begot three sons and walked with God. He was “perfect amongst his generations”. The generations there are different from the others we have been speaking of. God says, ‘I have confidence in you, I will make a covenant with you’; therefore he becomes a carrier-through of what there was in the first world for God. It is carried through intact. The next dispensation would, of course, be set up in all that wealth. Does that link on with what you had in mind?
JWD It seems to me these represented great features of what there was for God in that day. Sometimes we think there were only seven or eight godly persons in the antediluvian world. There may have been great numbers of others.
JT That is right. Chapter 5 gives names of persons, beginning with Adam and running down to Lemech and then Noah, all pointing to something for God. Enoch is the acme of it, he was a man who lived only about a third of the life of the others, but God takes him to Himself. God is always looking for something that is pleasing so that He can have something.
JTJr Would not Enoch in a way suggest the secret side before there can be the public side of service in [p. 390] Noah?
JT That is right. That is a good way to put it. It was not a long life like Methuselah or Noah, but a pleasing life to God, something for God.
NW What is the outstanding feature of these dispensations?
JT It will take us all these three days to tell that. The one we are at now is primary and basic and less pronounced than the others, but it is a root dispensation. It is a question of man, it is a book of the generations of Adam. It is a question of man, what is to be worked out in man, not angels. When you come to the New Testament we are told in John 1: 4, “the life was the light of men”. It is what God is working out in man, the purpose for which God created them.
MO Does the bow in the cloud indicate God’s intention to continue to operate with man? The covenant embraces the whole earth and all flesh; God evidently has man before Him, the whole race, as such.
JT Yes, we are coming down to the ninth chapter to Noah, for God is showing that He is going on a long time, and He is entering into covenant, and sets His bow in the cloud to assure all generations afterward that He is not forsaking man. He is going through and carrying man with Him. It is a question of man.
CN In Acts 26 the apostle says, “And now I stand to be judged because of the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers, to which our whole twelve tribes serving incessantly day and night hope to arrive”. Does that enter into what is before us?
JT Quite so. You can see how thoroughly Paul was in this matter extending back to Abraham. God is going through with the thing. The service was not abrogated — the whole twelve tribes serving God incessantly day and night. God is operating all the [p. 391] time. I think that helps. That is what you get in a man who represents all these things, that you might know “my knowledge in the mystery”. There is one man anyway who knows these things.
AR Would faith take us back to Genesis to see how God made Adam and to overthrow the theory of evolution that has been brought forward in recent years?
JT It does indeed. It is remarkable how God helps in Genesis. The enemy knows what is there and he attacks it more than any other book.
AAT The scripture says that “Noah was a just man, perfect amongst his generations”. God says that Job was perfect and upright. I wonder how the thought of “just” comes in.
JT This is not his own account. God says Job was perfect; outwardly so far as his testimony went Job was perfect, but this is intrinsic. God says in verse 8, “But Noah found favour in the eyes of Jehovah”; then “this is the history of Noah”. The word ‘history’ is the same as ‘generations’ in chapter 5, “Noah was a just man, perfect amongst his generations: Noah walked with God”. He is honoured in the use of this word ‘generations’, as extending backwards and forwards, but he was also a man of righteousness among his own circle of acquaintances. In his circle of acquaintances he would be known to be a righteous man. If any of us is to have part in this matter, there must be this idea of present righteousness, a local testimony to righteousness.
Ques Would that have some bearing on those washing their robes in Revelation 22: 14?
JT Just so. “Blessed are they that wash their robes”. It is characteristic of such persons; not simply something to be done. You could always point to Noah as a man who was perfect. Noah could challenge any one of his neighbours that he [p. 392] was a righteous man so that it is said he moved with fear. He was a godly man, as well as righteous. God had told him of things to come and he was moved with fear and prepared an ark for the saving of his house; he was concerned about saving his house.
Rem Both Enoch and Noah are spoken of as walking with God.
JT Walking with God means that God had something here; persons with whom He has a link. The allusion is to Genesis 3 where God walked in the garden, and there was no one to walk with Him, because Adam had failed Him, but Enoch walked with Him here. The thing is continued in moral lines in Noah. God takes it up right through, “Walk before me, and be thou perfect”.
