EarlyActs
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I have been away for almost 2 months working on feature film scripts that will go into a revolutionary new platform that bypasses Hollywood when it comes to selection and funding.
We need to understand at least a couple things about the NT term 'mystery.' One is that there can be a mystery where we know the outcome, but be at a complete loss as to how the thing could happen.
As an example that is not about the "mystery of the church," notice the mystery of being changed (I Cor 15) at the end of our lives/of time as the case may be. We only get told that it is very quick, and that it is at the last trumpet. We don't really get detail about it, although we had already been told that a thing that was a corruptible body (physically) would be changed to incorruption. So again, we know what is going to happen; that is no surprise. But the how is meager.
In Eph 3:5, 6, there is definition of the mystery that involves the church. "...that now, through the Gospel, the Gentiles have been made one..." It is legitimate to emphasize the prepositional phrase through the Gospel because it is moved right to the front in the original.
As Col 1 says, this (through the Gospel) was not understood in previous ages. He is referring to the how. That is the only sense there; he is not referring to the mystery outright. It is the fabric of Gen 3's promise, Gen 15, Gen 49, many Psalms, and gobs of lines in the prophets. Amos 9 says this about the OT itself, in an very strategic statement (being toward the end of the prophets and looking back at the whole OT).
Please understand the importance of this delicate point, because there are whole denominations that formed up and formed against each other, which is very sad. I currently work in a reconciliation mode to help those who think the mystery church was 'out of nowhere' see that it is very express in "Moses and the Prophets" (Lk 24).
This means that another way to put this problem, which I have found quite helpful, is that it is a mystery to Judaism, but not the OT. Where the church said this happened through the Gospel, Judaism would have said 'no, it would happen through the Law' and they even practiced that. They were so concerned about the impact that the Christians were making, in the Colossians setting, that they went around saying unless Christians followed the Law, they were disqualified from what they had in Christ. This is very different from denying Christ outright. It means that the Judaizers did not accept the incoming Gentile believers as the completion of their own Scriptures fulfillment.
On a historical note, one reason why the futurist sects (those which work out elaborate, detailed 'fulfilled prophecy' schemes) needed their defining doctrines arose from the devastating suppression of sciences in the end of the the 1800s. Cosmology, anthro-, bio- and geo- were all so seriously rewritten from Christian understanding that by the time of the 5 Fundamentals (@1905), most Fundamentalists believed the Genesis deluge was limited to the Caspian Sea.
Their answer? "Fulfilled prophecy." They basically evacuated those sciences, and all 'proof' was thrown on 'coming, endtime events.' At first, anyway, after the science changes, there were not people working in the sciences who responded. The USGS suppressed Bretz understanding of the Missoula-Columbia event until the 40s , and the work of Pellegrini about tectonics until the 80s. By finding Bretz, Whitcomb and Morris were able in the 60s, as believers with a high view of Genesis, to start seeing geological truth in Genesis and similar narratives.
The idea of new fulfilled prophecy also changed the way the NT uses the OT. Of course, they realized it quoted the OT. But a point-by-point prophecy-fulfillment method may actually misses what the NT was saying. The method was held by the futurists, however, as the way to read various NT locations, and the Rev, and of course, certain OT passages.
The problem is that this reading often conflicts with the NT itself. That is, it conflicts with what the NT saw in an OT passage. And it conflicts with the innovative expansion of themes that might not even have been mentioned in the OT. "Christ our passover" is not specifically mentioned that I know of, but obviously it shakes the old and creates an entirely new scheme. New wine does not belong in old wineskins.
With one tightening-up example to close with, Acts 15 quotes Amos 9. First we know that the reason for quoting it is to support how far back God intended an outreach to all nations at the end of time. This is undeniable. The council knew that this is why Gentiles were becoming Christians. But second, a phrase like 'raise up the tent of David' goes in this direction. We are not, like the rabbi in a 1949 documentary, poking around in the rubble of Jerusalem to find a stone that has the inscription cornerstone on it. The folks desparate for there to be proof of the Bible, as though it was depleted, strain to find a tent of David in modern Israel, and completely miss robust NT theology about the living temple made with living stones, still having so much impact on earth today.
