The End of the Age
Bible Study Time 4-2-06
Church links:
Bible Study Time 4-2-06
After His resurrection from the dead, the Lord Jesus sent out His disciples saying:
Matthew 28:19-20 (NKJ)
19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 "teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
We know that God encouraged the nation of Israel many times with the thought of His faithful presence with them. When Moses was turning over his mantel of leadership to Joshua, he said to the nation:
Deuteronomy 31:6-8 (NKJ)
6 "Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid . . . ; for the LORD your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you."
7 Then Moses called Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel, "Be strong and of good courage, for you must go with this people to the land which the LORD has sworn to their fathers to give them, and you shall cause them to inherit it.
8 "And the LORD, He is the one who goes before you. He will be with you, He will not leave you nor forsake you; do not fear nor be dismayed."
This commitment that God made to Israel turned out to be both conditional and unconditional. Later on, in the same chapter of Deuteronomy 31, the Lord said to Moses:
Deuteronomy 31:16-17 (NKJ)
16 . . . "Behold, you will rest with your fathers; and this people will rise and play the harlot with the gods of the foreigners of the land, . . . and they will forsake Me and break My covenant which I have made with them.
17 "Then My anger shall be aroused against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured. And many evils and troubles shall befall them, so that they will say in that day, 'Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?'
The conditional character of God’s commitment to Israel was typical of the old covenant Law of Moses. God had made it very clear from the beginning that the Law of Moses was a conditional covenant. He said, “If you keep my commandments, I will bless you, but if you fail to keep my commandments, I will curse you.”
There is a sense, however, in which God was making an unconditional commitment to Israel when He said I will not leave you or forsake you. As He said these words, He was anticipating the day when He would make a New Covenant with the house of Israel which would be unconditional and everlasting. Jeremiah wrote with great enthusiasm about the New Covenant, saying:
Jeremiah 31:31-33 (NKJ)
31 "Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah--
32 "not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD.
33 "But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
Later in that same chapter, Jeremiah said:
Jeremiah 31:35-37 (NKJ)
35 Thus says the LORD, who gives the sun for a light by day, the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, who disturbs the sea, and its waves roar (The LORD of hosts is His name):
36 "If those ordinances depart from before Me, says the LORD, then the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before Me forever."
37 Thus says the LORD: "If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, says the LORD.
God was saying that when the sun and the moon stop shining, that’s when His commitment to Israel will end. God was saying that when people get to where they can measure the universe and find out the origins of the earth, that’s when He will cast off all the seed of Israel.
Isn’t it interesting that man has such a burning desire to do these two things. For some completely irrational reason, man has dedicated himself to finding out and measuring the far flung limits of the universe. For some inexplicable reason, man has an obsession with finding out the foundations or the origins of the earth, but men will never be able to do either of the two.
Man’s obsession with these two areas of science is driven by Satan, Himself, because Satan hates Israel and wants to explore every possible avenue which might lead to Israel’s destruction. Satan suffers from the delusion that Israel has some mysterious vulnerability that is held secret within the measurements of the universe and the origin of the earth, and He would love to get his hands on that information. Satan deceives mankind and he deceives himself. God will never allow anything to interfere with His everlasting commitment to Israel. God’s commitment to Israel under the Law of Moses was conditional, but His commitment to Israel under the New Covenant will be unconditional.
Just before the Lord Jesus went to the cross, He said that His shed blood was the blood of the New Covenant. Someday, Israel will believe in Jesus Christ and the blood of Jesus will wash Israel’s sins away and purify her heart to make it fit as the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. God will put His Law in their minds and write it on their hearts. He will be their God and they will be His people.
This New Covenant will be made only with the Jews who believe in the One whom God has sent. The vast majority of all Jews will not enter into the New Covenant relationship with God. It will be only the small believing remnant of the nation of Israel who will accept Jesus Christ and receive the New Covenant.
When Jesus spoke to His disciples just before He ascension, He was speaking to them on the basis of the New Covenant, without any conditional stipulation. He said, “I am with you always, even unto the end of the age. These disciples had accepted Christ and had left everything to follow Him. Jesus had told them,
Matthew 19:28 (NKJ)
28 . . . Assuredly I say to you, that in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
As Jesus said His final words to His disciples, He wanted them to know that His commitment to them was solid and sure and unconditional. He said, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.”
Well, these words of Jesus give us cause to consider what the disciples must have thought when Jesus talked about the end of the age. They had asked Jesus what would be the signs of the coming of the Son of Man and the end of the age, and He had told them about the things that would happen during the tribulation period before the coming of the Son of Man.
