10. The Former Glory

“Speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people, saying: ‘Who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? And how do you see it now? In comparison with it, is this not in your eyes as nothing? Yet now be strong, Zerubbabel,’ says the Lord; ‘and be strong, Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; and be strong, all you people of the land,’ says the Lord, ‘and work; for I am with you,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘According to the word that I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt, so My Spirit remains among you; do not fear!’

“For thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land; and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘And in this place I will give peace,’ says the Lord of hosts” (Haggai 2:2-9).

The final three books of the Old Testament, Haggai, Zachariah, and Malachi, are the books of the restoration, and thus a Spirit knowing of the revelation of Jesus Christ can be found through them at a similar level as can be known through Isaiah, who, along with David, saw Christ Jesus more clearly than any other before the gospels.

For that reason, I have long drawn from Christ revealed as hidden manna through these last three books in order to understand the revelation of Jesus Christ through His Church today. And, of course, the writers of the New Testament did exactly the same thing for exactly the same reasons. They used many lines from these as well as many other Old Testament books and always applied these lines to the Church of Jesus Christ, and never to any continued natural Israel.

And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He [Jesus, on the road to Emmaus] expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself (Luke 24:27).

We follow Jesus’ example and show how the Old Testament is speaking of Jesus Himself and His revelation through a Church made up of those of us who were formerly Jews and those of us who were formerly Gentiles, now made one new man inside of Him (Ephesians 2).

I wanted the whole context of this line – “The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former.” But Haggai is a book I read over and over knowing deep inside that profound things were entering into my heart, though I did know then what they were.

Of course, Haggai was referring to the comparison between the mighty temple of Solomon and the little thing they were building under the direction of Zerubbabel and Joshua, the High Priest. But here’s the thing. That little temple, not anywhere near the external glory of Solomon’s temple, passed unknown from the pages of history as it was the temple into which Antiochus Epiphanes rode upon his horse, carrying the emblems of Greek paganism into the Holy of Holies.

The temple of Jesus’ day was one built by Herod during the reign of Augustus Caesar, of whom Herod had been a companion and friend.

It is evident, then, that Haggai was referring to something else, to the real house of God, which is the Church.

When you read the account of the Church of Jesus Christ from the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost until the martyrdom of most of the apostles, less than forty years later, you read of recognizably great glory.

But when God through Haggai said, “I will fill this temple with glory,” He was not speaking of the forgotten temple of Zerubbabel long gone from the pages of history, and He was not talking about the early Church under the apostles fresh in the memory of Jesus. He was talking about the Church upon this earth right now today, you and me inside of millions of Spirit-filled believers in Jesus who are caught in a darkness they do not comprehend.

The problem for Haggai is that the builders under Zerubbabel had become discouraged. The work on the temple had stalled. Old men who had remembered Solomon’s temple as it had been 70 years before, were telling everyone that this new temple just did not measure up. It was not anywhere near what Solomon’s temple had been.

One of the greatest arguments of unbelief among Christians who reject Jesus here and now, is that the church today cannot be like the church of the book of Acts because God just isn’t doing that now. Now – we have the Bible and the Nicene Creed. Now – we are waiting to die and “go to” heaven. Now – we have no need for the revelation of glory through us upon this earth.

My purpose in this letter is to present the exact opposite, to set before you how the glory of the early Church cannot compare to the glory of the present Church now in our world today, that is, as God fills this Church with His glory.

Lest we allow the old images to creep back in, let’s define God filling the present Church with His glory. It means – Love one another in exactly the same way that I love you. – Love one another IS God among us in all the revelation of power and glory.

The most terrible reality of the early Church was stated by Philip Schaff in his history of Christianity, and that is that the first century church did not actually know Paul’s gospel.

Everyone calls the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the miraculous signs and wonders coming through the apostles as “the glory” of the early church. It was not. Those things were only the means to an end, an end that was not accomplished BECAUSE Paul’s gospel was not known.

The end is always love one another, something Christians in themselves are incapable of doing.

Jesus never once preached Paul’s gospel in Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s accounts of his ministry. Jesus’ words in John’s gospel are filled with the same reality as Paul’s gospel only because John had spent more than two decades in close fellowship with those few disciples of Paul who understood his gospel more than most.

But here’s the real clincher. I suspect that, in all of his exuberant expression, Paul did not really understand the gospel coming through him, not as the over-the-top words he wrote require.

