Because we've bought the lies that the end is always near, Christ is not presently ruling from David's throne at the Father's right hand, that the Jews are a special and privileged people over against the Christian Church, and therefore Christians will always lose down here until Christ returns to finally start His Kingdom reign, we've embraced a loser mentally. The bride of Christ has regarded herself as a helpless damsel in distress, rather than equipped as warriors by the enthroned and glorified Christ's Mighty Spirit, with the full armor of God, to do battle against the world, flesh, and devil. This must change, for the sake of Christ's covenant and Kingdom. So let's have a necessary discussion and study of Scripture to correct grievous error.
Living and growing up in Sanford, North Carolina, churches often teach, and have taught for many generations ironically, that the end is near, that Christ is going to return at any moment, and so we need to have a great, sweeping revival just before He comes. This is often mixed in with a view of Israel and "end times" teaching that says Jesus will come back to Jerusalem here on Earth, sit on a literal throne on Earth, and the Jerusalem Temple will be rebuilt, even with animal sacrifices resuming for some reason. These churches also often maintain that Israel/the Jewish people and the Church are still two separate peoples of God, and will remain so until He returns, perhaps even eternally in heaven.
What this false system of belief also teaches, either directly or by implication, is that Jesus is NOT presently ruling and reigning on the true throne of David at the Father's right hand in heaven, ever since He has risen from the grave and ascended back to the Father in glory.
The claim is that Christ will not rule from heaven, but on Earth, and that the promises made to ethnic Israel are separate from the Christian church. This is a fundamental error and is simply false teaching, though many sincere Christians have held to it.
Because Jesus is not presently ruling from heaven, so they say, the world is going to get worse and worse, people will fall away or reject Christ, rather than come to Him. When we pray the Lord's prayer, "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven," they will often say this is a prayer only for the kingdom age, an age which will not begin until Christ returns for good. This despite Christ preaching the Gospel, His kingdom, had arrived with His first coming, and therefore calling all to repent, Matthew 4:17.
After atoning for sin and rising from death, Christ returned to the Father to rule on David's throne, in the 1st century, and continues to rule until this present day. This is why the Gospel/Kingdom great commission Christ gave to His Apostles as He ascended to heaven in Matthew 28:18-20 is, “All AUTHORITY has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 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, 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.” Amen."
Christ is King in heaven and on Earth. Satan has been cast down and bound. He is not yet cast into hell, he still can afflict unbelievers in their sin, and even buffet Christians, but at the cross, sin, death, and the devil were defeated, and Christ triumphed over them all in His resurrection, was coronated as King of all when He ascended back to heaven, and is now seated at the Father's right hand, ruling the nations and leading them, many to salvation, many others to their judgment for rejecting Him and failing to "Kiss the Son" as Psalm 2 says. These are present realities, not something far off into the future! Praise the Lord!
So, I hope you begin to see the fundamental flaw and danger in teaching that Christ is not reigning from heaven on David's throne, that the Jews and Israel are not one people of God, by faith united to Christ the Lord and Savior of His one body, bride, and church, comprised of believing Jews and Gentiles, Gal. 3:26-29 --
"For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise."
If Christ is not ruling and reigning now, what is He doing? The first Gospel proclamation after Christ has risen and ascended to the Father's right hand, declares plainly that Christ is PRESENTLY ruling and reigning in power ON DAVID's THRONE, to make all His enemies a footstool for His feet, in Acts 2:22-39
“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know— Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it. For David says concerning Him:
‘I foresaw the Lord always before my face,
For He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken.
Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad;
Moreover my flesh also will rest in hope.
For You will not leave my soul in Hades,
Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.
You have made known to me the ways of life;
You will make me full of joy in Your presence.’
“Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne, he, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption. This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear.
“For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he says himself:
‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at My right hand,
Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.” ’
“Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”
Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?”
Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.”
The Gospel proclamation requires proclaiming the present rule and reign of Christ in heaven, the rule and authority extending down to Earth. This is good news, great news, of the Gospel! The Kingdom has come, it has begun, and is growing, through trials and battles, but Christ is building up His Church and Kingdom, and the Lord's prayer is not prayed in vain.
Because Christ will rule and reign until all His enemies are made a footstool for His feet, we must realize that the idea of an imminent return of Christ because "things are getting worse all the time" is fundamentally backward to what Scripture actually teaches. There will be ups and downs, persecutions and hardships, but through it all, God's people in Christ are faithful, fruitful, and teeming in numbers, over centuries, just as Israel of old had done.
Further, the Bible teaches nothing of a secret, 7 year rapture and tribulation period. The Millennial Kingdom has already begun, and has been continuing for some 2,000 years, since Christ returned to heaven. David's true throne was heaven's throne, which His seed, Jesus, is eternally seated up, as our everlasting, omnipotent King, and also as our Great High Priest and True and Final Prophet.
