Turning Point - David Jeremiah

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
If the Seven Churches of Revelation each represent a period
of time in the history of the Church, which one
symbolizes the age we're living in now today. On turning point,
doctor David Jeremiah offers his understanding based on John's vivid
description and revelation as well as what's happening in our
modern churches. With the conclusion of his message, The Church

(00:29):
through the Ages, here's David, and I want to.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Thank you for joining us as we finished this week
together and as we get our feet on the ground
in the Book of Revelation for this extended study of
the last book in the Bible. Today we're going to
pick up where we left off yesterday as we put
together the Eternal Message from the Seven Churches of Chapters
two and three, how they spoke to history as actual places,

(00:57):
but how they speak to us today churches and as people.
The Church through the Ages. Part two will be up
in just a moment, But first some things I need
to tell you about. As many of you know, we
take some conference cruises during the year. This year, for
the first time in a long time, we'll have three.
We're going to be sailing to Alaska July twelfth through

(01:20):
the nineteenth and then later on in October we're going
to New England. These are wonderful opportunities to be refreshed
in your spirit, in your body, to rest, to see
some great things, to enjoy the fellowship of other Christians,
to hear the word of God, and to be blessed
with great worship. If you've never been with us on

(01:42):
one of our cruises, I hope you will take advantage
of one of these two and come and join us.
You can find out all about it at David Jeremiah
dot org. Now here's part two, the Church through the Ages.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Now for the Church of Pergamus. Write out of the
letter written to the church is the phrase the doctrine
of Balim. Now listen carefully to how this fits in
with the pattern of church history. As you remember, Balim
was a colorful Old Testament prophet. He was a gentile.

(02:19):
In fact, as far as I know, he was the
only gentile prophet to prophesy about the nation of Israel
and its future in the Old Testament scriptures. Balem, if
you remember the story from the Old Testament, was hired
by the King of Moab to curse the Israelites. The

(02:40):
King of Moab got Balim the prophet, the gentile prophet,
and he wanted to pay him money to curse the Israelites,
because Israel was standing on the threshold of Moab's territory,
ready to engage them in war. And the Moabites had
heard about how Israel had conquered all their enemies, and
they wanted an advantage against them, and so they figured

(03:01):
if they could get Balim on their side, he could
curse Israel and maybe that would work. Well. You know
the story. Four times Balim tried to curse Israel, and
every time he opened his mouth to curse them, God
put a blessing in his mouth instead. And so the
more he tried to curse Israel, the more he blessed them.
The people that hired him were getting kind of upset

(03:23):
with him. Here. They had hired him to curse Israel,
and every time he opened his mouth he blessed them.
And then Balem came up with his devilish doctrine, and
this is what he said. He said, my lord king,
if you cannot curse them, then corrupt them. Entice the
men of Israel with the women of Moab, and God

(03:44):
will judge Israel and they will be destroyed. That was
his idea. And whenever in the New Testament you read
about the doctrine of Balim, you always can understand that
what is talking about is this. It is the mirror
age of the world and godly things together for the

(04:05):
advantage that it provides to the world. Balem's idea was,
I can't curse Israel, so the way I will do
this is corrupt them. I will get Israel's men to
be seduced by the Moabite women, and when they intermarry,
God will judge them for their sin. And of course
that's exactly what happened. Now in this period of Church history,

(04:28):
in the Pergamus period, that is what happened. Let me
tell you the story. The last Roman emperor was a
man by the name of Diocletian. And when Diocletian died,
ultimately the emperor who succeeded him was Constantine. Constantine became
a quote unquote nominal Christian, a professing Christian, and all

(04:52):
of a sudden, under Constantine's leadership, the persecuting Caesars gave
way to the patronizing Caesar, and the world came into
the Church and Christianity became the state religion. Constantine had
a mass baptism, and he baptized all the soldiers in
his army all at one time. You didn't ask, you
didn't come forward, you just were baptized, period and made

(05:16):
a part of the church. Well, the result of that
state religion was that Rome and the Church were married.
The Roman Empire and the Church of Jesus Christ were
brought together. And isn't it interesting that the word pergamus
is a word which, being translated, means marriage. Rome and

(05:38):
the Church were married. And here's what happened. Listen carefully.
Pagan temples became Christian churches, Heathen priests became Christian clergy,
Pagan feast days became Christian festivals. Paganism was baptized, and
the church effectively corrupted, and the core continued as a

(06:03):
long line of church officials became high officials in the
Roman world. It was, indeed the doctrine of balem, the
marriage of the world and the Church, the coming together
of that which is good and that which is evil.
Once again, we're back to a two hundred year period
of time from AD fifteen hundred to seventeen hundred, and