- The Church which IS His body, the fullness of Christ who fills all inside of all. –

And so when Paul dropped back, all through his letters, to writing about problems and issues in the church, he treated those problems, not as “the fullness of Christ filling all inside of all,” but rather, in a similar way that the other apostles treated with those problems.

We can understand how this could be when we realize that the time period from Paul’s first letter, 1 Thessalonians, to his last, 2 Timothy, was just fifteen years, a time period that included traveling all around on foot, being flogged and stoned, imprisoned and shipwrecked, etc. and etc.

Paul hardly had the time to catch his breath, let alone think about the grandiose claims that had poured from him as he told his scribe what to write. He did have time to think for just a bit in the last few years he was in prison in Rome, that’s why we have Ephesians. But when his life was thrust again into the certainty of execution, he reverted back to the old way of thinking in his final letters to Timothy.

I don’t mean to say that the truth of Christ is not found in all that Paul wrote. We understand that there is a significant difference between good ideas about Jesus and about Christian living versus knowing Christ Jesus as the only life we are.

Here is what I am getting at. The ministry of Jesus to the Jews, the early church in Jerusalem sharing all things in common, and the scattered church across the Greek-speaking world, coming out of Peter and Paul’s ministries in particular, these were never God’s intentions for His Church as the revelation of His glory. All of that was as a seed planted into the ground, yes, but none of it was either the full-fruited ear or the harvest.

For this reason, when we look at the early church in the first chapters of Acts, we are looking at a form set by God intended to give us much understanding concerning the Church as God intends. But we are NOT seeing the real, for the simple reason that none of the apostles were building that church by Paul’s gospel, for they had no knowledge of Paul’s gospel.

Let’s set out a chronology of the church, for I think that would be very useful to us as we seek to know the glory of the “latter” house of God in our world today. (I draw from Reece’s Chronological Bible mostly with a bit from Martyr’s Mirror.)
 

AD 26	27 - 28	29	30 - 36
Jesus baptized by John	Jesus’ in-between ministry	Jesus’ death and resurrection. Birth of the Church through Acts 5:11.	The in-between years of the early church, everyone together as one in community in Jerusalem. Stephen is martyred in AD 35.

 

37	38 - 44	45
Larger persecution hits, much of the church is scattered. Saul is converted to Paul.	Most of the apostles continue in Jerusalem. In AD 40, Paul visits Peter and James, but shares little. Peter preaches to Gentiles. Paul in Tarsus, then Antioch. James, brother of John, martyred in 44.	James, brother of Jesus, writes his letter. Paul begins his first missionary journey.

 

46 - 49	50	51 - 53	54
Paul in Galatia, then back to Antioch.	First council of Church, Paul in Jerusalem. Paul rebukes Peter in Antioch. Paul begins his second missionary journey. Mark writes Peter’s gospel.	From late 40’s on, many apostles go out. Thomas to India, Bartholomew to Armenia, Matthew to Ethiopia, and so on. Paul is two years in Corinth. He writes 1 & 2 Thessalonians, not yet his gospel made clear. Gospels of Matthew and Luke – not known when.	Paul returns to Antioch. Then starts his third missionary journey.

 

55 - 56	57 - 58	59 - 60	61 - 63
Paul spends three years in Ephesus	Paul writes 1 Corinthians from Ephesus. Travels to Macedonia, writes 2 Corinthians there. Arrives at Corinth near end of year. Receives a letter from the Galatian church. Paul writes Galatians then Romans, the clear expression of his gospel. Paul travels back to Jerusalem and is arrested.	Paul in prison in Caesarea, sent to Rome, shipwrecked on the way.	Paul in prison in Rome. Paul writes, in this order, Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians, & Philippians. James is martyred in 63.

 

64 - 66	66 - 68	69 - 70	71-94	95	96 - AD100
Luke writes Acts. Paul released from prison, writes 1 Timothy & Titus. Peter writes 1 Peter. Hebrews written.	Paul writes 2 Timothy. Paul and Peter are martyred in Rome.	Jerusalem surrounded by armies. All Christians leave, Jerusalem is destroyed. Most disciples of Jesus martyred by this time.	John ministers and fellowships with Paul’s disciples in Asia.	John writes his gospel in tune with Paul’s gospel. He writes 1, 2, & 3 John.	John banished to Patmos, sees and writes Revelation, passes by AD 100. 2 Peter and Jude not written until 50 years later.

