The End of the Church Age...and After

    We learned that the three and a half year famine in Elijah’s day ended with fire from heaven consuming the sacrifice prepared by Elijah on Mount Carmel. We know that this represented God’s judgment on Christ. We also saw, in parallel fashion, judgment falling on the 450 prophets of Baal who represented Satan. But what happened immediately following this dreadful judgment experience? We read in I Kings 18:44-45:

And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand. And he said, Go up, say unto Ahab, Prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not. And it came to pass in the mean while, that the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode, and went to Jezreel.

    Likewise, following the resurrection of Christ, there was a great rain. No, it was not physical, literal rain. It was the water, the rain of the Gospel bringing forth an abundance of spiritual fruit. The season of the early Pentecost rain had begun.

    This season was to continue for more than 1950 years, and its purpose was to bring in the entire Pentecostal harvest of the firstfruits.

    It began in earnest on the day of Pentecost. During that great and wonderful day, the Holy Spirit was poured out. That is, God the Holy Spirit was in the midst of the congregation, applying the preached Gospel message to the hearts and lives of those who were elected to salvation. The promise of John 14:17 that the Holy Spirit would be in you (that is, in your midst), had come to pass. The consequence was that on that Pentecostal afternoon, about 3,000 were saved.

    This consequence of people becoming saved would be in evidence wherever there was any reasonably faithful preaching of the Word. We must define reasonable preaching as that which was not perfect (only Jesus was the perfect preacher), but, as a minimum, it was in the setting of the Bible alone and in its entirety being the Word of God. This situation of people being saved would continue for more than 1950 years and would end only when the work of the churches was finished.

    Later, we will see that the work of sending the Gospel into the world was finished during the time of the Great Tribulation.

    In the first years of this spiritual season of the early Pentecostal rain, the temple in Jerusalem was still used by the New Testament church. But after a few decades, the Bible no longer speaks of the New Testament church as having any identification with the temple. Fact is, the temple was completely destroyed in A.D. 70. Insofar as the synagogues are concerned, except for the synagogue in Berea (Acts 17:10-12), they would have nothing to do with having Jesus as their Savior.

The Transition from the Synagogues to the Churches

    The transition from the temple and the synagogues was very traumatic. The spiritual leaders were filled with anger at those who left the synagogues to follow Christ. Very quickly their anger caused Stephen to be stoned to death by the temple leaders. Moreover, one of the Pharisees, named Saul of Tarsus who later became the Apostle Paul, brought Christians, who had left the synagogues, to be killed if they would not repent. We read in Acts 8:3-4:

As for Saul, he made havock of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison. Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word.

    The enmity of the synagogue leaders against the New Testament church accomplished two things. First, it caused all the believers in Christ to be driven form the synagogues. Secondly, it drove the fledgling New Testament church away from Jerusalem and into all of Judea and even into countries outside of Israel. This greatly helped the early church to carry out Christ’s command to go into all the world with the Gospel. The enmity of the synagogue leaders was so intense that after Saul of Tarsus became saved, they continually tried to kill him.

    By this means, God effectively made a complete break between the early righteous rain season, when the spiritual focus was on the temple and the synagogues, and the early Pentecostal season, when the focus was on the churches and congregations which were entirely outside and independent of the synagogues. Never again would true believers be found in the

synagogues. Before the Bible was even finished, already seven churches were in full bloom. We read about them in Revelation 2 and Revelation 3. By that time, the church age had been well established.

    In preparation for the church age, which we have learned identifies totally with the early Pentecostal rain and its harvest of firstfruits, God wrote the first four books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These books provided rule after rule for the church age. An outstanding activity that the churches were to be engaged in during the church age was evangelizing the world. In preparation, the twelve apostles as well as the 70 were trained in this activity as they were sent out two by two with the Gospel.

