Dear Friends,

     Let us reverence, worship, bow down to, the One Who alone deserves everlasting praise. It is due to His mercies we are not consumed.

     The Lord was pleased to allow recent Yahoo mail problems to delay this bulletin. All things work together for good to His elect. May it be that we all can be assured of that wondrous truth.

     Of the multitude reasons for thanksgiving, I am especially thankful for having been allowed of the Lord to make the acquaintance of the Mannings during the week. The Mannings are part of a group of believers in Rochester. The Priebes were used of the Lord in making possible the fellowship. Mr. Priebe’s appointment with the doctor went very smoothly, resulting in the Priebes blessing us with their presence on Wednesday evening. Let us truly “In every thing give thanks” (1 Thess. 5:18).

     The passage which was the focus of our Lord’s Day message was Rev. 11:2: “But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.” Having studied the word “without” the previous week, the “court which is without the temple” was of particular interest to us. After all, that which is “without” had everything to do with that which had no spiritual substance: “There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man…And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him;” (Mk. 7:15, 18). This “without,” however, was that aspect upon which those who boasted of their spiritual condition trusted: “And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness” (Lk. 11:39). This, we learned, was the Lord’s rebuke in Mt. 23: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity” (vv. 27, 28).

    The “court” being “without the temple,” thus, it was now understandable why it was that which was not measured; that which was “given unto the Gentiles,” the “holy city” trodden “under foot forty and two months.” The “court without the temple,” in other words, was that which represented the external church, the corporate body. After all, Satan could never enter the eternal body of Christ, being worshipped as God! (see what happened to Haman when Ahaseurus found him near Esther) This brought us to the next point.

    The word “court” (being a cousin to “air,” Eph. 2:2) was also rendered “fold,” as in John 10:1 & 16. How interesting this was! For, Jn. 10:1 establishes the fact that Christ could not have had the Eternal “fold” here in view. Again, no “thief” or a “robber” could enter into the eternal “sheepfold” (Lit., “fold of the sheep”). This “fold,” thus, had to be referring to the corporate body which would be built during the NT church era. This made the Lord’s statement, “…other sheep I have, which are not of [out of] this fold” comparable to Rev. 7:14: “These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Please note that in the immediate, historical context, there is also the possibility that Christ was referring to the 2 corporate bodies: those of the Old and the New Testament eras. However, we must not forget that the NT corporate body is a type of the true New Covenant, and is a parallel time period to the Latter Rain, the period associated with the latter half of the Great tribulation:

I---------------------------     +    --------------------------------I

Old Testament Era              Famine                     New Testament Era

(type of church age) (type of 1^st part of grt. trib.) (type of Latter Rain/2^nd part)

     May the Lord, in His stupendous kindness to us-ward, continue to be pleased to bless us with His eternal truths.

     In Him,

     Zin Yi

* Please try listening to past Paltalk sessions, available at GoodMessage.org, as many discussions relate directly to our current studies.