JWD As to righteousness Hebrews says “Heir of the righteousness which is according to faith”. How do you look at practical righteousness, and righteousness that stands in relation to faith in regard to Noah?
JT The heir of righteousness would mean that he was a practically righteous man, but it became an inheritance. It takes the character of righteousness by faith when you come to Abraham; it is in him that you have the idea. It is righteousness that God attributes to you on the principle of faith. It is what God has effected in Christ. That is not simply what he worked out in his daily life, it is what he would get later.
CHH Is that carried down from Abraham who is practically righteous?
JT Quite so. There were three great righteous men on that line — Abel, Noah, and Abraham, but Abraham gets righteousness by faith.
JW It says of Noah he was “a preacher of righteousness”, 2 Peter 2: 5.
JT [p. 393] Quite so. That is very important. How can a man be a preacher of righteousness, if he is not practically righteous?
WR It seems that very little except Noah would be pleasing in this dispensation.
JT Well, that is so, and God made him His confidant, and spoke about him personally, limiting the position to himself. “Jehovah said to Noah, Go into the ark, thou and all thy house; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation”. He is the one God is linking on with.
ANW It says, of Noah that he “became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith”.
JT That is, be became heir of what we have. Righteousness according to faith belongs properly to this dispensation. It was reckoned to Abraham and he is brought into this dispensation as the father of all believers. In the sense of heirship you come into righteousness by faith, whereas a righteous walk is a practical thing at all times. What is by faith came in later.
AL You spoke of Noah going backward and also forward. Would you say something of going backward?
JT You go back to your fountain-head. You must begin with Adam, but then he is the figure of Him who is to come. It is all taken up in Christ. Christ is the fountain-head now; He is the last Adam. The first Adam is no more. He is only like you or me as a person. Christ is before God now. We must not forget what God began with.
AR Is that the idea in Hebrews of the heir? We might think God was going to wipe off all record from the earth prior to Noah but it has been carried forward in him and transferred to his family.
JT If there were any books there, Noah would have them. This is the only book mentioned, but the records remained. John makes a great point of writing. “I write to you” and “I have written to you”. Things are carried down. If you are a diligent christian, you have all the books and make much of them. Noah was a perfect man in his circle and was a practically righteous man in his generations. No one has any right or title to put himself forward in ministry unless he is practically righteous, but then you come into an inheritance through faith which God has worked out, which is a greater thought. Genesis 6 shows us the contrast to Noah, and what a terrible world it was at that time.
SJH Noah building an altar and offering all these clean beasts, would be the carrying over of what has gone before into the new dispensation?
JT That is good; that is the idea. The Spirit of God would help you to follow down this man. Look what he has brought in. God told him to take the clean beasts by sevens, a male and its female; and two of the unclean. He did not tell him to offer the clean animals, but he did offer them. He is a learner by observation. That is what is brought into the new world.
APh In the beginning of Matthew Joseph is said to be a righteous man. All righteous men get special commendation from Jehovah.
JT Matthew takes up the line of righteousness. The Lord speaks of a person who receives something in the name of a righteous man. If you are a righteous man, you have a name. The passage in Matthew 10 takes this up and shows its value. Joseph was a righteous man characteristically. Even one righteous man according to Matthew 10 is important; the Lord says, “the name of a righteous man”.
JWD This righteousness must stand related to some faith position, even more than Noah in the antediluvian world. Do you think when “people began to call on the name of Jehovah” there was some governing light to give Noah [p. 395] understanding?
JT Yes, quite so, that is the thing that we should look into. That period is said to have lasted about 1650 years, some would make it about 2300 years, but it is a long dispensation anyway. It is a dispensation of old men who lived a long time. God must have seen some value in it. If He only gets one out of ten, it is worth while letting the ten live a long time. We are told that Seth enters into these generations; Cain is left out. Seth called his son’s name Enosh. If you were to ask, Why do you give your son that name? no one ever had that name before, he would tell you, I see that how ever long a man may live, be will die. Enosh means that he is weak or mortal. If you are an exercised man you get help. He would learn that though he thought his children were going to live a long time, he had to realise that this boy is going to die. So it says, “people began to call on the name of Jehovah”. We do not know who they were, but it illustrates what this world was before the flood. God had something in it. There were people who called on the name of the Lord.
