In concluding his charge to the
children of Israel in the plains of Moab, Moses said, "The secret things
belong unto the Lord our God:but those things which are revealed belong unto
us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law"
(Deut. 29:29). The passage is often utterly misapplied and used by overcautious
souls to deter inquiring ones from delving into the deep things of God. It was
never so intended. When the great lawgiver spoke, the revealed things consisted
of what he had just rehearsed in their ears, together with the records he had
already made by the inspiration of God in the first four books of our Bibles.
"The secret things" were God’s purposes of grace which He was about
to unfold upon the manifestation of their utter failure and inability to claim
anything on the ground of the law, which they had broken from the first. All
rights were forfeited. But God had provisions of grace to be yet manifested. He
had infinite resources in Himself, to be declared when they were forced to own
that theirs were at an end.

 

God’s revelation of His purpose
has been gradual. In the Old Testament two objects were brought out—the woman’s
Seed, and the seed Of Abraham. Through the former, the latter were to be
blessed and to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. Beyond this, the
testimony of the prophets does not go.

 

As in Moses’ day, so in the days
of Malachi, the last of the prophetic line (before the coming of the preparer
of Messiah’s way), there were "secret things" which the time had not
yet come to make manifest.

 

The word so rendered in Deut.
29:29 is Sathar in the Hebrew, which scholars define as "absent" or
"hidden things." It does not refer to things too high for human
understanding, as it is generally supposed to mean, but things concealed, which
cannot be known unless divinely disclosed.

 

In the Septuagint Version,
rendering it into Greek, the translators chose the word krupta, the
plural form of kruptos, a word frequently used by our Lord in the
Gospels, and twice by the apostle Paul.  It is used in Luke 8:17, where Jesus
said, "Nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest.. “Paul uses it
in the same sense when writing of "the day when God shall judge the
secrets of men by Jesus Christ" (Rom. 2:16); as also in 1 Cor. 14:25, when
he writes of the unbeliever coming into the assembly of God, being convicted of
all and judged by all; so that he can add, "and thus are the secrets of
his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God,
and report that God is in you of a truth."

 

Man has his secret things—all to
be brought to light in due time. God too has His secret things, which could not
be known until He chose to reveal them.

 

Now the New Testament is not
only the answer to the Old (though it is that), but it is far more:it is the
unfolding of the secret things which God had purposed in His heart before the
worlds were made or the ages began to run their course.

 

Before entering upon an inquiry
as to the secret things thus made known in the New Testament, it will be well
to briefly notice the revealed things of the former revelation.

 

To man fallen, revelation came.
The first great promise was made and so accepted by Adam, in the curse
pronounced upon the serpent:"The Seed of the woman shall bruise the
serpent’s head." This is evidently "the promise of life in Christ Jesus"
made "before the age times began" (Titus 1:2; 2 Tim. 1:1,9).

 

To Abraham it was declared that
as the dust of the earth, the sand of the sea, and the stars of the heaven
should his seed be. He was separated from the nations to be the depository of
the promise:"In thy Seed shall all the nations of the earth be
blessed."

 

Further revelation was made
through Moses of the Prophet to be raised up to whom all were to give heed or
perish. He outlined, too, the history of the nation. Settled in the land of Palestine by divine power, they should nevertheless be driven therefrom for
disobedience and be scattered among the Gentiles, to be a reproach and a byword
wherever they wandered. Upon repentance they would be re-established in the
land and made the head of the nations and not the tail.

 

The further prophets but
elaborate this, connecting the restoration with Messiah, now revealed as the
virgin’s Son, the One "whose goings forth were of old, from
everlasting," yet who was to suffer and die at the hands of men, to endure
the forsaking of God, to make reconciliation for iniquity, but to prolong His
days in resurrection and to be made the King of Israel, sitting on David’s
throne.

 

Through Him the believing part
of the nation would be settled in their land, and the apostate portion
destroyed. He should judge among the nations, rooting out the wicked from the
earth and bringing all the righteous into subjection to Israel.

 

These were the revealed things.
Their sphere of action is the earth. They have to do with an earthly people,
not a heavenly one. "The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s:but the
earth hath He given to the children of men" (Ps. 115:16). This is the
invariable testimony of the Scriptures of the prophets.

 

Of the Church, the body of
Christ, there is no hint:the long history of Christendom is passed over in
silence. Of these things the Old Testament does not treat. Neither was it there
made known that man should be in heaven. The translations of Enoch and Elijah
were strange portents to the Jew, of which his Scriptures offered no
explanation. All these were among "the secret things" which would not
be revealed till the coming of the Just One, to be followed by His rejection
and ascension as Man to heaven.

 

Thus one looks in vain for the
distinctive truths of the Christian dispensation in the Old Testament. The
things there revealed refer to Israel and the nations as such, not to the
Church of which Christ is the glorified Head in heaven.

 

The
amazing thing is that in Christendom generally, despite the revelation of the
mysteries of God given in the last portion of our Bibles, the vast majority are
as ignorant of the once secret things as though they had not been made known.
Take the so-called Apostle’s Creed for a conclusive example. It will be found
that for almost every one of its statements the proof texts could be found in
the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. "He ascended into heaven" is
perhaps the only clause in it which the Old Testament did not make known; and
even that is more than hinted at in the 110th Psalm, and the last verse of the
5th of Hosea. True, as above noticed, it is not in these scriptures made clear
that He would be there as Man, but, connecting them with other passages in the
writings of the Prophets, there would be ground for the inference that so it
must be.