Jet Tour of Church History

Church History is a vital tool for understanding the current maelstrom of theological deceptions swirling around us. After this field trip to the Vatican, we spent the next hour in the classroom, where I summarized the eras of Church History, where all the denominations came from, and where all of this is headed. It was such a thrilling time to see the NextGeneration students connecting all the pieces and getting their own personal framework of Church History as a guide to understanding the present.

The Seven Churches Portray Seven Stages

For just a moment, let me give you a perspective. Revelation 2-3 contain seven specific letters to historic churches. But these letters also portray patterns, problems, and directions representing a prophetic perspective on the church's future: from Christ’s ascension in Century One to His coming back to Rapture His Church. Let me show you what many Bible teachers have taught over the years. The seven historic stages of Christ’s Church:

1--There was the Ephesian period (30-60 AD): this was a period of warmth and love and labor for Christ, dating directly from the apostles, in which defection began just as Christ warned-by the gradual cooling of the love of some, the false professions of others and the incoming of undue exaltations of the clergy and church offices.

2--Then came the Smyrna period (60-300 AD): this was the era of martyrdom and of the sweet savor unto God of faithfulness unto death, but it was marked by further developments of the departure from the true simplicities of the Gospel.

3--Then followed the Pergamite period (300-500 AD): this was when true faith began to fade, spirituality gradually formed itself into a system, the church united with the world, and finally, the mystery rites of Babylon began to permeate Christ’s Church.

4--Then came the Thyatiran period (500-1500 AD): this became the age of purple and glory for the corrupt priesthood and of the darkness of truth; the age of effeminacy and clerical domination, when the church usurped the place of Christ and the witnesses of Jesus were given to the dungeons, stakes, and inquisitions; the age of the enthronement of false prophetess, reaching up to the days of Luther and the Reformation.

5--Then came the Sardian period (1500-1800 AD): this was seen as the age of separation and return of the rule of Christ. It was an age of many worthy names but marked by the deadness of institutionalizing Christ through the denominations. It was an age covering the spiritual lethargy of the Protestant centuries before the coming of the great evangelical movements of the last two hundred years.

6--Next was the Philadelphian period (1800-1950 AD): a return to the zeal for missions of the early church, a time of significant evangelistic outreach and devotional godliness. Nearly every corner of the world was penetrated with the Gospel like no time since Pentecost.

7--This brings us to the Laodicean period (1950 to the present): the Church of the West has become so self-sufficient, comfortable, and untested that lukewarmness, materialism, empty profession, and false peace have become accepted. Jesus warned of this day in which He finds an unthinking multitude who suppose they are Christians and are not.

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   • AN OVERVIEW OF CHURCH HISTORY