Why the Old Testament Never Predicted 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 over 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 everybody in this afternoon, and once again we're going to produce four of these half-hour programs, and for those of you just tuning in maybe for the first time or maybe for the second, we are just an informal Bible study. We are not associated with any particular group, and we've got no ax to grind, and as I've said so often as we've taught these lessons over the years, we're not trying to twist people's arms to come from one group and into another. All we ask is that you get into the book and learn to read it, and as one telephone caller said just early this morning, clear up from International Falls, Minnesota, he said, You have taught me that you can't just read the Bible unless you study it. I just can't emphasize that, that if you once get a love for the Word, reading it isn't enough. You're going to end up studying it, and of course that's what the Scripture says, Study to show thyself approved unto God. So we like folks to know that that's all we're trying to do, is just emphasize the study of God's Word. We don't have an organization or anything like that, and Lord knows we're not in it for any financial compensation. We are just having a heart for people to be taught from the Word, and we're finding so many folks are now taking this into various areas, churches, home Bible studies, and getting people involved in studying their own Bible. For those of you who may be interested, all our past programs are available on either the videotape or the audio, or the little printed books that you see on the screen. If you're interested in any of that, you give us a call and we'll get the information out to you. Now instead of going right on into Galatians, because after all we finished 2 Corinthians in our last taping, and we just get so many requests and comments about our timeline. And of course I had experienced that even before we ever went on television, where my local class people would say, Well if you've ever done anything to open up the Bible, it's using the timeline. And so in response to those requests, I just thought we'd digress for at least one program, and review once again the timeline, and how everything unfolds, and how it all fits, and how everything rests on that which is gone before. And so consequently it is hard to understand the church age, and why God is dealing with us the way He is, unless we see where it all began. I'll never forget years ago, and I've used it over and over in my Oklahoma classes, and the gentleman involved watches the program, and he'll nod his head and smile when I tell about it. But he came up to the ranch one day after I'd been baling hay all day, and I was tired, and it was about 1030 at night. And he met me, and introduced himself, and said, Tell me, who in the world is Jesus Christ? Now at the time it shook me up, and I thought, How could anybody ask a question like that? But now, some 5-6 years after that, all I ask is, Why don't more people ask that very question? Because most people don't know who He is. Oh, they know He was born at Bethlehem, and they know He went through a crucifixion. But to really know who Christ is, and how He came on the scene, too many people haven't got a clue. Well that night as we went into our kitchen table, one person wrote, My that must be some kitchen table. Well it is, it's just an old round oak table, but boy we've led a lot of people to the Lord there. And so we brought him in, and put on the coffee pot, and that's what I did. I just started with him with this timeline, and that's why I share it with people. If you want to have an opportunity to get someone interested in the Word of God, learn to use the timeline. It's quite simple, and I'm going to complicate it a little bit today by showing the difference between what the disciples understood, and the early Jewish believers understood, compared to what you and I now understand as church age believers, because God interrupted His original program for the nation of Israel, and turned to the Gentiles instead. So anyway, I'm going to start as far as the Scriptures are concerned. Go to Genesis chapter 12, and we'll just look at the Abrahamic Covenant in a minute, because from the timeline you'll see that if Adam was created in 4004, and most chronologers are pretty much agreed on that, then from Adam until the call of Abraham, or Abram as he was first known in Genesis 12, covers 2000 years. Now I don't put an awful lot of emphasis on that in this particular half hour, because 11 chapters of Genesis cover that whole first 2000 years. And then you get to Genesis 12, and now this is where we're going to read a moment, and we have that covenant that God made with Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees, so he was a Syrian. That shakes people up. They think Abraham was a Jew. Well he couldn't have been. The Jews were still unknown. So he was a Syrian, but God made a special covenant with him. And here it is in Genesis 12, verse 1. Genesis 12. Now the Lord hath said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee, and I will make of thee a great nation. I will bless thee, make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. I