E Vol 8 Pages 619-620 Treats Youthful Worthy's "Tentative Justification"

(15) A number of times in The Present Truth, e.g., when treating of Ex. 12: 43-50, in the article on Israel's Enslavement And Deliverance, and of Ruth 2-4, in the article on Ruth, Type And Antitype, we pointed out that the strangers in the land (v. 14) type the Youthful Worthies. Their dwelling in the land types their being consecrated, i.e., in the Truth and its Spirit, while their not being born there types their not being Spirit-begotten. It is of the Youthful Worthies that v. 14 treats. For such an one to keep the antitypical Passover unto the Lord, it is necessary that he do exactly what the new creatures do with it (v. 14). He must keep it according to the statute (chukath) of the Passover and according to the judgment, ordinance (mishpat) of the Passover. According to the doctrine (mishpat—judgment, ordinance) he must keep it, i.e., in living faith in the Lamb as tentatively justifying him, through the tentative imputation of His merit. And according to the practice (chukath—statute) he must keep it, i.e., during the Gospel-Age from 1881 onward as a part of Nisan 14, with the leaven of sin and error purged out, with the unleavened bread of sincerity and Truth and with the bitter herbs of trials, sufferings and persecutions, with the staff of God's Word in hand as his support, with the girdle of service about his loins and journeying out of symbolic Egypt to antitypical Canaan. When v. 14 tells us that there is one statute for the stranger and the Israelite born in the land, it gives us the thought that in the antitype there is no difference in what consecration requires of the new creatures and of the Youthful Worthies. They make the same vows of deadness to self and the world and aliveness to God. The difference is, therefore, not in the obligations that they take upon themselves, but in the use God makes of their consecration: the consecration of some is accepted by God through the begettal of the Spirit and that of the others is not. But the same antitypical Passover doctrines and practices both classes are to live out—one statute to the stranger and to the one born in the land. But as the Youthful Worthies now do these things, not as the parts of a trial for life, but of faith and loyalty, they will unto a completion do these things Millennially and in the Little Season as the parts of a trial for life.