5.36 Epistles – The Church age ends when the Church is Raptured

For the last 2,000 years, the Church has been living in the New Covenant, under the dispensation of grace (Ephesians 3:2). After the book of Acts, Christianity grew and it became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

Then the church became corrupt and was backslidden during the dark ages. It lost everything that the early apostolic Church had in the book of Acts. It lost the power. It lost the gifts. It lost is faith. Finally, it lost its way to salvation. The truths of the Epistles were lost.

Then in the 16th Century, the Holy Spirit began restoring the truths of the Epistles back to the Church one truth at a time. The first truth that God restored was the truth of “justification by faith” through Martin Luther in the Reformation. This was the revelation from the Book of Romans.

The Church had found its way to salvation, but still lacked the empowerment. Then in 1906, God poured out His Spirit afresh just as He did in the book of Acts. The people experienced the move of the Holy Spirit in the Pentecostal revival just as the early disciples did in the book of Acts. God restored the truth of Baptism in the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit to the Church. This was followed by the Charismatic revival in the second half of the 20th century, where God brought the truths of the Holy Spirit to the mainline churches that had earlier rejected the move.

In the 1970s, God also restored truth about the important of faith to the Church in the Word of Faith revival. Kenneth Hagin was raised from his deathbed to teach God’s people faith. Today, God is still restoring truths about the fullness of our New Covenant in Christ – truths that we have covered in the Epistles.

Where is the Holy Spirit leading us to next? The Holy Spirit has been preparing the bride of Christ step by step for a big event. This is the Rapture – where the bride of Christ will be caught up to be with Him forevermore. Paul talks about this event in his Epistle:-

(1 Thessalonians 4:16-18, NKJV)
For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Today, the Holy Spirit bids you to walk in step with Him even as He is preparing us for the Rapture. He wants to fulfill His unique purpose in each of us before Jesus returns. He wants to establish us in the truths of the Epistles to empower us to live in the fullness of His promises. We live in exciting times.