So, what is all this for? First, God is BIG on history and on setting out the facts and chronology of history. This is part of why I contend that God never “zaps” in non-historical ways. Everything God does comes through the patterns and days of human life in this world. We humans, in our story, ARE the image and revelation of God. We cannot know what God looks like unless we know what we look like.

First, notice that it is more than 35 years from the time Jesus started preaching until Paul wrote down his gospel of the revelation of Christ through us (1 & 2 Corinthians) and our union with Christ (Galatians & Romans) with clarity.

Most of the actions of the apostles and all that the other apostles preached and taught as they went across the earth did NOT contain Paul’s gospel.

At the same time, none of the early church had any of what we call “The New Testament” until into the late AD 50’s for most, almost 25 years with no New Testament, just word of mouth teachings from the apostles. More than that we know that many went around preaching incomplete forms of even the external gospel as it was first known by the disciples of Jesus, as is recorded in Acts 19.

At no point was there a church in the first century built out from Paul’s gospel except the Church at Ephesus and that only in a limited way and of which we know nothing except what John wrote in Revelation 2:1-6, describing it as a church that had been faithful, but had lost its first love.
The early church in Jerusalem, although it proceeded out from the moving of the Holy Spirit, and although it typified, in pattern, the church of the Feast of Tabernacles, yet at no point and in no way did that church know or come out from Paul’s gospel.

Then note that Paul wrote Galatians in late AD 57 and Ephesians in 63. I have highlighted those years as the critical years of the expression of Paul’s gospel.

And so I would ask you this question. Is the church of Jesus Christ, coming in all fulness out from Paul’s gospel now through the next ten years some sort of “cult?”

The point is that such a church cannot come out from Nicene theology. For that reason, in order for the glory of this latter house to be the revelation of God, millions of Spirit-filled believers in Jesus must first escape the Nicene world-view and not only embrace but live as the Church out from Paul’s gospel in fullness. Thus, such a church cannot be anything like any church gathering as known in this present church age – ever.

And this is something more to consider. Even though the New Testament church neither knew nor lived out from Paul’s gospel, nonetheless it was a pure expression of God’s intentions in that season. That church did not know anything, however, about the Nicene “gospel,” the only gospel known in Christianity today. No one knew anything about any “Trinity” or any “eternal damnation” or any division between Jesus and Christ or any split between formerly Jews and formerly Gentiles in the fulfillment of Christ.

Paul’s statement that Peter preached “the good news of circumcision” was savage sarcasm. At no point did either Paul or the Holy Spirit intend some sort of split in the gospel between natural Jews and a non-existent “Gentile” church. And the reality of one new man in Christ is one of the driving points of Galatians and of Paul’s iteration of his gospel.

What I am saying is this. Just as Peter claimed that the grace coming upon us now would be a grace not known in Bible times and the salvation coming through us now would be a salvation not known in Bible times, even so, the Church being birthed upon this earth is a glorious Church far beyond anything seen in the New Testament, and especially far beyond the intervening darkness of Nicene Christianity.

Obviously, we need a second letter titled “The Latter Glory.” But in the remainder of this letter, now, I want to go through some things in the New Testament that point towards this glorious Church we will soon experience but things that were only a shadow of that which is to come and not the full measure.

Let’s start with miracles; miracles are probably the most important thing in this list.
And remember, we are placing our thinking inside of Haggai’s prophecy – The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former. – And as that prophecy is extended by Jesus’ words: The one believing into Me, the works that I do, he also will do, and greater than these he will do, because I am always going towards the Father (John 14:12).

First, we must define “greater.” Greater does not mean “bigger,” as in a greater “show” or “display.” We must know the word “greater” in this context in an entirely different way. “Greater” is that which causes God to be known as He is.

Miracles, however, are first and always acts of compassion. Someone is hurting; love sends forth healing. If that is all a miracle becomes in the present moment, it is the blessing of Love.

But miracles serve a second important purpose as well. They get people’s attention. They cause eyes and ears to turn to the one sent by Jesus in order to hear that one as God speaking.

The question is, then, what is being spoken into them? Dependence on form and hierarchy or Christ their life?

The mission of anyone who is sent by Jesus is one thing only – to cause individual persons to turn full-face into the good speaking of Jesus, to know what Christ their only life really means – and then the sent one is no longer needed and is now free to be just a brother or sister walking alongside.

Then Paul said this: My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (1 Corinthians 2:4-5).

