TO SPEAK . . . OR TO SHUT UP

All references are to the NIV-UK edition of 1984.

There is a time for everything . . .

a time to be silent and a time to speak.

Eccles. 3:1, 7

PRUDENCE DICTATES THAT secrets are sometimes necessary, and that private matters need to be handled with integrity and care. It is not wise to blurt out everything we know.

Even Bible truths are too precious to toss to those who would wilfully debase or misrepresent them.

‘Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs’, Jesus says (Matt. 7:6).

Jesus was the supreme revealer of the Divine plan.

But he also understood that he should exercise caution, and so he often addressed his audiences in figures of speech, in order to conceal truths from the unworthy. We read in Matt. 13:34, 35 that he

. . . spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: ‘I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.’

Though the gospel was preached to Abraham thousands of years ago, the way in which the promise was to be fulfilled remained obscure.

Following the revelations of Jesus to the faithful of his day, and especially after their baptism into the holy spirit at Pentecost, the Apostles gained fresh insight into the Master’s teachings, matters which they had only dimly understood before.

But it was the Apostle Paul, once a fierce persecutor of the believers, who, as the twelfth Apostle, was particularly enlightened in deep doctrinal matters. He was used to unveil many deep mysteries of Divine revelation. It is Paul who identifies the promised seed or offspring of Abraham as Christ, and proclaims the profound truth that there ‘is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise’ (Gal. 3:28, 29; emphasis added). One needs more than a superficial grasp of biblical teachings to understand this point.

However, secrecy must not be overdone. As Christians, we must be bold, unstinting and intelligent in our declaration of the salvation message. As Jesus told the disciples, ‘this gospel of the kingdom will be [openly] preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations’ (Matt. 24:14; emphasis added). In their time, the Apostles and their successors gave witness to the foundational teaching that Jesus is Saviour and King.

This rock-solid truth is not the private property of any sect or denomination, and we should not hide it out of fear of embarrassment or of persecution. It needs to be made known to all, especially today, as western society sinks into disbelief around us.

Divine providence has brought the gospel to those with the capacity to exercise a saving faith, and Christ’s followers today may, like those of the early Church, echo the words of the prophet, Amos (3:7):

Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets.

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December 2016. ukbiblestudents.co.uk

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