However, they did not think about the tribulation period as we think of it today. Even if they were aware of Daniel’s prophecy concerning the 70 weeks, they would not have known that each week was a period of 7 years.
Daniel said that there would be 70 weeks from the time the Jews returned to Jerusalem from Babylon until the restoration of the kingdom. Daniel specifically said that the Messiah would be cut off or killed after the 69th week. That means that until the Messiah was killed, no one would have the means to calculate how long each week was in the mind of God.
Today, we can calculate how long it was from the Jews return to Jerusalem from Babylon to the death of Christ, and if we divide that length of time by 69 we can know the time period for each week. Since it was 483 years from the Jews return to the crucifixion, and since 483 divided by 69 is 7, we know that each week in Daniel’s prophecy represents a 7 year period. In other words, each week is a week of years.
We, today, know that the tribulation period will be 7 years long because it’s the 70th week of Daniel. But the disciples didn’t know anything about that. If and when the disciples ever looked at Daniel’s prophesy, all they would have seen is that the kingdom was the next big thing on God’s agenda for the nation of Israel.
Therefore, when Jesus said, “I will be with you, even unto the end of the age,” they would have understood that to mean that Christ would be with them all the way to the kingdom. As far as they knew, the kingdom was the next item on God’s agenda, and the Lord even spoke about the kingdom as being the next age. In Matthew 12, He said:
Matthew 12:32 (NKJ)
32 "Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.
The point being made is that there will be no forgiveness for rejecting the Holy Spirit, not now, not ever. That means that the next age is the everlasting kingdom, and if the next age is the everlasting kingdom then the end of the age would have to be that period of time just before the everlasting kingdom. In Matthew 13, Jesus was explaining the parable of the weeds in which the enemy planted weeds among the wheat. He said:
Matthew 13:39-43
39 "The enemy who sowed (the weeds) is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.
40 "Therefore as the (weeds) are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age.
41 "The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness,
42 "and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
43 "Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!
We have already seen that the disciples did not know the details of the 7 year tribulation period, but here in Matthew 13, we see that they knew nothing about the thousand year reign of Christ. Revelation 20 tells us plainly that unsaved people will not be cast into the lake of fire until after Christ rules with the saints for a thousand years. We also know that at the end of His thousand year reign there will be a rebellion of the unsaved nations which God will crush by sending down fire from heaven. Then, the unsaved will be called before the Great White Throne judgment, and they will be judged and sentenced to the lake of fire.
Now, it is interesting that the parable of the weeds does give a hint that there will be a rebellion of unsaved people even in the kingdom because He says that He will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend. But as Jesus explained the parable of the weeds, He chose not to reveal the details of the thousand year reign of Christ. He spoke of the end of the age as if it would coincide with the Great White Throne judgment where the unsaved will be judged and cast into the lake of fire.
Obviously, Jesus was content to leave it up to the Apostle John to reveal the somewhat startling truth that Christ will rule for a thousand years between His second coming and the Great White Throne judgment. The disciples didn’t know that. They saw the two as being coincidental, and Jesus chose not to reveal to them the truth of the 1000 year reign at that time. It was the Apostle John who revealed this great truth almost 6 decades later in the book of the Revelation.
Well, before we close today, I would like to mention that there was another great mystery which the Lord Jesus did not reveal to His disciples, and that was the mystery of the Church which is the Body of Christ. When Jesus told His disciples, “Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the age,” they had no idea that Israel would reject the kingdom by rejecting Jesus as their Messiah. They had no idea that God would set aside Israel’s kingdom program on a temporary basis to bring in a totally different body of believers who would have no material interest in Israel’s kingdom.
They did not know these things, but that is exactly what happened. Israel rejected Christ, and God called the Apostle Paul to reveal the Church which is the Body of Christ. This is the Church to which all believers belong today. God’s program for the Church of our present age ended up being right between the age in which the disciples lived and Israel’s tribulation period. The 70th week of Daniel did not immediately follow the 69th week of Daniel. We have already had a 2000 year interlude between the two. Someday the Church will be taken up in the glory, and God will resume His dealings with Israel by sending the great tribulation period.
When the Lord said, “I will be with you, even unto the end of the age,” He did not reveal that our present age of the Church and the age of the tribulation period would lie between the disciples and the coming of the Son of Man at the end of the age. He did not reveal that our present age and the tribulation period and the 1000 year reign of Christ would lie between the disciples and the Great White Throne judgment which He also said would happen at the end of the age. These were mysteries which the Lord Jesus left for others to reveal.
I see our time is gone this morning. Thank you for listening to Bible Study Time. I’ll look forward to being with you again next week at this same time.