CN Would it be right to say that there is development in God’s ways seen in Noah following Adam? These dispensations coming one after another instruct us in God’s mind.
JT Quite so. It is development in His ways with man as created, not development as evolutionists suppose. Enoch signifies development morally because he is the seventh from Adam. He has gathered up from those preceding him. Noah has the same principle so that he is carrying things on. As we come down to the other dispensations we will see that there is development in us; there is none in Christ. John says, “That which was from the beginning”, there is no development in that; then “Him that is from the beginning”.
AR How would you work out your thought in connection with the dispensation following? We ought to be carrying forward everything in church history.
JT Yes, the city is coming down from God out of heaven in perfection. Everything will be learned in that coming dispensation. The assembly is the great dominating feature.
NW At the end of chapter 7 it says, “And Noah alone remained”. Is that a principle, that at the end of each dispensation there is a reduction and a refinement?
JT It would mean that the quality was there before the old world was destroyed, and Noah represents what is of God and that is going through. As the flood is dried up, he is the same man. He has not lost any ground, in fact he has gained; he has come to know God better through it.
JW There seems to be very little for God in this period.
JT It looks that way, but there must have been something in the way of result from the dispensation. The fifth chapter gives you a list of names each of which has remarkable meaning. It is the fruit of God’s dispensations, the way God is operating in a dispensational way. He did not leave Eve alone, or Seth alone. God was working with them, there was fruit born. Seth is the best example of fruit, because others began to call on the name of the Lord because of what he said. Others began to move in that. There must have been something there at that time.
ANW Enosh lived over nine hundred years, and Cainan his son also, and he begat Mahalaleel. There must have been something in the way of testimony in him.
JT His name, Mahalaleel, meaning the praise of God, would suggest that faith apprehended that [p. 397] there was a system of glory, revealing the splendour of God. Well, there must have been something there that indicated how God was shining in that time. It was not in his own light that Enosh shone, there was something in him that indicated a knowledge of God. Seth would know that his son was a dying man. Even though we live a long time, it is not eternal life.
JWD It says that, “ye have come ... to the spirits of just men made perfect”.
JT Those are the men that come into the dispensation we are dealing with. They are all awaiting the coming of Christ.
CHH We are in the dispensation in which all culminates prior to the display of glory in the millennium.
JT That is the point. They come on us; that is the point the apostle makes. We should be equal to the burden of carrying them through, they are not fallen to the ground. All coming upon us would mean that the splendour of God is to shine out in christianity.
Ques The results of God’s operating are seen here in both Enoch and Noah. Does the Lord refer to that in His word, “My Father worketh hitherto and I work”, John 5: 17?
JT I was thinking of that in the beginning of this reading. The Lord says, “My Father worketh”. He was working out a great scheme of glory and blessing all awaiting redemption. The Lord Jesus preached, and the Spirit of Christ was operating in Noah as he preached to the end of his dispensation.
AR Is the idea of carrying forward everything seen in the word to Noah, “And of every living thing of all flesh”? He was also to take “of all food that is eaten”; all looked forward to this other [p. 398] world.
JT If we look into the facts about Noah, we are impressed with that, that everything was brought through. What energy must have been needed in the work that was put upon him. Now the point for us is what energy are we showing? Are we taking things on and working things out in our own localities? Is each one bearing a burden?
SL Is it seen in John 14, “The works which I do shall he do also, and he shall do greater than these”?
JT That is good. Greater works; and Noah is an example of a man who can do things and do them well. He is dealing with full grown men and women and cattle — all developed. He is a man able to influence all things, so that the cattle came to him. What an influential man he must have been. God made him that.
CHH God blesses his generation.
JT It is the greatness of the man that is in view. Noah was one man that God was pleased with, and God carried him through, and Noah carried through in testimony what God had committed to him.
AAT There were no results from his preaching.
JT As far as we know there were none. That was not a defect in the preaching because really the preaching was Christ. It shows the terrible conditions, how bad they were. They are unconvertible. God could do nothing because of their unbelief. Even in the Lord’s time. He could do nothing in certain places because of their unbelief.
TH Would you mind helping us in view of local conditions. How do we learn things in our local meetings?
