Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation: A Book for the Times

by James B. Walker

1. That the Jews, who possessed these ideas, should be scattered throughout the world, and that they should be thus scattered long enough before the time of the general diffusion of Divine knowledge to have become familiar with the languages of the different nations where they sojourned. This would be necessary, in order that, by speaking in other tongues, they might transfer into them their own ideas of Divine things, by attaching those ideas to words in the respective languages which they spoke, or by introducing into those languages words and phrases of Hebrew origin conveying the revealed ideas. Whether the different languages were acquired by miraculous or by human instrumentality, there would be no other way possible of transferring ideas from one language to another, but by the methods above mentioned.

2. It would be necessary, before the Jews were thus scattered, that their propensity to idolatry should be entirely subdued, otherwise they would, as they had frequently done before, fall into the abominable habits of the nations among whom they were dispersed.[23]

[23] Idolatry is one of the most unconquerable of all the corrupt propensities of the human soul. Miracles under the new dispensation had scarcely ceased—the apostolic fathers were scarcely cold in their graves, before idolatrous forms were again superinduced upon the pure spirituality of the holy gospel; and in the papal church the curse continues till this hour. [Back]

3. The new and spiritual system should be first propagated among those who understood both the spiritual import of the Hebrew language, and likewise the language of the other nations to whom the gospel was to be preached. It was necessary that the new dispensation should be committed, first to the Jews, who were scattered in the surrounding nations, because, as we have seen, they were the only individuals immediately prepared to communicate it to others.

Now the following facts are matters of authentic history.

1. By instruction and discipline the Jews were entirely cured of the propensity to idolatry—so much so that their souls abhorred idols.

2. They were, and had been for many generations, dispersed among all nations of the Roman world; but still, in their dispersion they retained their peculiar ideas, and multitudes of this peculiar people assembled out of all countries, at least once a year, at the city of Jerusalem, to worship Jehovah; and it was while the multitudes were thus assembled that the gospel was first preached to them; and preached, as was proper it should be, by power and miracle, in order that those present might know assuredly that the dispensation was from heaven.

3. The new dispensation was likewise introduced, in the first place, among the Jews who continued to reside in Palestine, and when a sufficient number of them were fully initiated persecutions were caused to arise which scattered them abroad among the nations; and the Gentile languages not being known to them, they were miraculously endowed with the gift of tongues, that they might communicate to others the treasures of Divine knowledge committed to them.

Thus, when the old dispensation had fulfilled its design in disciplining the Jews, in imparting first ideas, and thus, as a ‘schoolmaster,’ preparing the people for the higher instruction of Christ; and when the fulness of the times had come that the means and the material were prepared to propagate the spiritual truth of the new dispensation, then the Mosaic cycle would appropriately close—it would not be consistent that it should remain longer, for the plain reason given by Jesus himself, that new wine should not be put into old bottles, nor the old and imperfect forms be incorporated with the new and spiritual system.

Therefore it was that so soon as the new dispensation had been introduced, and its foundations firmly laid, Jerusalem, the centre of the old economy, with the temple, and all things pertaining to the ritual service, was at once and completely destroyed, and the old system vanished away for ever. It would not have been expedient for God to destroy the old system sooner, because it was necessary to engraft the new system upon the old; and it ought not to have remained longer, for the reasons above stated.[24]