Why the Old Testament Never Mentions the Church Age

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, it's good to have another group for another four programs this afternoon, and we appreciate the effort that you all put forth to come in for this, because I've said so often, I just couldn't do it without you. I couldn't talk to that camera. I don't mind talking to a class full of people, but you're the ones that make it what it is. And for those of you joining us now on television, again, we just want you to know that we're an informal Bible study. We're not connected with any group. We don't trumpet any group. We don't ridicule or fault any group. We just love to teach the Word, and hopefully tantalize people to start studying it and enjoying it on their own. Because after all, that's why God left us this book, is that you and I, as ordinary believers, can read it and study it. I think it was Tyndale, as he was being burned at the stake, was the one who said that he wanted every plowboy in England to have a copy of the Word. It wasn't Tyndale or Wycliffe, but one or the other. But that was the name of the game. He wanted the Bible to be in the print and in the language of the common man, so that even every plowboy in England could have a copy of the Scriptures. And since God has seen fit to do that, then I think it behooves us to study it, and to read it on our own. Now again, for those of you out in television, realize that all the past programs are available on videotape. We've put six hours. We've gotten busy and have transcribed the programs onto the printed page, and each six-hour tape now then is available in a little booklet such as this one. And Jerry Poole, where are you? Right back there. Jerry has just been working day and night, and he's all caught up with us. So as funds are available, we're getting them printed, and we now have books 1 through 12 available. And 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 will be coming out, we hope, before the end of the year. But anyway, if you're interested, and these little books are, they're getting the attention of a lot of people. And if we can get a copy to you, you call us or write to us, and we will send you the information. All right, now for those of you here in the studio audience, I told you before we started, I'm going to do a little bit of review in this half hour, because we've had so many new listeners come on the line that have not seen a lot of this. And I'm going to start way back at the board with, of course, the creation of Adam, and way back here at 4004 BC. That's the number that is usually ascribed to the creation of Adam. Not necessarily the planet, but this is where Adam comes on. And then I always like to divide in round terms. Now this isn't in exact years, but I like to divide it in such a way that you can remember that from 4000 BC to the time of Christ, and halfway in between was the appearance of the man Abram, or we'll just start out by calling him Abraham. And that was at 2000 BC, halfway between the creation of Adam and Christ's first advent. And then when you back away from Abraham about 400 years in round figures, that brings us back to the time of the flood. So from Adam until the flood is approximately 600 years. And then we go 200 years approximately again between the flood and the Tower of Babel. And that gives another approximate 200 years then from the Tower of Babel until we get to the call of Abraham, which is at the midpoint. Now from Adam until Abraham, God dealt with one race of people. One race. In other words, all the things that God had taught Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, that was appropriate for that whole race of people for that first 2000 years. There was no organized system of worship. There was no temple. There was no written law. It was just simply based on man's conscience that if they knew they had sinned, then they were to bring a blood sacrifice by faith. And if their faith was real, it was their faith that saved them, just like it does us today. But there was no organized system of worship. There was no organized law or anything like this. And consequently, you know what happened. The human race just simply fell apart until it got so wicked, it was so rebellious, that God had no remedy but to destroy them. Now then with the advent of Moses, Noah, see I told my class before I started, I'm always getting those two mixed. With the advent of Noah and the three sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth, now we're beginning to split the human race into three races. Those that are going to come out of Ham, those that are going to come out of Shem, and those that will come out of Japheth. That's the beginning now then of the separating away from the one race. However, they really did not scatter until they got to the Tower of Babel. If you know your Bible, they had all congregated together, and they were of one race, and one speech rather. And it wasn't until God came in with the language confusion then, that they began to scatter into their prescribed areas of the old planet. Until 200 years later then, out of the line of Shem, remember the three sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth, out of the line of Shem comes this man Abraham. 