    Jesus gave instructions concerning the character and nature of the Sunday Sabbath that was instituted the Sunday morning Jesus arose from the dead. God underscored that all the Old Testament ceremonial laws were ended by rending in two the great curtain that separated the holy of holies from the holy place. This signaled the fact that the Old Testament ceremonial laws, which all pointed to some aspect of the Gospel, had been completed by Christ who is the very essence of the Gospel.

God Established Rules for the Church Age

    As the Bible was being completed, God laid down many rules which were to be observed throughout the church age. There was to be spiritual oversight by elders and deacons. The qualifications of these elders and deacons were very detailed. Rules concerning offerings and congregational worship were set forth. Two new ceremonial laws were introduced into the churches. The first was water baptism and the second was the communion service.

    Because the chief task of the church during the church age was the evangelization of the world, much more information was introduced into the Bible as the New Testament was written. This included such important things as describing the nature of salvation, the authority of the Bible and how it is to be interpreted, the believers’ relationship to Christ, and Christ’s relationship to God the Father and to the Holy Spirit.

    When we ponder the awesome task of evangelizing the world, which God assigned to the truly saved ruing the season of the early Pentecostal rain, we

can understand at least some of the reasons why God established the churches the way He did. We must remember that at least for the first 1400 years or so of the church age, there was no printing press. Therefore, the only Bibles that were available were handwritten and exceedingly few in number. Most of the people were illiterate. Therefore, God structured the church age in such a way that illiterate people could be served with the Gospel. Qualified men who could teach (that is, they had access to the Scriptures and could read and study them), were appointed as elders, deacons, evangelist, and pastors. They were to be the means by which the written Word of God could be taught to the people of the congregation.

    After each congregation was established, qualified men were sent out from that congregation to establish other congregations. God details this in Acts 13, where we read of Paul and Barnabas being sent forth as missionaries from the church that had been established in Antioch of Syria.

    As churches faithfully carried out the rules set forth in the Bible for the church age, the people who attended the church were placed under the spiritual care of those who had the spiritual oversight of the congregation. At the same time, this external evidence of the kingdom of God in the world reached out into the distant lands of the world so that by the time the church age had come to an end, churches had been established in a very high percentage of the cities and villages throughout the world.

    It was God’s good pleasure to continue this method of reaching the world with Christ until God had securely put in place the ability of believers to reach whole continents for hours each day with the true Gospel. That is, God guided men to establish worldwide communication by radio, by Internet, by satellite broadcasting, etc. We will examine this phenomenon more fully in Chapter 9 of this study.

The Temple, Israel, Jerusalem, Judah

    Symbolically, God speaks of the churches of the church age as the temple, as Israel, as Jerusalem, and as Judah. Unless we understand this, a number of passages that helped us to understand the times and the seasons will remain obscure. Therefore, before we continue this study, we will look at the verses that set forth this symbolism.

    First of all, the Bible clearly identifies the true believers as Jews in the spiritual sense. That is the reason why, in turn, He identifies them with a temple, Israel, Jerusalem, and Judaea. All of the entities originally were identified only with the Jews. In Romans 2:28-29, God declares:

For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.

    In these important verses, God is showing us that in God’s sight a true Jew is not a blood descendant of Abraham, who shows this by physical circumcision, but a true Jew by God’s definition is anyone who has been circumcised in the heart. That is, his sins have been cut off. That means a true Jew by God’s definition is anyone who has become saved. This truth is reinforced by the language of Galatians 3:7:

Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.

    Abraham was the progenitor of the physical nation of Jews. In this verse God is reiterating what we already read in Romans 2:28-29, that a true Jew is someone who has begun to trust in the Lord Jesus.

    To be sure that we understand this, the Bible declares in Galatians 3:26-29:

For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

    In this passage, God is indicating that each and every believer whether physically a Jew or a Gentile is spiritually a descendant of Abraham, thus making him spiritually a Jew. This is easily understood is we recognize that those who believe are sons of God, as we read in Romans 8:14:

For as many as are lead by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

    As sons of God we are sons of Christ who is His flesh was the son of David, the son of Abraham (Matthew 1:1). Since Christ is the son of David who was a Jew, and we are sons of Christ, then we who are saved are also sons of David, and therefore, we are also Jews.

