A Long Age Between Pentecost and Rapture
Between the Church’s birth at Pentecost and her presentation at the rapture lies a long and turbulent age – an era marked by revival and resistance, triumph and testing, and temporal points of unity but mostly division. Yet through it all, God has still multiplied us according to His will, and He’s been with us all the way, and will be till the end.
But for nearly two thousand years, the people of God have endured intense spiritual warfare.
Spiritual Warfare and Division in Church History
How well I remember that, while I was ministering God’s word throughout South America, I learned that in the small country of Chile, alone, there were literally thousands of registered Christian denominations! How much more division is there throughout Christendom worldwide?! One can only imagine!
Our Lord Himself told us that it would be this way, saying, “I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18) Jesus knew that there would be warfare and that it would be great.
Before Jesus even mentioned building His Church, He revealed that spiritual warfare in the world had increased, beginning with the heralding of John the Baptist. From that point forward, the Enemy went all out to stop Him, but he could not; and since that time, that old Dragon has been trying to destroy both Israel and the Church, but he cannot and will not (Revelation 12)!
Matthew 12:11
“And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force”
John MacArthur and the Partial View of Maturity
The late John MacArthur (1939-2025) points out that Jesus said this around the midpoint of His ministry – six to twelve months before the events of chapter sixteen, when Jesus first spoke of the Church. MacArthur also recognized that Paul’s letter to Ephesus indicated that the Church would grow spiritually mature, too, even though MacArthur didn’t acknowledge a work of completeness as a literal reading of the scripture plainly says, even in Greek.
God doesn’t reveal all things to anyone, and the highly respected Pastor/Teacher John MacArthur is no exception. None of us is. We’re learning progressively together into “the knowledge of God” of His plan to the end.
And it’s all in the Word. No extra-biblical revelation here, friends.
I believe, like most believers and even most Bible scholars, Brother John, despite the blessings of his gifts, simply never saw the mystery of “the bride” Church (the last Church), but only the first Church at Pentecost and a struggling Church that has endured great warfare throughout the entire Church Age and does even now.
Regardless, God continues to reveal and unfold His divine plan for the Church as we grow closer to His return.
Obstacles to Maturity: False Doctrines, False Teachers, Schisms and Schemes
False doctrines, leading to schisms, persecutions, and many religious men and women with ill motives, and more, have constantly overwhelmed and obscured what God enabled all along by His Spirit for the maturity of His Church (Colossians 2:8; Ephesians 4:14).
I admit, it’s hard to imagine that it will ever change. The struggle in the worldwide Church today is real.
I believe Jesus looks over the Church and that His heart is heavy in the same way that it was when He looked over Jerusalem when He was here.
Matthew 23:37
“How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!”
Our Limited Vision and Our Need for God’s Perspective
We are so entrenched in the fog of spiritual warfare and the countless religious complexities with which we’ve been relentlessly bombarded by the Devil that we have little vision for anything better on this side of eternity. We just want out!
But ask God to give you a new perspective – His perspective – a thoroughly scriptural perspective!
The Glorious Church promise is right there in plain sight!
God wants to reveal to us all that He’s accomplished through Jesus Christ – and that includes a glorious Church yet to be revealed.
Paul prayed that we’d have a spirit of revelation to know all that God accomplished through His Son.
Ephesians 1:17-18
“…that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints…”
When Paul speaks of “…the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,” I believe that includes becoming glorious, not a church in shambles! That’s exactly what He wrote to the Ephesian believers for all of us.
New Testament Mysteries: Gentiles, the Gospel, and the Bride
That Jesus Christ would woo the Gentiles and adopt us by His Spirit is a mystery held for the New Testament era (Colossians 2:27).
The whole gospel is a mystery that wasn’t revealed until God’s time (Ephesians 3:1-12).
Our marriage to Jesus Christ, His coming to catch us away, our wedding ceremony, our marriage supper, and our becoming glorious that will usher it all in – these are all mysteries yet to be revealed – God’s mysteries! And all will be revealed to us in His time.
I believe the Holy Spirit is beginning to reveal the mystery of the Church, the last Church, becoming glorious to more believers even as He did to me nearly thirty years ago (Ephesians 3:9; 5:32; Colossians 1:26-27; Revelation 19:7-9)!