2000 B.C., halfway. Now then to this man Abraham, God promises what we're always referring to as the Abrahamic Covenant. And I've maintained now down through the years that I've been teaching, that unless you understand the Abrahamic Covenant, you will never understand the Bible or even the New Testament. Because when God called this man out of idolatry, and remember he was steeped in idolatry, his whole family was, and the whole human race was, except someone thought of something that I never had. And of course that's why I love to teach, and that's why I've learned. But what about Shem? Now the Bible is silent about Shem, but he was still evidently alive at the call of Abraham. Now I think a lot of those old patriarchs probably for one reason or another lost their testimony. I know Noah did. You know after Noah built the vineyard, and drank the wine, and got drunk, you know what? You never hear another word about Noah. He drops off the scene. Now I don't think he lost his salvation, but he lost his testimony. Now the same thing may have happened to Shem. I don't know. But other than that, I've always felt comfortable with teaching that after the Tower of Babel, and in this 175 to 200 year period of time until Abraham comes along, every human being, with maybe an exception or two, had now succumbed to idolatry, and to pagan worship of the mythological gods, and so forth. So God tells Abraham, I'm going to make of you a nation, and this is what I always referred to as the three parts of the Abrahamic covenant. I'm going to make out of you a nation of people. I'm going to put them into a geographical area of land. That of course didn't take all that long until those two were consummated. And then the third part was, someday down the road I will come myself and be your king over a glorious kingdom, not up in heaven, but on earth. So when God called Abraham, I usually remember just sort of pull it off like this, He's going to make them a special race of people, the nation of Israel, or as we have come to know them, the Jew. And I always put it this way, Jew only, with the exceptions. And God will make exceptions during this 2 ,000 year period of time, but they're rare. And so the mass of humanity just goes on like the river, but out of that great river of humanity God pulls this little stream, the nation of Israel. And of course the whole object was that He would use the nation of Israel to funnel back into the nations of the world, and bring them into a knowledge of their God. That was their opportunity, that was their option, which of course we know now they rejected. So now what I'd like to point out, and I've had you here in the studio, turn to Psalms chapter 2. So with the beginning of this Abrahamic covenant, and of course coming all the way back to Genesis 3.15, the promise of the seed of the woman, and that's another whole hour or two of lesson. The seed of the woman, promised back here in 3.15, but the seed of the woman would come through this man Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and then out of Jacob's 12 sons, the son of Judah, out of Judah comes David, and Solomon, and then Solomon and the other branch of the tree bring us all the way up then to Joseph and Mary. Now that's as far as it goes in the Old Testament, maybe I can just as well keep going. So when Israel has the opportunity of going into the nations with a knowledge of their God, they reject Him, they crucify Him. Now of course as we've been seeing in the book of Acts, in the early chapters, even though everything is now consummated here for the salvation of the whole human race, God continues to deal with the Jew. And I know I probably fly in the face of most traditionalists, that He does not immediately go through Gentiles, He continues to deal with the nation of Israel in the early chapters of Acts, until we are introduced to the Body of Christ, the Church. And remember that's a Pauline terminology, you do not see that term, the Body of Christ, until you get to the revelations given to the Apostle Paul. Remember when he had that conversion experience on the road to Damascus, ere he came to the house of Ananias, what did the Lord tell Ananias? Well don't be afraid of him, because we know He was, don't be afraid of him because I have designated that man to go where? To the Gentile. And that's the turning point in God's dealing with the human race, is that He's going to raise up that Jew, Paul the 13th Apostle if you want to call it that, and He sends him specifically to the Gentiles. And then after the Church Age is completed, and the Body of Christ is full, God has to take it out so He can pick up again with the Jew in particular, in those final seven years ere we go into the final thousand years of the Kingdom. But this will be the second coming then, at the end of that seven years and the advent of the Kingdom. Now this is the way we understand the whole 7,000 years of time that God has laid out prophetically. A lot of it is already historical, that 4,000 years went by to the time of the Cross. Now another 2,000 years have gone by to our own particular time. We know there's seven years left that God is going to deal specifically with the Jew, although the whole human race will come into it. Then He'll return, set up His Kingdom, and then there's yet another thousand years of time as we know it. That won't be eternity yet, that'll still be in time. All right, now I've got you in Psalms chapter 2. So I'm going to start reading there, right in verse 1, and hopefully in the 15 minutes now we have left, we can make this run up through Scripture, and show that from the Old Testament perspective, from the Old Testament perspective, this was never mentioned. This is something that is totally out of the Old Testament. The Old Testament just brings all this right up here. As soon as Christ was crucified, in a short period of time could Elapse, then the Tribulation was to come in, Christ was to return, set up His Kingdom to the nation of Israel. Now I'll point this out as we come