Write me at: jimjoan77@juno.com
Matthew 28:19-20 (NKJ)
19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 "teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
We know that God encouraged the nation of Israel many times with the thought of His faithful presence with them. When Moses was turning over his mantel of leadership to Joshua, he said to the nation:
Deuteronomy 31:6-8 (NKJ)
6 "Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid . . . ; for the LORD your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you."
7 Then Moses called Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel, "Be strong and of good courage, for you must go with this people to the land which the LORD has sworn to their fathers to give them, and you shall cause them to inherit it.
8 "And the LORD, He is the one who goes before you. He will be with you, He will not leave you nor forsake you; do not fear nor be dismayed."
This commitment that God made to Israel turned out to be both conditional and unconditional. Later on, in the same chapter of Deuteronomy 31, the Lord said to Moses:
Deuteronomy 31:16-17 (NKJ)
16 . . . "Behold, you will rest with your fathers; and this people will rise and play the harlot with the gods of the foreigners of the land, . . . and they will forsake Me and break My covenant which I have made with them.
17 "Then My anger shall be aroused against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured. And many evils and troubles shall befall them, so that they will say in that day, 'Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?'
The conditional character of God’s commitment to Israel was typical of the old covenant Law of Moses. God had made it very clear from the beginning that the Law of Moses was a conditional covenant. He said, “If you keep my commandments, I will bless you, but if you fail to keep my commandments, I will curse you.”
There is a sense, however, in which God was making an unconditional commitment to Israel when He said I will not leave you or forsake you. As He said these words, He was anticipating the day when He would make a New Covenant with the house of Israel which would be unconditional and everlasting. Jeremiah wrote with great enthusiasm about the New Covenant, saying:
Jeremiah 31:31-33 (NKJ)
31 "Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah--
32 "not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD.
33 "But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
Later in that same chapter, Jeremiah said:
Jeremiah 31:35-37 (NKJ)
35 Thus says the LORD, who gives the sun for a light by day, the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, who disturbs the sea, and its waves roar (The LORD of hosts is His name):
36 "If those ordinances depart from before Me, says the LORD, then the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before Me forever."
37 Thus says the LORD: "If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, says the LORD.
God was saying that when the sun and the moon stop shining, that’s when His commitment to Israel will end. God was saying that when people get to where they can measure the universe and find out the origins of the earth, that’s when He will cast off all the seed of Israel.
Isn’t it interesting that man has such a burning desire to do these two things. For some completely irrational reason, man has dedicated himself to finding out and measuring the far flung limits of the universe. For some inexplicable reason, man has an obsession with finding out the foundations or the origins of the earth, but men will never be able to do either of the two.
Man’s obsession with these two areas of science is driven by Satan, Himself, because Satan hates Israel and wants to explore every possible avenue which might lead to Israel’s destruction. Satan suffers from the delusion that Israel has some mysterious vulnerability that is held secret within the measurements of the universe and the origin of the earth, and He would love to get his hands on that information. Satan deceives mankind and he deceives himself. God will never allow anything to interfere with His everlasting commitment to Israel. God’s commitment to Israel under the Law of Moses was conditional, but His commitment to Israel under the New Covenant will be unconditional.
Just before the Lord Jesus went to the cross, He said that His shed blood was the blood of the New Covenant. Someday, Israel will believe in Jesus Christ and the blood of Jesus will wash Israel’s sins away and purify her heart to make it fit as the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. God will put His Law in their minds and write it on their hearts. He will be their God and they will be His people.
This New Covenant will be made only with the Jews who believe in the One whom God has sent. The vast majority of all Jews will not enter into the New Covenant relationship with God. It will be only the small believing remnant of the nation of Israel who will accept Jesus Christ and receive the New Covenant.
When Jesus spoke to His disciples just before He ascension, He was speaking to them on the basis of the New Covenant, without any conditional stipulation. He said, “I am with you always, even unto the end of the age. These disciples had accepted Christ and had left everything to follow Him. Jesus had told them,
Matthew 19:28 (NKJ)
28 . . . Assuredly I say to you, that in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
As Jesus said His final words to His disciples, He wanted them to know that His commitment to them was solid and sure and unconditional. He said, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.”
Well, these words of Jesus give us cause to consider what the disciples must have thought when Jesus talked about the end of the age. They had asked Jesus what would be the signs of the coming of the Son of Man and the end of the age, and He had told them about the things that would happen during the tribulation period before the coming of the Son of Man.
However, they did not think about the tribulation period as we think of it today. Even if they were aware of Daniel’s prophecy concerning the 70 weeks, they would not have known that each week was a period of 7 years.