JT You learn intuitively. You begin to feel things in the presence of God. It does not say that God was inside the ark. It says, God shut him in, but we believe that all inside the ark were devoted to what was of God. Noah did not produce his food,
[p. 399] or his cattle, or his family; it all came from God. Noah must have been learning all these months while he was in the ark. They must have learned God in the ark. They would go around and look at these animals and know the names that Adam had given them. Each denoted some divine principle. It was the learning time.
AC Lemech, the father of Noah, looks for reward, for comfort “concerning our work and concerning the toil of our hands, because of the ground which Jehovah has cursed”.
JT That is good. His name means violence, and in this line it would mean violence spiritually. He would not let his children go to the theatre; he would be violent about it. Cain was a violent man, but in a physical sense, there was no moral element in that. The Lord says “the violent take it by force”, Matthew 11: 12. Lemech knew what to call Noah. He calls his name Noah and tells us why he did it: “This one shall comfort us”. That shows Lemech was an intelligent man. He died before the flood; God took him. It is really like the gospel of Matthew. Matthew tells us that the Lord says, “Behold, I am with you all the days, until the completion of the age” (chapter 28: 20). That means He is watching what you are doing. You work in the light of these principles, and you know what to do. He does not tell us how to do it; but that is how things work out in the assembly; you have general principles, and in our public readings of the Scriptures we learn what to do. We learn, because we have a Model, the Scriptures, the principles, and the books, so that we should know what to do in a crisis or at all times.
AL Do we see the intensification of spiritual life in the reduction of age to three score years and ten?
JT Persons now are to learn to do things well in a short life, and then the Lord takes them away [p. 400] and another comes along. It is a time of short life. The Lord Himself speaks prophetically, “Take me not away in the midst of my days!” Psalm 102: 24. John the baptist, even Paul and Peter, did not live to be very old, but see what was done in their lives. God says, ‘Do your best in your life’.
JTJr Chapter 5 closes with the names of Noah’s three sons, and in chapter 6, verse 10, the Spirit of God says, “And Noah begot three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth”. Would it not suggest the new order of things that God had in mind?
JT Just so. They are to go through; they are to be blessed. You get their generations too. That is the idea, they are to carry the thing down.
SJH What is the suggestion in the number eight, eight souls?
JT I think it is because there is something carried over. One suggests a new beginning, but eight is the carrying over of what was in the preceding seven. The dispensations are cumulative. Noah represents the principle of carrying over what is in one dispensation, to another. Now we are to carry something over into eternity which is the greatest thing of all. Everything merges in what is spiritual.
TH In view of localities where the old brothers are not able to teach the young, how is the new personnel going to be instructed? Maybe some of us did not take things on early enough.
JT That brings out a good deal. Eldership involves that we impart to the younger. An elder who teaches is to be held in double honour. An older brother should be a teaching brother if he can be. The idea is that he is a model in order and behaviour and can instruct people. Noah was a preacher. We do not know much about the three sons. The greatest is Shem; his name means a person of renown spiritually, not like Nimrod who was a mighty hunter before the Lord. We get Shem’s generation twice. Shem means ‘name, or renown’.
AR Noah would have first-hand information as to why Adam named certain creatures. He would tell his sons so they would carry it forward.
JT We are not told in the first world what the clean creatures were. Noah is supposed to know them. That is another evidence that there was knowledge; he knew the clean from the unclean.
AAT We are dependent on the teaching of the old brothers.
JT Well, we are. We are to learn from the old brothers. Enoch means that he is a model; he learned from his predecessors. He was the seventh from Adam. Even Paul refers to his fathers. We learn from those who precede us, whether our direct fathers or those living in our time. “I write to you, fathers”. The fathers are distinguished more than any others in John’s epistle. They will instruct you in spiritual things. Timothy is called as a younger man, for Paul tells him, “Let no one despise thy youth”. He also says, “The things thou hast heard of me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men”, 2 Timothy 2: 2. There was a paternal relationship, for Paul called Timothy “my child”.
TS Paul also says to the Thessalonians, “Ye know how, as a father his own children, we used to exhort each one of you, and comfort and testify, that ye should walk worthy of God”.
JT Quite so.
APh David gets divine instruction as to building the house, and he communicated that to Solomon.