    We can now understand why Jesus identifies the believers with the temple, with Israel, with Jerusalem, and with Judah. These are all entities entirely identified with Jesus.

    Let us therefore, first of all, learn what the Bible says of believers being the temple. In I Corinthians 3:16, we read:

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.

For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble;

    It should be immediately apparent that the true believers are typified by gold, silver, and precious stones. They are the lively (living) stones who are built up into a spiritual house (I Peter 2:5).

Truly Saved and Apparently Saved in the Churches

    On the other hand, the wood, hay, and stubble must relate to the church members who are still unsaved. Fire does not destroy gold or silver, but fire will utterly destroy wood, hay, and stubble. Thus, the Bible is teaching that the spiritual temple is a spiritual house representing the churches and congregations, but within those churches there are people who are truly

saved (gold, silver, and precious stones), and those who are not saved (wood, hay, and stubble).

    The churches that have existed throughout the season of the church age are also typified as spiritual Israel. In Galatians 6:16, we read of believers that they are the Israel of God. In Revelation 7, God speaks of 144,000 of all the tribes of Israel who were sealed (Revelation 7:4). The Bible then names 12,000 from each of twelve unnamed because in actuality, there were thirteen tribes. There were twelve sons of Jacob who became the heads of tribes, but Joseph was given the two tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, who were the sons of Joseph. Therefore, the total number of tribes was thirteen.

    Therefore, when Revelation 7:4 speaks of 144,000 of all the tribes of Israel, it is immediately apparent that the twelve tribes named are actually the complete fullness of the Israel of God, which included all the churches of the church age. The numbers 12,000 and 144,000 symbolically represent the complete fullness of all those who would become saved in the early Pentecostal rain season of the New Testament church era.

    It might be noted that the 144,000 are presented in Revelation 14 as those who have their Father’s name written on their foreheads (Revelation 14:1), they were redeemed from the earth (Revelation 14:3), and they are the firstfruits (Revelation 14:4). Remember we learned earlier in this study that the firstfruits are the harvest of the early Pentecostal rain.

    Later in this study, we will look at the significance of the statement that these 144,000 were sealed.

    These same twelve tribes are spoken of in James 1:1:

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.

Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

    We have learned thus far that the members of the churches and congregations throughout the church age are typified as a spiritual temple

and by a spiritual Israel consisting of 12 tribes. The reason that the Book of James speaks of “firstfruits” is that this book is particularly focused upon those within the congregation during the church age. Of course, every book of the Bible is for all believers, including those saved during the latter rain. However, the Book of James particularly focuses upon those in the churches during the church age season. It is harsh language is to help those in the churches examine if they are truly saved. Also, we read the accusation that those in the churches are “adulterers and adulteresses” (James 4:4). The unsaved in the churches are still in spiritual fornication against the law of God (Romans 7:1-3). So, God provides the Book of James as a warning particularly to those in the churches. With this in mind, we can see why James 1:18 was written the way it was.

    We also know the members of churches and congregations were typified by Jerusalem and Judea. In Revelations 21:2 we read:

And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

    This verse is speaking of the whole body of believers, throughout eternity future we are called the new Jerusalem.

    In Galatians 4:25-26, the Bible speaks of a present Jerusalem:

For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

    The context shows that the Jerusalem which now is consists of individuals who are still in spiritual bondage. That is, they have not become saved even though God calls them a Jerusalem. But these verses also speak of a Jerusalem above. This Jerusalem can only relate to those who have become saved. We read in Ephesians 2:4-6:

But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are save;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:

    In principle, the true believers are seated in the heavenlies with Christ even though we live on this earth serving as ambassadors of Christ.

    This, the body of believers on earth is made up of Jerusalem above (those who are saved), and Jerusalem which now is (those who think they are saved but are still in bondage to sin). These individuals make up the churches and congregations. Therefore, the churches are spiritually called Jerusalem.