So then, does the Church need revival? If revival means we need to constantly seek to serve the Lord, repent of sins, grow in holiness, get married and have children and raise them from the Lord, then yes. We have no concept of family, marriage, the Covenant household and promises to us and our children, and we need a great revival of family worship and faithfulness to God. We have no sense of community that even unbelievers have had in the past. We are rootless wanderers, as if we are called to be in a perpetual wilderness wandering for 40 years like Israel was in the wilderness. But they were under God's judgment for idolatry. This is not the normal state of the righteous who faithfully serve the Lord. They are planted in the good land the Lord their God gives them, no matter where it is on earth, and in God's blessing it becomes like a land of milk and honey to them. Children in the new covenant in Eph. 6:1-3 are given the same command (honor/obey your parents) and promises (your life will be blessed and you will live long on the earth) during the old covenant administration, because it is fundamentally one covenant promise, of salvation and life if we repent and believe and follow the Lord.
We have forgotten that Abraham was not only the father of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles. We saw in Galatians 3 that if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, regardless of your ethnicity or national identity. God literally changed his name from Abram from Abraham, because Abraham means "father of many nations". The power of Christ to revive His people from all nations began in Acts 2 at Pentecost, when He poured out His Spirit from David's throne at the Father's right hand, to revive the dry bones that the Prophet Ezekiel spoke about, and to spread and build His Church and Kingdom to the ends of the Earth, as He commissioned the Apostles to do, and as they fulfilled, in their lifetime in the 1st century! Paul says in Colossians 1:5-6 that the gospel "has come to you, as it has also in all the world, and is bringing forth fruit."
We are built upon that Apostolic foundation today, Eph. 2:20, but we are not trying to usher in the "end times" by taking the Gospel to the ends of the Earth. The end times, the last days, began at Christ's first coming, and especially following His outpoured Spirit at Pentecost in Acts 2:17, as the Apostle Peter declared, quoting from the prophet Joel, where Peter declares the last days have begun because the Spirit of Christ is being given to His people/all flesh all over the world. The whole book of Acts demonstrates this spread of the Gospel to the ends of the Earth, from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth/Gentiles. That was the task Christ gave the Apostles in particular, and He empowered them to fulfill us, and build His Church in His blood and Spirit upon that apostolic foundation.
So the return of Christ will only occur after Christ, who is RIGHT NOW ruling and reigning on David's throne at the Father's right hand, has made all His enemies a footstool for His feet. We do not need the rapture to make that a reality. It is a present reality, and when Christ returns, the final day of judgment will commence, the wheat and tares, goats and sheep will be separated, the living and the dead will stand before the Lord Jesus Christ.
The true "Israel" of God are all who have faith in Christ. The promise was never to Israel separate or alone or distinct from the rest of the world, but through the Jews, in Christ, salvation and blessing would come to all nations, and believing Jews and Gentiles would be one people of God through faith in Christ.
The Church is not built primarily by desperate spasms of revivals, which are often counterfeited and fraudulent and drummed up, rather than prayed down from Christ's rule and reign from heaven by His powerful Spirit. Most of the hyper charismatic and hyper Pentecostal types are false prophets and false miracle workers, deceiving many.
In truth, the Church and Kingdom grows and spreads steadily, gradually, multi-generationally, like leaven, leavening hearts and souls, churches and communities, nations and kingdoms, until the world is won for Christ. Nations will rise and fall, but Christ's kingdom stretches from shore to shore. Jesus told us what His kingdom was like in many parables, here are 2 in just 3 verses, Matthew 13:31-33:
"Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.”
Another parable He spoke to them: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened.”
Seeds don't grow overnight, and yeast takes time to rise. The kingdom of God, though we may not like it, tends to grow like grass. It is not something perceptible. You cannot just stare at it and watch it happen. Not all the prophecies in Scripture or all the fullness of the Kingdom is going to come in your lifetime. Since the 1800's, many have been screaming that the sky is falling, that the end is nigh, that the rapture is imminent. This is false teaching, proven by the fact that so many false prophecies have been made about the return of Christ, and the punishment in Scripture for false teachers of this sort is severe, it is that they be put to death! Even Kirk Cameron, who played the main character in the erroneous Left Behind movies, has completely abandoned this false teaching, and has embraced that Christ is presently ruling and reigning from the Father's right hand in heaven.
If you have embraced this error as a Christian, or even taught it as a pastor, there's hope for you. Repent of this serious error, and it shall be forgiven. Christ forgave those who murdered Him when they repented. He will forgive you, too. Then proclaim the Truth of the Gospel, that Christ's kingdom has come and begun at Christ's first coming, and will continue to grow and spread, through many ups and downs and trials and tribulations and persecutions, until His final coming, when He makes all things new, the wicked are cast into hell with Satan, the righteous will worship the Lord in His glorious heaven forever, even ruling and reigning with Him over all the renewed heavens and earth.
If you are looking for a church that teaches the Gospel of the Kingdom according to the Scriptures, that Christ is presently ruling and reigning from on high, that the Kingdom of God has come and is spreading, slowly but surely, like leaven and a mustard seed, until the kings of the nations are brought into it, then come worship with us at Heritage. We prioritize what Scripture has always prioritized, faithful, covenantal nurture of us and our children, the Christian family and household, proclaiming the faith down through the generations, and trusting the Lord to bless that over many generations, and praying for such a revival and reformation of true Christian religion, that looks to build Christ's kingdom for days they will not see. For the end is not nigh, at least not the way many in the Church have claimed it to be. So build up His church and Kingdom, in a faithful church, with families, children and grandchildren, down through the generations, being salt and light to those in our community.
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