up through the Old Testament, Psalms chapter 2. Now read this quickly, verse 1, "...why do the heathen," or the non-Jew, "...rage, and the people," the Jews, "...imagine a vain thing. The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together." Now underline that word, together, because as we've been noticing in the book of Acts, and we're going to come back to that probably in our next program, Peter is constantly accusing the nation of Israel for crucifying their Messiah, doesn't he? You killed Him. You murdered Him. But you see, the Scripture in total says Jew and Gentile were guilty of the crucifixion. Don't ever lose sight of that. All right, "...so the rulers take counsel together," that is with the Gentile, that was Rome, "...and against the Lord, and against His Anointed, the Messiah. And they said, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us." Now that was what the human race said concerning the Messiah. We'll not have this man to rule over us. Away with Him, crucify Him, see? So they cast off the cords, that is God's reins, from them. Then verse 4, "...he that sitteth in the heaven shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision." Now that's as a result of the crucifixion. But now look at verse 5, "...then after they have rejected the Messiah, the author of the king and the kingdom, then He shall speak unto them, not in love, mercy, and grace, but in wrath and vexation." So what is that? That's the tribulation. Now, do you see anything in between those two verses of the church age? No, it's not in there. So the psalmist just continues right on with the prophetic program. He will vex them in His sore displeasure, that's the tribulation. And then verse 6, what's the next event? The kingdom. "...yet have I set my king on the holy hill of Zion." Again, any interlude for the church? No, it's not in here. Now what I'm going to do is we slip up through the Old Testament based on this program. Now again, I want you to picture in your mind's eye that the seven years and the thousand year reign, the return of Christ is right up here. We're just going to bring it up and realize that the Old Testament says nothing of this parenthetical period of time that we now know is in here. All right, now in order to give me a basis for doing what I'm going to do, I'm going to have you go all the way. Keep your hand here in the Old Testament psalms. Yeah, we'll be back to psalms in a little bit. Come all the way with me up to Luke chapter 4. And of course with a 30-minute program, I'm always racing the clock. Now when we have our two-hour classes here during the week, I don't have to worry about it quite so much. But Luke chapter 4, drop down to verse 18, and the setting of course is the Lord and His earthly ministry, and He's gone into the synagogue in His hometown of Nazareth. And well, I've got to read verse 17. "...As He went into the synagogue, and He stood up to read," verse 17, "...there was delivered unto Him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book," or the scroll, "...He found the place where it was written." In other words, He looked for a particular portion of Scripture. "...And the place He found said," verse 18, "...the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and the recovering of sight to the blind. To set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." Period. "...He closed the book, and He gave it to the minister, and He sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on Him. And He began to say unto them, This day is this Scripture fulfilled." All right, now let's go back and read what He read, and that is in Isaiah chapter 61. Go back to Isaiah chapter 61, and I'll write it in verse 1. Isaiah 61, verse 1. And again, I always give you in the studio time to find the verse, because we know a lot of people in their living room are doing the same thing, and I want to give them time as well as you. So in Isaiah 61, verse 1, "...the Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord hath anointed Me to preach good tidings to the meek. He hath sent Me to brind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive." See how identical this is? "...and the opening of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." Now you remember in Luke 4, there was a period there. But in Isaiah, it's a what? It's a comma, and it's not the end of the sentence. And the sentence goes on to say, "...and the day of God." Now according to Psalms chapter 2, what was that? The wrath and vexation. You see that? So this prophecy, just like Psalms chapter 2, flows right on through, and then the next part of the verse says, "...to comfort all and mourn." What's that? The Kingdom. See? Just like it said in Psalms 2, "...he will pour out his wrath and vexation, and yet have I set my King on the holy hill of Zion." That's the process. And so the Lord, teaching now in the synagogue, or reading in the synagogue, knew the end from the beginning, so He knew where to stop. And He said, "...this is fulfilled in your ears." The rest of it wouldn't be, and so it's going to be postponed. Now what we've done then, if you'll go back with me to Psalms chapter 2, and we're going to take a run, like I said, up through the Old Testament and all the way into the New, if we have time. And we like to put little marks with a parenthesis around it to show where it was fulfilled, and where the rest is still unfulfilled. Now in Psalms chapter 2, the verses we read, you have to stop after verse 3, because that's as much as happened. They rejected the Messiah, they crucified Him, and then verse 5 hasn't happened even yet. He has not yet spoken in His wrath