will bless them that bless thee. I will curse them that curse thee, and in thee." In other words, through a lineage of people that would come from this man, all the families of the earth would be blessed. Now of course this Abrahamic covenant is given to the man who will be the father now then of a race of people who had never been on the earth before. They came out of course, Adam, and Noah, and the three sons, and Abram. But God institutes now by His sovereignty a new race or nation of people that we have come to know as Israel. And so the Jews come as a result of this covenant made with this one man, and this covenant promises a nation of people. And implied is that you can't have a nation of people functioning and operating unless they are in their own geographical area, homeland. And so that's implied. Well again it's implied that if you have a nation of people and they're in a geographical area, you cannot have law and order, you cannot have an economy unless you have a government. And so those are the three main tenets of the Abrahamic covenant that God will make of this one man, a nation of people. He will put them in their own geographical area of land, and then at some future day he and the person of God in the flesh would be their King. And that of course is the promise of the Messiah and the Redeemer. Now I've got it on the board, I hope you can read it by way of the camera at least, that with the 2000 BC call of Abraham, and we've got God dealing now for the next 2000 years up to Christ's first advent with Jew only, and of course I always in the past have said with exceptions. But down on this timeline I have called this whole period of time from Abraham until we get out here to the church age when it's interrupted. We call this the time of prophecy, the prophetic program, or the Old Testament program, and then we're going to see how it was interrupted. But when I say that it's a program of prophecy, I want you to turn the page in your Old Testament a minute to chapter 15, Genesis 15, and I always like to make these things as plain as I possibly can. Prophecy, true prophecy, which is telling the future of course as we understand in the Old Testament, is almost always, maybe not always, but almost always whenever God made a promise, He put it in a time frame. Now that's how explicit God is when He can tell the future. He will name the day, and He will name the number of years that will be involved in that particular prophecy. Now in Genesis 15, Abraham has now come along and is ready to begin the physical nature of the land. He's going to have children. The first one of course was not according to God's plan, Ishmael, but nevertheless in Genesis 15, here we have what I'm calling a real example of true prophecy, and that is in Genesis 15 verse 13, "...and he," that is the Lord or God, "...said unto Abram, Know of a surety." I like that word surety. You know what that means? It means it's going to happen. "...know of a surety, that thy seed," his offspring, the nation that's going to come from this covenant promise, "...that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs." Now do you see the prophetic element? Your offspring are going to be, so what is God telling? Something out in the future. "...that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs." They're not going to be in the promised land, they're going to be someplace else, and of course we know it was Egypt, "...and shall serve them." They're going to go into bondage. Now here comes the time element, "...and they shall afflict them," or they're going to be afflicted for 100 years. You see that? Now God is making a prophecy that this nation coming out of this one man, Abraham, is going to end up in a land that's not theirs, which we now know is Egypt, and they're going to be under slavery, but it's going to cover a period of 400 years. See how plain that is? Now that's the way prophecy always works. Now according to my timeline of course, once we come past the first 11 chapters, which is Adam and the Flood and the Tower of Babel, now comes the call of Abraham and the appearance of the nation of Israel, and then we come 500 years after that, we come to Moses and the Exodus experience, and the Law, and then we have all the rest of the Old Testament writers, the prophets, the Psalms, and everything else, and everything now is prophetically looking forward to and promising what we call the First Advent of Christ, in other words His birth at Bethlehem whence He came to the nation of Israel. Now just to pick up what I always refer to as the outline of this Old Testament program is Psalms chapter 2. Now a lot of this is repetition even for a lot of our television viewers, but on the other hand we've got a lot of them we trust that have come in and have been watching the program long since we've had any of this. So in Psalms chapter 2, and this is what I call it, I call this the outline of the prophetic program. And we might as well take the whole first 4 or 5 verses because they're short. Why do the heathen, now remember in Old Testament language and even in the New, anybody that was not a Jew, born of Isaac and Jacob and the 12 sons, anyone other than that is either called a Gentile or the Goyim, or they're referred to as heathen