This book is entitled “The End of the Church Age and After.” However, the essential issue that is being presented is not the subject of the end of the church age. The essential issue is the authority of the Bible. Is the Bible truly the ultimate and final authority to which every true believers is subject?

    The big question each one must face is: Do I have such a fear of God that I tremble before Him if I suspect a doctrine I hold may be contrary to the Word of God?

    Or is it possible that I feel altogether secure with God because I faithfully obey each and every doctrine that my church teaches. Do I realize that some of the doctrines held by my church may not be faithful to the Bible? In turn, do I trust that everything my church teaches is altogether true to the Bible?

    To say it another way, if I discover that a doctrine my church teaches is not faithful to God’s Word, do I tremble in fear? We must remember that any doctrine we hold that is not faithful to the Bible is a lie. It is something developed by men. Therefore, to believe that this doctrine is true, when in actuality, it is not true to the Bible, is to place our trust in men rather than in God. Actually, it is a sin equivalent to that committed by ancient Israel as they worshipped God in Jerusalem but also worshipped other gods at the high places. This was such a serious sin that God finally destroyed Israel in 709 B.C. and Judah in 587 B.C. As we will discover in this book, it is such a serious sin of our day that God’s judgment is upon today’s churches.

    The same principle must be applied to this study. Has every effort been made to be sure that everything presented in this book is altogether faithful to the Bible? The teachings and the conclusions must have nothing to do with visions or voices or dreams. They are to be unrelated to human speculation. They must be carefully founded on the Bible alone.

    It must be admitted that at time, it is very difficult to obey the bible. That is, sometimes as we carefully read the Bible we find that God is giving us a command for some kind of action. And sometimes we don’t like that command. We don’t like it at all. Then comes the big question that each of us

must personally ask: In my fear of God, am I ready to be obedient to the command even though I don’t like it? The answer has to be, “If I am a true child of God, I want to be obedient to each and every command. My delight is to do the will of God.” If I keep hesitating to obey, I must ask myself the fair questions, “Am I truly a child of God?”

The Saved Person Is a New Creation

    The reason why that is the spiritual mentality of the true believer is because at the moment he became saved, he became born again. He experienced form heaven above a new resurrected soul in which he never desires to sin again. In I John 3:9, God assures of this as He declares:

    Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

    The seed that remaineth in him is Christ (Galatians 3:16).

    Therefore, the true believer has become a new creature in Christ (II Corinthians 5:17). At death, which could come moments after salvation or years after salvation, in his soul existence, he goes immediately, without any change, into heaven to live and reign with Christ. Because he was given his new resurrected soul, God can say of him in I John 2:3-4:

    And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

    He can also understand Romans 7:22:

    For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:

    He is in accordance with the testimony of Romans 7:24, “who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” He deplores the fact that he must still live in a sin-cursed body that will also become saved when Christ comes on the last day.

    Frankly stated, if a highly successful pastor or a Biblical theologian or I do not find an intense desire in my life to be obedient to all the Bible command, so that I tremble before God lest I teach something contrary to the will of God, I may have evidence that I am not saved. Ordination or acclaim that I am a

faithful Bible teacher or elder or pastor, in themselves, give no guarantee that I have become saved.

    Unfortunately, those who are not saved may not be able to understand these truths. They may conclude that these statements concerning a new resurrected soul are merely the opinion of a writer of this study. In fact, that judgment can extend to this whole study so that the reader may conclude that this study is merely the opinion of the writer.

    The best this writer can hope for is that each one who reads this book will carefully and diligently check the Bible for the validity of each conclusion that is taught in this study.

Progressive Revelation

    The Bible is a complete revelation of God’s Word to the human race. We are not to add to it. We are not to take away form it. It alone an in its entirety is not the Word of God.

    However, when we consider how we receive truth from the Bible, we have another matter altogether. God insists that there is a timetable known only to God by which He reveals the truths of the Bible to mankind.

    For example, Jesus clearly told his disciples that the time would come when He would be killed and after three days, He would rise again. Mark 8:31 declares:

    And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

    Even though this is a plain, clear statement, it was not understood at all by the disciples. It was only after His resurrection, as the disciples were reminded by the two men in shining garments, who stood outside the empty sepulcher, that they understood Luke 24:6-8 informs us:

    He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into

the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words,

    God had given them the revelation that Christ was to be killed and rise again, but it was not a revelation that became apart of their understanding until Christ had risen.

    Likewise, we read in Ephesians 3:3-5:

    How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words, Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ) Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit;

    God is indicating that a mystery was made known to the Apostle Paul, “That the Gentiles should be followheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel” (verse 6). However, this truth was repeatedly written about in the Bible, for example, Abram’s name was changed to Abraham because he would be the father of many nations (Genesis 17:5-7).