You see, Paul was convinced that miracles were more important than convincing arguments. And we see the reason for that underlying many of Jesus’ miracles. That is, you can see Jesus’ effort to connect the one receiving the miracle directly with the Father and not to Himself.

People must know that they are filled with all the fulness of a God of power and love, that Father carries them. The most important thing one can impart to others is the knowledge of a God of love filling them in power and flowing out from them.

I just watched one of my favorite movies again, Rango. When I watched it last, several years ago, I wrote a whole letter on it. This time I enjoyed it even more and it spoke the same truth ever more profoundly to me. This time, when Rango confessed publicly that he was fake, he said, “I am nobody.” Those words went all through me. They are now wonderful to me.

You see, always in the past, whenever I heard someone preach such a thing at me, it left me without hope. The reason is that it was clearly up to me to make myself nothing, but having nothing to replace “me” except more failed effort. You can see the hopeless confusion in which such a “Sisyphus” task must leave those who give ear to it.

This time, when I heard the words, “I am nobody,” all I heard was my wonderful release into Christ Jesus being all that I am, that all my humanity is found only inside of Him. I don’t have to prove to anyone that I “bear Christian fruit.” Jesus has already proven all, and He has, not replaced me, but filled me.

Then, when Rango wandered away in despair, finally meeting up with Clint Eastwood as the “Great Spirit of the West,” Clint Eastwood spoke the most wonderful words into him. “It’s not about you; it’s about them.”

It’s the whole story of Rango that makes those words so powerful. I would recommend your watching the show, just to have those words go through you in that way.

When Jesus healed someone, it wasn’t about Jesus; it was about them. When God fills someone with His glory, it’s not about God; it’s about them. When I minister Christ to you, it’s not about me or even Jesus, but about you.

Put your own name in the blank and shout these words out loud.

Father, I desire that __________ whom You have given Me might be with Me, that _________ might behold My glory that You gave Me, because You loved Me out from the Source of the cosmos. Righteous Father, although the world has not known You, I have known You and ___________ has known that You sent Me. And I have made known to ___________ Your name and will make it known, that the love with which You loved Me, might be inside of ____________, and I inside of _____________.

It's not about Father, it’s not about Jesus, it’s about you.

And as Father sends you out, Christ Jesus moving as and through you, it becomes not about you, but about them.

Let’s bring this back into our look at the former glory of the early church.

Nothing done by anyone in the New Testament became permanent in the knowledge of God inside the human experience. All who were healed got sick again. All who were raised from the dead died again. Nothing established in the early church was able to prevent the ravenous wolves from becoming the “ministry” and “fathers” of the church. And death continued to rule generation after generation.

More than that, from the Day of Pentecost until now, in no place, at no time, do we see a Church living together out from Paul’s gospel, the revelation of Jesus Christ through His body, many together as one, out from Christ their only life.

I am uninterested in any “return” to a “New Testament Church.” Christian community filled with apostolic word and mighty demonstrations of God in power cannot be what we require. It is possible to have all of that as we see in the early church and as I lived inside of for many years and knew first hand, and still not have Paul’s gospel of Christ in us, as us, and through us together.

The final Glorious Church of today must be a Church through which the knowledge of God as He is, God made visible, Love among us, becomes the permanent fabric of everyone’s lives.

This water flows toward the eastern region, goes down into the valley, and enters the sea. When it reaches the sea, its waters are healed. – Along the bank of the river, on this side and that, will grow all kinds of trees used for food; their leaves will not wither, and their fruit will not fail. They will bear fruit every month, because their water flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for medicine (Ezekiel 47:8 & 12).

And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:1-2).

The river is always the knowledge of God personally, God here and now, God among us, God filling us full, God flowing out. God touching and being touched. God loving and being loved. God known by all.

“Their fruit will not fail.”

If you live inside of Me, and My words live inside of you, then whatever you desire, you shall ask, and it will happen and become for you. In this is My Father glorified, that you should bear much fruit, and so you shall be My disciples (John 15:7-8).

You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you [set you forth], that you should go {same word as Jesus said earlier, that He is continuously going} and that you should bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you might ask the Father inside of My name, He might give it to you. These things I command you that you might love one another {full reciprocity} (John 15:16-17).

That you should bear much fruit (God known as the life and joy of each one), and that your fruit should remain.

The fruit is not about you; it’s about them.

The former glory did not remain. The latter glory is greater, for the knowledge of God revealed through each one and through all of us together remains forever.