"The Future History of the Church, Part 1"
A typological and midrashic examination of what will happen in the future of the church by seeing how the past history of the church is recapitulated eschatologically; how past events happen again in the Last Days. What to expect, and what to prepare for.
Download or email Part 1 Download or email Part 2 Download or email Part 3 The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism
Acts 19:33, 34 shows that in the time of the early church there was growing anti-Semitism. In the Last Days, we will again see growing anti-Semitism. The two kinds of people that the Bible calls God's chosen are Jews and born-again Christians; it all goes back to Genesis chapter 3, where God addresses the serpent to say that He will put enmity between it and the woman, between its seed and hers. Anti-Semitism and persecution of the church is like a coin, heads and tails: you can distinguish between them, but you cannot separate them.
Who do Moslems hate the most? Jews and born-again Christians. Under the Communists, behind the Iron Curtain, who was persecuted most? Jews and born-again Christians. Who did the Roman Catholic Church persecute the most over the centuries with its Crusades and its Inquisitions and pogroms? Jews and born-again Christians. Who did the Russian Orthodox Church persecute the most? Jews and born-again Christians.
It all goes back to the Early Church: after the Roman government turned against the church it went after the Jews. That's what happened in 70 A.D. and again in 120-132 A.D. with Bar-Kochba's rebellion, and that is exactly what is going to happen again in the Last Days with the Antichrist. He will come after us first, and then he'll go after the Jews. Anti-Semitism will increase, and through certain Restorationists,\ it is even coming into the church.
Martin Luther, as an early example, was a man of God if there ever was one; but how he could end up the way he did is a shocking tragedy: he said that peasants should be stabbed in the back, that Jews should be herded into corrals and forced to confess Christ at the point of a knife, and that the German people were to blame for not murdering them to prove they were Christians. This is what is re-entering the church now.
Corrupt political leaders who have tried to exterminate the Jews have always attempted to justify it theologically by quoting people such as Chrysostom and Luther. Today we have the same situation; just read some of the books being published in our time, such as Whose Promised Land? or Blood Brother – very biased against Israel. People are trying to find Christian preachers who will justify their hatred of Israel and their denial of God's end-times purpose for the Jews, and they are succeeding. Yet God's plan for world redemption will ultimately depend on the redemption of Israel; His plan for the salvation of the world is prophetically bound up with His plan for Israel's salvation. Israel is God's timepiece. This does not mean that the Jews are higher, better, or anything else, but it is true nonetheless.
This is Page 14 of 15 of PART 1
Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.