Principle No. 8 The Gap Principle Part 1
By Clifton L. Fowler
Taken from Grace and Truth Magazine 1923
The Gap Principle of Divine
Revelation is only recognized by
a few students. In this it
stands in direct contrast with
the Context Principle, the
importance of which is declared
by practically all writers on Bible themes.
Inasmuch as the Gap Principle is
of such a character as to be quite beyond human
guess or invention, God has given it an unusually clear
revelation in His Word. ‘This is harmonious with all of God's
gracious dealings with His people. He never deals
unfairly. God is never unjust. Lf he had placed such an
unusual principle as the Gap Principle in His Inspired
Book and had failed to make clear in that Book the
presence and the nature of the principle, He would by that
act have laid Himself liable to the accusation of
having been unjust to those who
trust Him. Those who are without
a knowledge of the Gap Principle are without
excuse, for God has placed the
knowledge within easy reach of all
who study the Bible with an open
mind. A working conception of the Gap Principle is essential to an
intelligent study of prophecy. It
is quite futile to expect a clear and satisfying entrance into the beauties of those sections of Scripture which bear upon the things to come if the Gap Principle is ignored. Beginners in Bible study should most
carefully avoid Bible teachers whose prophetic studies fail to recognize
and employ the Gap Principle. This principle is a divinely given
key which quickly and easily unlocks the most important and the most difficult prophetic doors in the Bible.
The definition of the Gap
Principle is—
THE GAP PRINCIPLE IS THAT
PRINCIPLE OF DIVINE REVELATION
(a) Whereby God in Jewish
Scriptures ignores those periods of time during
which He is especially manifesting His
disapproval of sin, or during which the confusion of a
national adjustment may be taking place, or
during which God may be holding in
temporary abeyance some one of the Divine
purposes.
Here is a principle of
revelation which has
particularly to do with those sections of
Scripture which set forth God’s dealings with Israel. Thus
we shall expect to find the evidences of this principle
in the Old Testament, in the Gospels and Acts, or in the
latter part of the New Testament, for in these sections
of God's Word, God is specially dealing with those
things which pertain to His people Israel.
There are various gaps which a
careful study of the Bible will bring to light, but
that gap which is of most frequent occurrence in the Word
of God is the one in which God places some incident
of Israel's past against some prophesied event of
Israel’s future, leaping the intervening centuries without
comment. ‘The gaps which are found
scattered through the Jewish sections of inspiration are
not uniform in length. The application of the Context
Principle will invariably show up the length either by years or
by terminal events, of any given gap.
As has been declared, the
existence of the Gap Principle is demonstrated in the
Bible. Instead of making a definite statement
concerning it, the Holy Spirit has chosen to reveal
this principle by showing that Jesus knew of it as a
principle of revelation and consequently employed it as a
principle of interpretation ‘The passage from which this
unique fact is adduced is found in Luke
14:17-20:
“And there was delivered unto Him the book of the prophet Esaias (Isaiah). And. when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me—"
Jesus had turned to Isa. 6121-2. (It were well for the reader of this article to turn to the same
passage.)
“because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year” of the Lord. AND. HE CLOSED THE BOOK, AND HE GAVE IT AGAIN
TO THE MINISTER AND SAT DOWN.” Note the explicitness of the
record, —“And He closed the book,” for'He had not come to
the end of a sentence. All other things being normal there
was no occasion for His closing the book, in fact, from
every ordinary standpoint, it was incorrect and excuseless
for Him to close the book as He did in the middle of a
long sentence. But knowing that our Lord Jesus never made
an incorrect or meaning less move, we are instantly
impressed that so unusual, so unprecedented an action on the
part of Him Who could say, “I and My Father are one,”
must have significance of stupendous import. It has. A
glance at the Isaiah passage (Isa. 61:1-2) will
reveal the remarkably meaningful place at which Jesus
closed, the book and sat down.
“The Spirit of the Lord God is
upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to
preach good tidings unto the meek; He hath sent me to
hind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to
the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that
are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord
(HERE IS WHERE. JESUS DISCONTINUED HIS READING.
