Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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(Today’s Reading)
The Implications of the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact
(Book Installment 31)
The Scope of the Second Coming
Chapter 2 – Contrasts of the Second Coming
The Contrast of Church and Kingdom
Some people say that the church and the kingdom of God are the same thing, but that isn’t the case. Failing to distinguish the two will definitely limit a person’s ability to study and understand the Second Coming.
The church was a one-generation phenomenon – the greatest generation that ever was. Nevertheless, it was like the salad that gets served at the beginning of a steak dinner. As a comedian once said, “Salad is a promissory note that food will soon arrive.” The lesson for us? Don’t confuse what is preliminary with what is permanent. The church was preliminary; the kingdom of God was permanent.
Jesus and the apostles had warned that there would be a falling away, an apostasy, that would come upon the church in the very last days before the coming of the kingdom of God. In such an atmosphere, it would be hard for church attendees to maintain hope in the Lord’s coming. And this effect would be compounded if those attendees were not growing spiritually – that is, if they were remaining fleshly in their thinking.
As a result of this apostasy, many individuals, leaders, and whole congregations, were in no position to recognize a spiritual coming of the Lord. For this reason, the Second Coming escaped their notice, having come “like a thief in the night” for them.
In the centuries that followed, church leaders sought ways to hold their congregations together in the face of a “delayed” coming of the Lord. Their thinking consolidated around the idea that the Lord was still coming…but that no one could be certain of when. They began ignoring the very verses they used to emphasize – those that called for an imminent coming in the 1st century. This church doctrine actually became codified into a formal confession of “faith” called the Nicene Creed, beginning in the 4th century. It still guides the institutional church today with 98% of churches professing adherence to it.
This ecumenical creed definitely places the coming of the Lord in the indefinite future when it says:
“…He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end…”
Church members who do not subscribe to this creed are considered odd at best, and heretical at worst. Thus is the institutional church built on the foundation of rejecting the Second Coming – meaning it’s actually built on a foundation of unbelief, just as Rabbinic Judaism is built on a foundation of unbelief in Messiah’s first coming.
The institutional church is constitutionally denying its members fulfillment of “the blessed hope” (Titus 2:13) that Jesus Himself gave. Its leaders, more naively than deviously, have decided that Jesus died to create another institution to replace ancient Israel. (I ought to know…I was one of those leaders.) History, however, demonstrates that the church is no more the kingdom of God than ancient Israel was. Sure, both Israel and the church have highlight reels; but their lowlights are confirmation that neither was the kingdom of God. Therefore, it’s both prophecy and history telling us that today’s institutional church is wrong when it claims to be the “already but not yet” kingdom of God. That ship has sailed.
I’ll have much more to say about both church and kingdom when we get to those parts of the book.
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