    Many years earlier, Jesus had told the disciples in Matthew 28:19:

    Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

    The truth that those whom God would save would include people from all nations of the world is taught in many places in the Bible. But while this truth was included in God’s revelation to mankind, only when Saul of Tarsus had become saved was it truly revealed to the minds of the apostles.

    This principle of progressive revelation is especially emphasized in Daniel 12:8,9:

    And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.

    In God’s revelation, which is the Bible, God has a great many things to say about the end of the world and the details that lead up to the end of the world. But God has a timetable for the giving of understanding of these truths.

    The true meaning of these end-time statements is not to be revealed to the minds of men until near the time of the end. This is why many devout, God-fearing theologians of the past have endeavored to explain the meaning of Biblical end-time passages, but they have not even come close to the truth. This was not a failure on their part. It was simply not time for God to reveal the meaning of these end-time passages.

    Thus, we can expect that in our day, when the sings are showing that we must be close to the end of time, the meaning of a great many Biblical passages should become revealed to the minds of careful, diligent students of the Bible. The very fact that we can find great harmony in our understanding of Biblical passages that heretofore have been very obscure greatly encourages us that God has placed us on the right track. We can expect, therefore, that many passages of the Bible which in earlier times have been somewhat mysterious, can now be understood.


The Bible- the supreme law book

    It must be also emphasized that the Bible is a book of law. It is the supreme law book by which God governs all mankind. Even as each political government has written laws by which the rulers govern so, too, God who is King of kings and Lord of lords, has a written law by which He governs. Moreover, rulers of nations are subject to the written law of their land. So, too, God is subject to the written law, the Bible, by which He governs the nations. This principle is set forth in the language of Psalm 138:2:

I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.

    We stand amazed at the idea that the Word of God is above all His Name. But when we understand that the Word of God is a synonym for the law of God we learn that God, too, is subject to all the laws He has written in the law book, the Bible. When we read the 176 verses of Psalm 119, for example, in each of more than 170 of these verses we find a reference to words such as law, precept, commandment, word, testimony, statute, etc. Each of these words is a synonym for the word “law.”

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.

And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

    A trial requires a judge, and throughout the Bible God has repeatedly indicated that God in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ is the Judge. We read, for example in Psalm 9:7,8:

But the LORD shall endure for ever: he hath prepared his throne for judgment. And he shall judge the world in righteousness, he shall minister judgment to the people in uprightness.

    The law of God (the Bible) also reveals the penalty that will be required of those who are found guilty. That penalty is eternal damnation. God warns in II Thessalonians 1:8,9:

In flaming fire taking vengeance to them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction form the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;

    The face that essentially the Bible is a book of law is normally not apparent to the reader of the Bible. This is because God declares His laws in the context of history, in the context of examples of people and nations that disobeyed His laws and suffered the consequence of their sins. God’s laws are frequently hidden because God sometimes spoke utilizing metaphors and parables. But in the measure we begin to understand these obscure passages, we always find that the basic truth being brought is the law of God.

    An integral part of God’s law book is the He declared His purpose and plans to publish the teachings of His law book to all the world. Moreover, a most important part of God’s law are the laws that govern God’s salvation plan - a plan that is required to maintain the integrity of God’s law.

    Because God is subject to the laws set forth in the Bible, He cannot have a people for Himself eternally unless their sins (their violations of the law of God) have been adjudicated (these individuals have stood for trial) and the penalty demanded by the law (eternal damnation) has been paid. Therefore, when God the Father gave to Christ those whom He had elected to salvation (John 6:37) it meant that Christ must somehow first satisfy the requirements of the law of God as it applied to these individuals. That is, the penalty for the sins of these elect individuals had to be paid before they could be forgiven so they could eternally be with Christ.

    This is why Jesus had to become sin for them, be brought to trial as their stand-in, as their substitute, on their behalf. This is what the cross is all about. There Christ was found guilty because all of the sins of the elect were laid on Him. It was at the time God poured out His wrath on Him on behalf of those He came to save. Because God is under the same law that mankind is under He had to suffer sufficiently so that His suffering would be perfectly equal to each of these elect persons spending an eternity in Hell. Only because He was God as well as man could God so intensify the punishment on Him that is was equal to a perfect satisfaction of the law’s demands.

    Once we have learned this tremendously important principle that the Bible is God’s Supreme Law Book we should tremble as we read it. God, in the Bible, is constantly declaring the laws by which we are to live. Violation will absolutely bring about the penalty of eternal damnation. Therefore as we read in the Bible God’s laws that govern the church age, that relate the end of the local church age and the bringing in of the final harvest, we should carefully study God’s law book, the Bible, to know God’s Will. It cannot be emphasized too strongly the seriousness of disobeying God’s laws as they are set forth in this divine lawbook, the Bible.

    Because God Himself is subject to the laws of the Bible, He must bring to completion the punishments He has decreed that are to be experienced by any human - Even church leaders and local congregations that transgress His laws.