BUT THE PASSAGE CONTINUES AS
FOLLOWS:) and the day of
vengeance of our God; to
comfort all that mourn." Why did Jesus stop and close the
book at the particular point that He did? His next
words give the inspired answer to this question.
“This day is this Scripture
fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:21).
He stopped where He did because
if He had read on into the sentence to the words, “And
the day of vengeance,” He could not have said to the
people, “This day is this Scripture fulfilled.”
The day of
vengeance was then future and is still future.
When
Jesus in the presence of the minister of the synagogue
and the assembled Jews of Nazareth chose that
unexpected place to close the
book, He was teaching the Gap
Principle. In His first coming He did come “to preach the
acceptable year of the Lord,” —He did not come “to proclaim
the day of vengeance of our God.” ‘The words
“year” and “day” in this passage (Isa.
61:1-2) constitute the compound
direct object of the infinitive
“to proclaim.” When Jesus closed
the book of Isaiah in the
synagogue that day He was so
determined to stop just where He
did that He separated the parts
of a compound direct object—He
dismembered a clearly defined
grammatical clement in order to
demonstrate a scriptural
fact,—that the purposes of His
first coming and the purposes of
His second coming were not
identical. He chose to
demonstrate the presence of the
Gap Principle in Jewish
Scriptures, not by a direct
statement, but’ by closing the book
in the middle of a compound direct object.
He could
scarcely have used a more convincing method. By this
unique action, He thrusts the “day of vengeance” out into the
future and relates it to His second coming. It is a clear
example of a passage where a fact concerning Israel's
past is placed in immediate contact with a fact of
Israel’s future, the intervening centuries (which are the
gap) being passed over without comment. Our Lord’s method
of handling the passage becomes authority to us to
handle similar passages in a similar way.
The Gap Principle has the
endorsement of Jesus. He Who was in the beginning with
God and without Whom nothing was made that was made,
has shown us that the solution of some of the most
difficult passages in Scripture is to be found by applying the
Gap Principle. How comforting it is to the soul of the
eager student of God's Word to find conclusive proofs
on every hand that the Bible is self-interpreting.
The Apostle Peter saw and
appreciated the importance of the Gap Principle,
but the ancient prophets through whom God
inspired many of the gap passages, were utterly
perplexed by their own writings. Peter definitely teaches
that the prophets didn't understand their own prophecies
and that their whole difficulty was that they didn't
know about the Gap Principle.
The passage is in I Pet.
1:10-11:
“Of
which salvation the prophets
have inquired and searched diligently, who
prophesied of the grace that should come unto your Searching
what, or what manner , of time the Spirit of Christ
which was in them did signify, when it testified
beforehand the sufferings of
Christ, and the glory that should
follow.”
Peter, led by the Spirit, says
the prophets “searched” for
the “time” that the Spirit of
Christ was talking about, when He was speaking through
them, and talked about the “sufferings” and the “glory.”
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah and the other prophets are
here presented as studying their own writings and unable to
find the “time” which the Spirit of Christ which was
in them did signify when He inspired them to write
beforehand concerning two things,—suffering and glory. No
wonder the prophets were perplexed. ‘The prophecies
which the Spirit of God had inspired them to write had
prophesied the coming of a Messiah and had told of
suffering and glory. ‘The sufferings predicted were
poignant and the glory predicted marvelous and radiant,
and yet they appeared in the prophecies side by side.
This made the prophecies seem self-contradictory. The prophets
were consequently. puzzled by their own writings (What
a testimony to the divine inspiration of the Scriptures).
They were puzzled simply because they did not know the
Gap Principle. Had they but known the principle revealed
by Jesus that day in the synagogue at Nazareth they would
have understood that the “sufferings” were predicted
for the first coming of the Messiah, that after the
sufferings would come a “gap” of many centuries and then the
“glory” would follow when Jesus would come back to
reign. Copyright 1923, Clifton L. Fowler
|
||
|
||