and vexation. That's still future. So we can put a break in time there. All right, now then go with me to Psalms 118. Psalms 118, we're going to do the same thing. We're going to see where the Old Testament just continues on with the prophetic plan, but we know that it's been interrupted. Psalms 118, verse 22. Psalms 118, verse 22, "...the stone which the builders refused." When did that happen? Well, at His crucifixion. Who was the stone of Scripture? Christ is. He was the head of the corner. But what'd they do with it? They cast it aside, not knowing who He was. So that's all that was fulfilled. But what does the rest of the verse say? He'd become the headstone of the corner. That hasn't happened yet. So you can put a little break right in the middle of that verse. The builder's stone was refused. The rest of it is still future. All right, let's go on to Isaiah chapter 9, that familiar portion. Isaiah chapter 9. Isaiah 9, I think it's verse 6, "...for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given." Did that happen at the first advent? Sure did. But now read on. "...the government shall be upon his shoulder." No, that hasn't happened yet. That's a reference to the kingdom, when He will be the King of kings and Lord of lords. That hasn't happened yet. So you put a break in there. The first part's fulfilled. The rest of it is still future. All right, we can go on from there to Isaiah chapter 61. Well, that's the verse I think we just read that the Lord referred to. But again, just look at it once more. Get it locked into our computers, where He says in verse 1 that He came to preach good tidings, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. See? And then the rest, the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all that mourn. That hasn't happened yet. So you just put a break right in the word, between the word Lord, and the word and. All right, now let's go to Daniel chapter 9. Ezekiel, Daniel chapter 9. This is the chapter on Daniel's 70th week, remember? And now you come down to verse 26, where we already have the description of the coming of the Messiah. And then verse 26, and after three score and two weeks, Messiah shall be cut off. What is that speaking of? His crucifixion, His death, but not for Himself. And the people of the prince that shall come, shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Now that didn't happen right at His advent, but just a few years later, 70 A .D., when Rome destroyed the temple. All right, but now look at the rest. And the end thereof shall be with a flood, and to the end war and desolation is determined, and He, the Antichrist, shall confirm the covenant. That hasn't happened yet. That's all still future. So you can put your break in this verse right after the word sanctuary, because that all took place in His first advent, at least in proximity of it. Next one, Joel chapter 2. Joel chapter 2, verse 28. Now this is Bible study. My land, this is just plain Bible study. This isn't denominational doctrine or anything like that. This is just showing you what the Scripture says. Joel chapter 2, verse 28. And it shall come to pass afterward, that is after His rejection and so forth, that I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. And also upon the servants, upon the handmaids in those days, I will pour out of My Spirit. And then look at verse 30, it says, and I will show wonders in the heavens and the earth, blood, fire, pillar of smoke. Did that happen? No, that hasn't happened yet. But all the rest of verse 28 did. That was Pentecost. See, that was all in proximity of His first coming. But verse 30 is the tribulation, and that hasn't happened. So we put a break in there. All right, another one, Zechariah. We're getting close to the end now. Zechariah chapter 9. And Zechariah is the next last book in your Old Testament. Zechariah chapter 9, verses 9 and 10. Zechariah 9, verses 9 and 10. Look at verse 9. Zechariah 9. Zechariah 9. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, just, having salvation, lowly, riding upon an ass and upon the colt. Did that happen? Sure it did. But look at the next one, verse 10. And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off. He shall speak peace to the heathen, and his dominion shall be from sea to sea. What's that? The Kingdom. Has that happened? No, still future. So we put a break in between verse 9 and verse 10. All right, I'm going to run out of time with this one or not, but we're getting close. Matthew, Mark, Luke, chapter 1. And again, between 31 and 32. See how obvious all these are? Verse 31 says, And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. Did it happen? You bet it did. Verse 32. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. Hasn't happened yet. It's going to. You see how clearly all these are? All right, one more. Luke, chapter 21. Luke 21. Now we're getting down to the end of the whole break in prophecy, where Jesus says, And they, the Jews, shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations. See, that happened at the siege of Titus. And then verse 25. And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, and upon the earth, distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea, and the waves roaring. Has that happened? No. See how clearly all this is? And so what I'm always just trying to show from this putting breaks in verses, that this Old Testament program, as the Old Testament put it straight out, was suddenly interrupted, and this gap is put in here, and all of this is still future. Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time, for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.