(06:27):
the key phrase for Sardies. From the letter written to
Sardis is the phrase a name but dead. Oftentimes when
we think of the rule of the Roman Church, we
get all excited when we start to talk about the
period of the Reformation. And I'm not going to try
to take away from your thoughts of history any glorying

(06:50):
that you may have in the Reformation. But I want
to tell you it wasn't all it was cracked up
to be. Let me share with you what I mean.
When Martin Luther, on October thirty first, fifteen seventeen AD
nailed his ninety five thesis to the door at Wittenberg, Germany,
halfway up the Santa Scarlet, seeking absolution for his sins,

(07:16):
Martin Luther said that he suddenly heard the voice of
the Lord ringing in his soul, saying the just shall
live by faith. And he rose to his feet, dusted
off his robes, descended the stairs supposed to have been
Pilot's staircase, brought from Jerusalem to Rome by Helena, the

(07:37):
mother of Constantine. And he went down those stairs, and
he marched out of the building and out of Rome forever.
But it was almost as if the mighty movement that
he began with his marching out of Rome, was stillborn

(07:58):
state churches to the place of the Roman churches, and
before long any further spiritual progress was arrested. There were
some good things about the Reformation in that long two
hundred year period. All of us who have studied it
know that it was during that period of time that

(08:20):
the scriptures were encouraged to be circulated. Up until that time,
Rome had a lock on them. They were sealed under
Roman dominion. And you know that passage of scripture that
says no scripture is any private interpretation. That was a
famous watchword under the Roman rule. That meant nobody could
interpret it, but the priest or the pope. No individual

(08:40):
had the right to interpret scripture. Of course, we know
that's not what that passage means. The scriptures were unlocked.
The doctrine of justification by faith came alive during the
Reformation period. During the period of Sardis, the Reformers swept
away much ritualistic and doctrinal rubbish, but they failed to

(09:03):
recover the doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ. It's
interesting when you read Reformation history, there is almost nothing
written about the Second Coming of Christ. Someone has said
they turned to God from idols, but not to wait
for his son from heaven. And during the latter part
of the Reformation period, Rome staged a counter Reformation under

(09:28):
Ignacious Leola in order to try to regain the ground
that had been lost in the Reformation, and the sad
spiritual state of the church continued. And it could truly
be said of that period of time they had a name,
but they were dead. Look around you today at what's
going on in the religious church. Just put the Roman

(09:51):
Church aside, put all the cults aside, take the evangelical
fundamentalist churches and put them aside. And what do you
have left? Basically, what you have lef left is the
result of the Reformation, the inability of the reformers to
totally subtract themselves from the ritualism and the paganism that
was so much married to Rome. And so we have

(10:15):
in the period of sardis the period of Reformation. The
sixth period of church history is the period signified by
the Church of Philadelphia from AD seventeen hundred to a d.
Nineteen hundred, another two hundred year period of time, and
the phrase in the Letter to the Church of Philadelphia

(10:39):
is this phrase an open door. The Age of Philadelphia
from seventeen hundred to nineteen hundred was an age of
revival and missionary expansion. In all of the ages of
church history, this is the most exciting to study. For
the Philadelphian age is the age of D. L. Moody

(10:59):
and Charles and Spurgeon, the great preachers. It is the
period of time when the great revivals broke out under
men like George Whitfield a. D. Seventeen thirty nine, and
John Wesley and Charles Finney. All of the great heroes
that we study about in church history, the vast majority
of them come from the Philadelphian period of time, and

(11:23):
the churches of that period of time began to take
on new life. Thousands of people were being saved, and
great movements for God were started all over the world. Socially,
the impact was felt in that during this section of time,
slave trade was stopped, ungodly child labor was stopped, The

(11:44):
poor began to be objects of concern on the part
of the masses of people. Social works began under leaders
such as men like George Mueller. If you've never read
his life, you're missing out. In a great blessing. George
Mule single handedly opened his arms to the wretched orphans
of his day, and by the fellowship that he had

(12:07):
with the Lord Jesus and by prayer alan he financed
millions of dollars to feed and to clothe and to
take care of the orphans. His story of faith is
one of the great stories out of this period of time.
And while all of this was going on in the homeland,
the great missionary movement was started as well. Missionaries were

(12:30):
dispatched to every corner of the world. William Carey went
to India, Hudson Taylor went to China, David Livingstone went
to Africa, Judson went to Burma, Peyton went to the
Cannibals of the New Hebrides. And God had set before
the church an open door, and every open door that
was set before it, the Church walked through. It was