    Thus, we see a parallel as God speaks of the churches as a temple and as Jerusalem. In the temple those who were saved were called gold, silver, and precious stones. They are called the Jerusalem above. However, also in the temple there are those who are called wood, hay, and stubble. They are called the Jerusalem which now is.

    The churches are also called Judea because Jerusalem was the capital of Judea. We read in Luke 21:20-21:

And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto.

    These verses link Jerusalem and Judea together. As we continue in this study, we will look very carefully at these versus.

Unfaithful Churches

    There was a major problem that continued throughout the church age. It was already in evidence just a few decades after the beginning of the season of early Pentecostal rain. That problem was a lack of faithfulness to the teachings of the Bible. God tells us about this in Revelations 2 and Revelations 3, where the Bible speaks about the seven churches that flourished even before the Bible was completed.

    In the Biblical account of the spiritual condition of the congregations we read that already the church of Ephesus had lost its first love. To love God is to keep His commandments (John 14:21, 24). Thus, they were already beginning to teach doctrines that were not based faithfully upon Bible. So God tells them if they don’t repent, He will remove their candlestick. If their candlestick is removed, it means there is no light of the true Gospel coming from that church. They will have become a dead church.

    In fact, the church of Sardis had already become a dead church even through some true believers were still a part of it (Revelation 3:1).

    God was almost ready to vomit the church of Laodicea out of His mouth (Revelation 3:16). The church of Thyatira was troubled by a spiritually adulterous woman God called Jezebel (Revelation 2:20). The church at Pergamos had allowed a wicked group called the Nicolaitans to operate in the church.

    Indeed, these have been the kinds of problems that have existed in the churches throughout the church age. At times, it would become so bad that the churches were entirely removed. The seven churches of Revelation, for example, finally ceased to exist. However, because the churches were God’s method of evangelizing the world, new churches would be established even as some churches ceased to function. God in His mercy and patience continued to use churches as His means to get the Gospel into the world.

Spiritual High Places

    Fact is, the spiritual situation that prevailed throughout the church age in many ways paralleled the situation that prevailed during the years that Judah existed as a nation. Judah had its high places. They were small places of worship constructed on a convenient hill. But the one who was worshipped was not Jehovah. They were places where false gods were worshipped. Thus, Judah was engaging in spiritual harlotry.

    Even when faithful, God-fearing kings reigned, with two exceptions the high places were never removed form the land of Israel. God overlooked this obvious spiritual adultery, but He warned them that eventually, God would bring judgment on Israel and Judah because of the existence of those high places. As our study continues, we will look more carefully at this.

    Amazingly, the same situation has prevailed throughout the church age. Doctrines that were held and taught by churches that were not faithful to the Bible are the equivalent of those Old Testament high places. This is true because any church doctrines that is obeyed by the members of the church is an act of worship of the one who commanded that this doctrine be obeyed. When we obey God’s commandments, it is an indication that we are surrendering our will to the one who asked for obedience to that command. Thus, if the congregation obeys doctrines that were designed in the minds of church theologians, and those doctrines do not come from the Bible, then in a real sense, the minds of those theologians are being worshipped. Obedience to that false doctrine becomes the equivalent of a high place of the Old Testament.

    Amazingly, God has overlooked these spiritual high places that have existed throughout the church age. In spite of them, for more than 1950 years, God used defective churches to do God’s work of reaching the elect with the Gospel.

    It is true that at times during the season of the Pentecostal early rain, which we call the church age, the spiritual condition of the churches was very weak. But at other times, glorious chapters were written into the history of the church age as believers were willing to be burned at the stake rather than be unfaithful to their Savior.

    However, even as the Old Testament season of the early righteous rain ended with a three and a half year time of hearing the Word of God, which was also a time that identified with severe judgment, so, too, the church age season ended with a time symbolized by three and a half years during which there was also an intense spiritual famine together with God’s judgment. We will look carefully at this sad fact as we continue this study.