or uncircumcised. But here the word is heathen. So why do the heathen, the non Jew, the Gentiles, and the people, so that is now referring to the Promised Covenant people, and so why do Jew and Gentile alike, all of them, imagine a vain thing, the kings of the earth, set themselves and the rulers, that is of Israel, take counsel together. In other words, even though the Book of Acts lays the blame on the nation of Israel for crucifying Christ, yet never forget, Rome carried it out. Pilate was the one who made the decree to crucify Him, even though he may not have liked to. And so it was Israel and the Romans together, and they turned against the Anointed, which was the other word for Christ and His Messiahship, and they said, Let us break their bands asunder, and that is the Godheads, let's not let God rule in our affairs, and let us cast away their cords. In other words, God's sovereign rule. They rejected all that, because after all that's what Christ had come to proclaim, was that He was the King and ready to set up the Kingdom, and Jew and Gentile alike said, No way, we'll not have this man to rule over us. Then verse 4. Here was the response of God the Father in heaven. And he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, and the Lord shall have them, the nations of the world, and Israel in derision. And then verse 5. What's the very first word? Then. Now that's not a specific time of 6 months or a year, but nevertheless there would be a definitive time element between His crucifixion and the next event in the timeline, or in the Old Testament prophetic program, and that is not a pretty picture. And what is it? His wrath. The wrath of God. And He will vex them, that is the nations of the world, and Israel in particular. He will vex them in His sore displeasure, that's the tribulation. Yet in spite of everything falling in place according to the prophetic program, everything that the prophets have written, yet the psalmist writes, I have set my King upon the holy hill of Zion. Now what's that? That's the Kingdom. So now if I can get back to my top line, I hope I can make sense out of this. Abraham in 2000, for all those years up to his first advent, it was primarily, not exclusively of course, but primarily God dealing only with the nation of Israel. Christ came, brought about His 3 years of earthly ministry, preaching and proclaiming who He was only to the nation of Israel, and they crucified Him. He ascended back to glory. Now then according to Psalms 2, the next event would be the wrath and vexation, which would be the 7 years of the tribulation, and then Christ would come and yet set up His Kingdom. Now that's Psalms 2, 5, 6 and 7, just as plain as you can get. Now it's obvious then, what's missing? Well the church age. Not a word in the Old Testament about the church age. Not a word in the Gospels that God would turn to the Gentiles, and call out of them a body of Christ, of Jew and Gentile. But the Old Testament was only looking forward to this top line, that Christ would come, He would suffer, He would die, He would be raised from the dead, and then the wrath of God would fall, and then the Kingdom would be set up. Now let me show you how obvious it really is that Peter had no concept of anything other than this Old Testament timeline. In Acts chapter 2 on the day of Pentecost, and they've been accused of imbibing a little too early in the morning. And so that by 9 o'clock they were drunken. Well I don't know how in the world they could accuse someone who was speaking in languages that everybody could understand, of being drunken. My experience with drunken people is you can't understand one language, let alone many. But whatever, they were being accused of having been drinking too much new wine, and then in verse 15 Peter's response was, Acts 2 and verse 15. Peter said, "...for these are not drunken as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day." It's only 9 o'clock in the morning. But what you're seeing is the fulfillment of prophecy, that's what he's saying. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, back in the Old Testament. It was part of prophecy. And now he quotes him, and this is what Joel wrote, and it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, that I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams, and on my servants, and on my handmaids, I will pour out in those days of my Spirit, and they shall prophesy." Peter was seeing it, it was happening on the Day of Pentecost. And then verse 19, Peter should have stopped right there had he known that Israel was going to go into a dispersion, and God was going to turn to John. He should have stopped right there, but he didn't. Peter was still hanging tooth and nail on that Old Testament program, that Israel had to come to a knowledge of their Messiah, and then the tribulation could unroll, and then they'd have the King and the Kingdom. Look what he says in verse 19, and he continues to quote Joel, and I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath, blood, fire, vapor of smoke, the sun turned in the darkness, the moon in the blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come. What's he talking about? The tribulation. And Peter knew that it had to come, but what's the last verse? Verse 19. