Acts 15:14); and these people,
who are the real Church, were to be built together upon a rock (Matt.
16:18); their glorious salvation and final heavenly perfection were to
rest only on His perfect and finished work for them. By this Divine
transformation, He would secure, out of all nations, both Gentiles and
Jews, a heavenly people; wholly fitted in quality to be His own body,
His heavenly bride, and a kingdom of priests unto God.

All this, though not revealed in past ages, was known in the councils of
God (Acts 15:18) and is parenthetical in the history of the Jew. It is a
delay of their earthly kingdom and in no way its fulfillment or
substitute.

Want of knowledge of the right divisions of truth is also evident in the
general impression that God has cast off His people, the Jews, and that
the Gentiles are their rightful successors and the recipients of the
blessings of their unfulfilled prophecies. This confusion is due to a
failure to distinguish between this and the following age.

Two distinct lines of seed were promised to Abraham. One, an earthly
seed, to be like the dust of the earth, without number (Gen. 13:16),
centered wholly in the earth by a relationship of physical generation:
the other seed were likened to the stars of heaven, without number
(Gen. 15:5), centered wholly in the heavenlies by a relationship of
Spirit regeneration, which is the present answer of God to all true
Abrahamic faith (Rom. 4:1-5). The earthly people found their origin in
the physical fatherhood of Abraham: while the heavenly people find
theirs in the shed blood of Christ. One had an earthly history from
Abraham to their dispersion among the Gentiles--a history which will yet
be resumed and the everlasting covenants fulfilled in the faithfulness
of God: the other has a transient earthly pilgrimage from the Cross to
their completion; when they will be caught up to meet and marry their
Bridegroom, and be forever with the Lord (I Thes. 4:13-17).

To one, Christ is the coming glorious Messiah, who will actually sit
upon the throne of His father, David (Lu. 1:31-33), in a literal earthly
kingdom (else all Scripture language fails): to the other, He is the
glorious Head of the Body, and coming Bridegroom. One of these lines of
seed are the favored subjects in the earthly kingdom: while the other is
to be in His bosom as a bride, and be associated with Him in His reign
(I Cor. 6:2; Rev. 3:21).

As these two lines of seed are everyw