Daniel said that there would be 70 weeks from the time the Jews returned to Jerusalem from Babylon until the restoration of the kingdom. Daniel specifically said that the Messiah would be cut off or killed after the 69th week. That means that until the Messiah was killed, no one would have the means to calculate how long each week was in the mind of God.
Today, we can calculate how long it was from the Jews return to Jerusalem from Babylon to the death of Christ, and if we divide that length of time by 69 we can know the time period for each week. Since it was 483 years from the Jews return to the crucifixion, and since 483 divided by 69 is 7, we know that each week in Daniel’s prophecy represents a 7 year period. In other words, each week is a week of years.
We, today, know that the tribulation period will be 7 years long because it’s the 70th week of Daniel. But the disciples didn’t know anything about that. If and when the disciples ever looked at Daniel’s prophesy, all they would have seen is that the kingdom was the next big thing on God’s agenda for the nation of Israel.
Therefore, when Jesus said, “I will be with you, even unto the end of the age,” they would have understood that to mean that Christ would be with them all the way to the kingdom. As far as they knew, the kingdom was the next item on God’s agenda, and the Lord even spoke about the kingdom as being the next age. In Matthew 12, He said:
Matthew 12:32 (NKJ)
32 "Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.
The point being made is that there will be no forgiveness for rejecting the Holy Spirit, not now, not ever. That means that the next age is the everlasting kingdom, and if the next age is the everlasting kingdom then the end of the age would have to be that period of time just before the everlasting kingdom. In Matthew 13, Jesus was explaining the parable of the weeds in which the enemy planted weeds among the wheat. He said:
Matthew 13:39-43
39 "The enemy who sowed (the weeds) is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.
40 "Therefore as the (weeds) are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age.
41 "The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness,
42 "and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
43 "Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!
We have already seen that the disciples did not know the details of the 7 year tribulation period, but here in Matthew 13, we see that they knew nothing about the thousand year reign of Christ. Revelation 20 tells us plainly that unsaved people will not be cast into the lake of fire until after Christ rules with the saints for a thousand years. We also know that at the end of His thousand year reign there will be a rebellion of the unsaved nations which God will crush by sending down fire from heaven. Then, the unsaved will be called before the Great White Throne judgment, and they will be judged and sentenced to the lake of fire.
Now, it is interesting that the parable of the weeds does give a hint that there will be a rebellion of unsaved people even in the kingdom because He says that He will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend. But as Jesus explained the parable of the weeds, He chose not to reveal the details of the thousand year reign of Christ. He spoke of the end of the age as if it would coincide with the Great White Throne judgment where the unsaved will be judged and cast into the lake of fire.
Obviously, Jesus was content to leave it up to the Apostle John to reveal the somewhat startling truth that Christ will rule for a thousand years between His second coming and the Great White Throne judgment. The disciples didn’t know that. They saw the two as being coincidental, and Jesus chose not to reveal to them the truth of the 1000 year reign at that time. It was the Apostle John who revealed this great truth almost 6 decades later in the book of the Revelation.
Well, before we close today, I would like to mention that there was another great mystery which the Lord Jesus did not reveal to His disciples, and that was the mystery of the Church which is the Body of Christ. When Jesus told His disciples, “Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the age,” they had no idea that Israel would reject the kingdom by rejecting Jesus as their Messiah. They had no idea that God would set aside Israel’s kingdom program on a temporary basis to bring in a totally different body of believers who would have no material interest in Israel’s kingdom.
They did not know these things, but that is exactly what happened. Israel rejected Christ, and God called the Apostle Paul to reveal the Church which is the Body of Christ. This is the Church to which all believers belong today. God’s program for the Church of our present age ended up being right between the age in which the disciples lived and Israel’s tribulation period. The 70th week of Daniel did not immediately follow the 69th week of Daniel. We have already had a 2000 year interlude between the two. Someday the Church will be taken up in the glory, and God will resume His dealings with Israel by sending the great tribulation period.
When the Lord said, “I will be with you, even unto the end of the age,” He did not reveal that our present age of the Church and the age of the tribulation period would lie between the disciples and the coming of the Son of Man at the end of the age. He did not reveal that our present age and the tribulation period and the 1000 year reign of Christ would lie between the disciples and the Great White Throne judgment which He also said would happen at the end of the age. These were mysteries which the Lord Jesus left for others to reveal.
I see our time is gone this morning. Thank you for listening to Bible Study Time. I’ll look forward to being with you again next week at this same time.
Write me at: jimjoan77@juno.com
Church links:
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