(12:51):
the period of great expansion in the missionary vision of
the Church of Jesus Christ. If you want to go
back to the Great Oath of the Church of Jesus Christ,
there are two periods. You must look at. The period
that is historically covered in the Book of Acts and
the period between seventeen hundred and nineteen hundred, and that

(13:12):
brings us to the seventh period of church history, the
last period of time from nineteen hundred to the rapture
of the Church of Jesus Christ. The seventh church is
the Church of Leiadica. It is from nineteen hundred to
the rapture, and the key phrase in the letter to

(13:34):
the Church of Leadica is the phrase thou art lukewarm, nauseating, sickening, poor, wretched, blind,
torn by false cults, ripped apart by offbeat theologies, incapable
because too weak, it could not deal with the problems

(13:56):
of today's world. And the Laiadicean Church, which symbolizes the
church that will be on this earth before the Lord returns,
is a weak church that has tried to be both
in the world and out of the world. And it
is neither cold nor hot. It is lukewarm, and it
is powerless to deal with the issues of the day.

(14:19):
In the proverbial picture, it is the lethargic Christian making
daisy chains on the brink of the precipice while the
multitudes press forward toward eternal doom. And that is the
prophetic history of the Church, starting with the Church of Ephesus,
moving through persecution and from persecution, the marriage of the

(14:42):
Church to the Roman Empire, and then the long and
dark age of Roman rule and Martin Luther bringing about
the Reformation and the Reformation running its course, and then
the period of expansion, and finally the to see an age. Now,

(15:03):
before we close our bibles, let me point out something
that will help us as we move into the future.
It will not be long before we will be studying
the seals and the bowls and the vials of judgment.
There are seven seals, and seven vials, and seven bowls,
and in each one of them, each one of the sevens.

(15:26):
The sevens are divided in half, four and three each one.
You will see it as you study it. There are
four that are significant and three to follow. There are
seven made up of four and three, And so it
is with the churches. Let me explain the first four
periods of church history are successive. By that I mean

(15:49):
they follow one after the other. The apostolic period of
the first century, signified by Ephesis, is followed successively by
the period of per There is no overlap. The period
of persecution is followed by the period of marriage between
the Church and Rome, and then the long and dark

(16:12):
age of Roman rule. The first four periods of time
in church history are successive, one right after the other,
but the last three are not successive. They are contemporaneous.
Let me explain what I mean. They all follow to
some degree one after the other by way of emphasis.

(16:34):
But one does not end when the next one begins.
For instance, when the period of Philadelphia and History began,
did the Roman Church end? Absolutely not, It continues to
this very day. And when the period of church expansion began,
did the period of Reformation end? Is not the influence

(16:56):
of the Reformation felt everywhere today in many of the
churches that were formed out of the Catholic Church. And
when the Ladicean age comes, if it is upon us today,
is it not true that while there are many lukewarm
churches that do nothing for God but have only the
name of Christ in their title, there are still churches

(17:17):
that have the Philadelphian spirit, that send missionaries out to
the far flowng corners of the earth and walk through
every open door. And the answer to those questions is yes,
in the last ages there will be Philadelphia and Ladicea
and Sardis somewhat living together until the coming of the Lord.
And even though as we move towards the coming of

(17:39):
Christ there will be more and more of the Ladicean spirit,
there will probably never be a time when there's not
some Philadelphian emphasis and some Sardis emphasis. For the last
three periods of church history are contemporaneous. And all of this,
as we look at it now, forms this picture in
our mind, and I hope you have it. Write the

(18:01):
things which thou hast seen Jesus Christ and all of
his glory standing in the midst of his churches. Write
the things which are, and beginning with the Church of Ephesus,
John writes magnificently the history of the Church from its
birth until its rapture. And write the things which shall be,

(18:22):
beginning with the fourth chapter. Look down in your bibles,
chapter four of the Book of Revelation. After these things,
I looked and behold a door standing open in heaven.
That's the next thing, isn't it. The next thing that
we should expect is the open door in heaven. The
Church age is about to end. In fact, I went

(18:43):
back through my Bible when I found something I had
not seen before hold your bibles open for just one moment.
Look and chapter two and verse five. Jesus is speaking
first of all to the Ephesian church, and he says, remember, therefore,
from where you have fallen, repent and do the first work.
Now watch this, or else I will come to you quickly.