JT Quite so, that is another good point; father and son again. David says that Solomon is young and tender and therefore he was concerned that he should get everything rightly. David got the pattern [p. 402] of the house by the Spirit, but he passed it on to Solomon.
Rem With regard to the young men you have already referred to, it says, “I have written to you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one. Love not the world, nor the things in the world. If any one love the world, the love of the Father is not in him”.
JT That is right. Be sure you get the right father. There are fathers and fathers. The fathers in christendom, well, you cannot be sure of what they say. I mean the official fathers who have their place in the ecclesiastical writings. Paul says there may be many instructors, but not many fathers. He had begotten the Corinthians. The Spirit would direct our view to him.
CHH The first seven chapters of Proverbs continually speak of “my son”.
JT That is by a man who said, “I was a son unto my father”, Proverbs 4: 3. He carried the thing down.
WL I was wondering about the thought of command in regard to Noah. Paul speaks of the Lord’s commandment.
JT That is a point of great importance with Noah, that “so did he”. Everything is carried through. There is not a single discrepancy in what he did.
JW The ark is a type of the assembly in which things are carried forward.
JT That is what I thought we might see, that the assembly is the great thought of God running through all the dispensations. It is remarkable how in these early dispensations Christ and the assembly should be typified, until you have the actual coming of Christ and the assembly formed. Everything is there in the sense of wisdom, knowledge, affection,
[p. 403] family feeling; all is there. That is where salvation lies, so that the great expanded thought is the assembly as it is here today, and believers are coming into salvation today in the circle in which God is operating.
JWD God says about Himself, “My Spirit” and then we are told, that “it grieved him in his heart”. He must have presented certain distinguished personal features of Himself that were understood in that day.
JT It is wonderful, I think, in that connection to see how the end of a dispensation brings out God. You have God personally in the most touching manner in this section, Noah’s section. How He felt things! Think of the Spirit of God saying that it grieved Him in His heart and that He was sorry He made man. God speaks to us in a way that we as His creatures will understand. We are made after Him; we are His offspring and we ought to be able to judge what He is in some sense. If you are sorry, well, God can be sorry, and He has a means of meeting what causes it. That is the point to learn in this section. Think of the apostle Paul speaking about the foolishness of God. Who understands that? That is Scripture. What a wondrous and blessed Being God is, and He comes near to us so as to make us know this. He gives us to understand — that He is sympathetic with us in what we are going through. In Noah’s day everything he had under his care was either a man or woman, beasts or birds, or creeping things, all were mature beings. Noah is able to manage all that. The Spirit of God would direct us to the second Man, the Head of every man; so our minds are directed to Christ.
JTJr Peter speaks about Noah quite a bit. One section alludes to putting away of the filth of the flesh, and then he leads us to the right hand of God where [p. 404] Christ is.
JT So that everything is under Christ. Peter stresses that. He makes something of Lot; he calls him a righteous man. How God accredits people beyond what we might.
JW If there were no children in the ark why is the scripture in Peter used so frequently in connection with baptism in relation to the salvation of households? It refers to making an ark for the saving of his house.
JT Yes, that is right; Noah saved his house. They were all grown-ups, but they are referred to as his house. Paul is the great household baptist man. He baptised households, and makes a point of it. Paul speaks of our little ones; your children are holy, he says, because they belong to christian parents. That is a wonderful point because it gives us a basis of operations. God says they are holy, not substantially holy like Jesus was when He was born. They are provisionally holy and this knowledge of God’s mind as to them gives us a basis on which to act, so that our consciences might be governed in what we are doing. God has in mind that they are to be holy and they can only be holy through the death of Christ.
JW At household baptisms that scripture in Peter is frequently quoted.
JT The household principle is quite right but what people are baffled about is little children. Why should they be baptised? We are entitled to view them in the light of what Paul says, that little ones are holy (1 Corinthians 7: 14).
JWD When we baptise our children, it is not exactly with the childhood state in mind; it is what they are to be as full-grown persons in the testimony that is in mind.
JT The assembly is in mind. The assembly is not formed of children; the assembly is formed of grown-up persons, who have the Spirit of [p. 405] God.
TH The children are constantly alluded to in the expression, “you and your little ones”.
JT Very good. It is often alluded to. The little ones went over the brook (2 Samuel 15: 22).