We need to understand at least a couple things about the NT term 'mystery.' One is that there can be a mystery where we know the outcome, but be at a complete loss as to how the thing could happen.
As an example that is not about the "mystery of the church," notice the mystery of being changed (I Cor 15) at the end of our lives/of time as the case may be. We only get told that it is very quick, and that it is at the last trumpet. We don't really get detail about it, although we had already been told that a thing that was a corruptible body (physically) would be changed to incorruption. So again, we know what is going to happen; that is no surprise. But the how is meager.
In Eph 3:5, 6, there is definition of the mystery that involves the church. "...that now, through the Gospel, the Gentiles have been made one..." It is legitimate to emphasize the prepositional phrase through the Gospel because it is moved right to the front in the original.
As Col 1 says, this (through the Gospel) was not understood in previous ages. He is referring to the how. That is the only sense there; he is not referring to the mystery outright. It is the fabric of Gen 3's promise, Gen 15, Gen 49, many Psalms, and gobs of lines in the prophets. Amos 9 says this about the OT itself, in an very strategic statement (being toward the end of the prophets and looking back at the whole OT).
Please understand the importance of this delicate point, because there are whole denominations that formed up and formed against each other, which is very sad. I currently work in a reconciliation mode to help those who think the mystery church was 'out of nowhere' see that it is very express in "Moses and the Prophets" (Lk 24).
This means that another way to put this problem, which I have found quite helpful, is that it is a mystery to Judaism, but not the OT. Where the church said this happened through the Gospel, Judaism would have said 'no, it would happen through the Law' and they even practiced that. They were so concerned about the impact that the Christians were making, in the Colossians setting, that they went around saying unless Christians followed the Law, they were disqualified from what they had in Christ. This is very different from denying Christ outright. It means that the Judaizers did not accept the incoming Gentile believers as the completion of their own Scriptures fulfillment.
On a historical note, one reason why the futurist sects (those which work out elaborate, detailed 'fulfilled prophecy' schemes) needed their defining doctrines arose from the devastating suppression of sciences in the end of the the 1800s. Cosmology, anthro-, bio- and geo- were all so seriously rewritten from Christian understanding that by the time of the 5 Fundamentals (@1905), most Fundamentalists believed the Genesis deluge was limited to the Caspian Sea.
Their answer? "Fulfilled prophecy." They basically evacuated those sciences, and all 'proof' was thrown on 'coming, endtime events.' At first, anyway, after the science changes, there were not people working in the sciences who responded. The USGS suppressed Bretz understanding of the Missoula-Columbia event until the 40s , and the work of Pellegrini about tectonics until the 80s. By finding Bretz, Whitcomb and Morris were able in the 60s, as believers with a high view of Genesis, to start seeing geological truth in Genesis and similar narratives.
The idea of new fulfilled prophecy also changed the way the NT uses the OT. Of course, they realized it quoted the OT. But a point-by-point prophecy-fulfillment method may actually misses what the NT was saying. The method was held by the futurists, however, as the way to read various NT locations, and the Rev, and of course, certain OT passages.
The problem is that this reading often conflicts with the NT itself. That is, it conflicts with what the NT saw in an OT passage. And it conflicts with the innovative expansion of themes that might not even have been mentioned in the OT. "Christ our passover" is not specifically mentioned that I know of, but obviously it shakes the old and creates an entirely new scheme. New wine does not belong in old wineskins.
With one tightening-up example to close with, Acts 15 quotes Amos 9. First we know that the reason for quoting it is to support how far back God intended an outreach to all nations at the end of time. This is undeniable. The council knew that this is why Gentiles were becoming Christians. But second, a phrase like 'raise up the tent of David' goes in this direction. We are not, like the rabbi in a 1949 documentary, poking around in the rubble of Jerusalem to find a stone that has the inscription cornerstone on it. The folks desparate for there to be proof of the Bible, as though it was depleted, strain to find a tent of David in modern Israel, and completely miss robust NT theology about the living temple made with living stones, still having so much impact on earth today.