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Now that's not Paul, that's Peter. And Peter is still on the top timeline, he's in the prophetic program, and all he's talking about here is that the One you crucified has been raised from the dead, He's gone back to glory according to Psalms 110 verse 1, sitting at the Father's right hand, and yet would come the wrath and vexation, and then of course Christ would return and yet set up the Kingdom. But Israel rejected it, and so the King couldn't pour out the tribulation wrath. He had to wait in Heaven until something else glorious would come to pass, and now we have to turn a little further in the Book of Acts to Acts chapter 9. Now this is just a quick skimming review of course. Now in Acts chapter 9 I want you to jump all the way to verse 15. Acts 9.15 And here we are at Saul's tremendous conversion on the road to Damascus. This one who detested, hated with a passion the name of Jesus of Nazareth, because he could see it as just totally rotting away Judaism, defaming the Temple and the Law, and so he did everything humanly possible to stamp out the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And so he thinks he's pretty much covered all his bases in the homeland of Jerusalem and Judea, and so now he has gone to the High Priest and gotten permission to even go to Damascus. Now I read an interesting account of this the other day that I guess I never realized before. I've often wondered, how did the Romans allow that? Well, Judaism had a fair amount of clout even with the Romans, and so the High Priest and the rulers of Israel had enough clout with the Roman government that with a few of the cities of the Middle Eastern Roman Empire, they could actually demand extradition like we do today. In other words if someone from America commits a horrible crime and they flee to Canada, you know what the law allows? We can prevail on the Canadian government to extradite them back home to America. Well the Judaizers, the High Priest of Israel, had that kind of control over the Roman government that there were certain cities where they could ask for extradition. And so this is what Saul and the religious leaders of Israel kick into gear, and they say, let us come up to Damascus and bring these renegade Jews who have followed this Jesus of Nazareth, and let us deal with them. And of course Paul rehearses in chapter 26 that what did they do? They threw them into prison, and they put them to death. Now as Saul of Tarsus has met the Lord on the road to Damascus, and you all know the account, here is where you have that tremendous change in the modus operandi of the Sovereign God. Let's look at verse 15. "...But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way, for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake." Now that opens the door then to the Apostle Paul's ministry among the Gentiles, and now we have to drop down to the second line. This is the one where we're concerned with. Prophecy had run its course, Christ came according to prophecy, He was rejected, He was crucified, but now all of a sudden with Israel's continued rejection, the prophetic program of Jew only has come to a screeching halt. And God's time clock stopped, and that's why I erased the line in this parenthesis. His time clock stops, prophecy stops, and God opened a whole new vista of Scripture, and what is it? The mysteries. Paul says, "...Behold I show you a mystery." In Romans chapter 16 verse 25, and let's look at it a minute quickly, my time is going too fast again, but let's see if we can find it. Romans 16 verse 25, and this is the open part of my time line then. Romans 16 verse 25, and now to Him Paul writes, "...that is of power to establish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery." And so now for almost two thousand years we haven't been in the prophetic program, we are in the Age of Grace, which is the revelation of the mysteries. Things that were kept secret back here in the Old Testament. There was no concept of Gentiles being brought into a relationship with the Almighty God. But when the Church is complete, and it can be taken out of the way in what we call the Rapture, then you see this just backs right up to there, and the prophetic program will go right on, and will yet be completed. I can't put it any other way, that as soon as the Church is out of the way, just slide these two bumps together, and you continue right on then with the prophetic program. Now all you have to do is look at the situation. Israel is back in the land like she was at the time of Christ's first coming. They'll soon have their Temple, and they'll go back under Judaism, and the Law, and Temple worship. The revived Roman Empire is already on the scene. The European community is just about jot and tittle complete. And so everything is now falling into place, that it'll be just like it was at the time of Christ's first advent. Oh granted, technology and everything has exploded, but yet it is all for the sole purpose of bringing about the end time scenario for that second coming of Christ to the nation of Israel. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kenta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kenta, 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.