(19:07):
Look at Chapter two, verse sixteen. Repent, or else I
will come to you quickly. Look at chapter three and
verse three. Therefore, if you will not watch, I will
come upon you as a thief, and you will not
know what hour I will come upon you. Chapter three,

(19:29):
verse eleven. Behold, I come quickly. Chater three, verse twenty.
Behold I stand at the door and knock. Do you
see it? The message of the coming of Christ throughout
the period of the church ever more urgent as we

(19:50):
move to the end of the Age. I am coming,
I'm coming quickly. I'm coming as a thief. Behold I
come quickly. Behold I stand at the door and knock,
and many women. I believe we're living in an age
where Jesus is standing at the door of the church
and he's knocking. The next thing we're going to hear

(20:15):
is the trumpet announcing his coming, and the dead in
Christ shall rise first, and we who are alive and
remain shall be caught up together with them, And so
shall we ever be with the Lord. The Church is
moving to its end. The age is rapidly moved to

(20:37):
its fruition. I often think about this when I study
the Bible. I could have been born in the Smyrnian
age of persecution. I could have been born in the
dark ages of Roman domination. I've often wondered what kind
of a reformer I would have been. I could have

(20:58):
been born in the Early Age, age of the missionary period.
By the grace of God, He's let me be born
in this age. When Jesus is knocking at the door,
I believe with all of my heart that I am
going to live long enough to see my Jesus. I
do not expect to die. I don't expect to come

(21:21):
out of the grave and go to see Jesus. I
expect to see him in the rapture. Look at the
ages that have passed, Look at all the time that
has gone by. If you look at the calendar, all
of the pages are pulled off the calendar but one.
There's only one left, and we're living on the bottom
edge of that page, and the only thing left now

(21:42):
is for Christ to come. I don't see any event
on the prophetic horizon that has to be fulfilled until
Jesus comes again. I believe in the imminent return of
Christ that it could happen tonight, and I want that
belief to be more than just something in my head.
I want it to get into my heart, because if
Jesus is standing at the door of the church knocking,

(22:04):
seeking entrance, then I need to be standing as his
representative at the door of the hearts of men and women,
asking them to receive the Savior who want so desperately
to come in. The Lord is coming back, and the
next moment is to look and see a door standing
open in heaven. If it should be tonight. Are you ready,

(22:27):
you say, Pastor, I've gone to church all my life.
Also did most everybody in all the periods of history
we've talked about. The people who lived in the thy
Tyrant Age thought they were great, wonderful Christian people. After all,
wasn't everybody a Christian? Constantine had proclaimed them such. But
I'm asking you individually, are you a Christian? You know,

(22:50):
the Bible says something to Christians about the return of
the Lord. I don't understand this completely, but it frightens
me whenever I read it. It speaks of us being
ashamed at his coming often in the scripture. In fact,
I think there is something like fourteen or fifteen occasions
in the New Testament where we are encouraged to do
certain things lest we be ashamed at his coming. You're

(23:13):
going to be ashamed. It is coming. If he should
walk right into the middle of your life right now,
if tonight should be the night and he should just
intervene right in the middle of what you're doing with
your life, are you ready? Are you going to be ashamed?
It is coming. One of the things the Bible does
for us through prophecy, it warns us, It warns us

(23:34):
wonderfully that the time is short, and the opportunities are limited,
and whatever we're going to do, we best be doing amen.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
The Book of Revelation, believe it or not, has parentheses
throughout the book where salvation is once again presented. And
as you may know, during this period of time, one
of the greatest revival us of all of history takes
place through the efficacy of the one and forty four
thousand Jewish evangelists. Salvation is always at hand, But the

(24:12):
problem is salvation doesn't come upon you. You have to ask
for salvation. You have to come and ask the Lord
Jesus Christ to be your savior. Here on this Friday
edition of Turning Point.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
Would you do that?

Speaker 2 (24:25):
Would you just bow your head and ask Christ to
come and take over your life, to forgive your sin
and give you the gift of eternal life, which he
promises to all who will believe in him. It will
be the most important thing you ever did in your life.
I promise you you'll look back on it and remember
that's when things begin to move forward for me. Tell

(24:46):
us about it when you're right. We'd love to hear
your story, and we'll see you on Monday after this
great weekend.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
This finish.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
The message you've just heard originated from Shadow Mountain Community
Church and David Jeremiah, the senior pastor. Turning Point is
also on radio and TV this weekend. To learn where
to find it, visit our website David Jeremiah dot org,
Slash Radio. That's David Jeremiah dot org, Slash Radio, or
call eight hundred ninety four to seven nineteen ninety three,

(25:17):
ask for your copy of David's new book, Sixty Days
of Prophecy, The Truth behind Endtime Warnings. It's yours for
a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the
Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard, New International and
New King James versions available in your choice of attractive
cover options. Your words of encouragement are so appreciated. Please

(25:39):
write to us at Turning Point PO Box thirty eight
thirty eight, San Diego, California, nine two one sixty three.
This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us Monday as we
continue the series Escape the Coming Night on Turning Point
with Doctor David Jeremiah