In which we discuss the end times theology of the early church; Romans 5 and 8; victory past and present; narcissistic eschatology.

July 6, 2025

Tim: Let’s take a deeper dive into Colossians 1:5,

…because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the Gospel …

I find the topic of “the hope” a fascinating one. It speaks to the eschatology of the early church, and it permeates the ministries of Jesus and the apostles. They believed that what they were hoping for would happen within their lifetime. Colossians was one of Paul’s prison letters putting the date around AD 62. It was then less than a decade before the temple was destroyed.

We find eschatology in Peter’s sermon at Pentecost. The very first sermon of Apostolic Christianity is packed with warnings of a coming apocalypse. Peter quotes out of Hosea saying that “in the last days” God is going to pour forth his spirit on all mankind. This is going to happen before the “great and terrible day of the Lord.” This “day of the Lord” is understood to be an apocalyptic event of judgment.

Peter closes his sermon by saying that all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.  The punchline of his sermon is that this Lord, to whom they need to call for salvation, is the same Jesus whom they crucified. God has made Jesus both Lord and Messiah; call upon him if you want to be delivered from the coming day of judgment.

So, the very first Apostolic sermon in this new church’s history is filled with eschatology. It is full of apocalyptic language. The questions that intrigue me are, “How much did eschatology affect the ongoing preaching and teaching of the early church? Were the teachings of Jesus in Matthew 23 and 24 a prominent subject of those meetings of early Christians?”

Discussions today about eschatology will either get heated or will be met with indifference. Those who blow it off say they believe in pan-millennialism; everything will just pan out in the end. If it was an integral part of the early teachings of the church, I want to know why.

Ty: We have prophecies in Isaiah where God has promised that he is going to give a new heart and a new mind to his people. He is prophesying for a new relationship with people. Does that have to be fulfilled for the Gospel to be the Gospel?

Tim: The fulfillment of those prophecies is a matter we should address when talking about their fulfillment. We examined Isaiah 65 in detail, talking about the New Heavens and the New Earth. Hebrews also addressed these subjects. These were promises to God’s people; were these promises fulfilled? Hebrews talks about a covenant that was growing old and was about to disappear. If that Old Covenant disappeared, are we truly left with a new one in its place? These are matters brought up by first century eschatology.

Ty: I mention this because Matthew 24 is the promise of his return. Matthew 25 and 26 define the new Kingdom. Jesus was saying to his disciples, “This is what I bring to my people.” Do these describe that Kingdom he brought or are we still waiting?

Tim: The promise of Jesus was to establish the Kingdom. As students of the Gospel, we must ask what this promised entailed. The eschatology shows up seven years after Pentecost in the preaching of Stephen. At Stephen’s trial in the book of Acts, chapter 6, we have:

¹³ They put forward false witnesses who said, “This man incessantly speaks against this holy place and the Law; ¹⁴ for we have heard him say that this Nazarene, Jesus, will destroy this place and alter the customs which Moses handed down to us.” 

Those who debated Stephen in the synagogues were getting whipped by him. They couldn’t beat him in debate, so they were going to invoke legal intervention. They mustered up a group to accuse Stephen: “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God.” If Stephen was merely repeating the words of Jesus that “not one stone was going to be left upon another, that it was going to all be torn down,” then this message was to them blasphemous words.

Reading between the lines, we can ascertain that Stephen’s message was eschatological in its content. He was talking about an end times that his listeners would witness. Paul encourages the churches like the Colossians by reminding them of their future hope that will come in the midst of tribulation. For instance, let’s look at Romans 5,

³ And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; ⁴ and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; ⁵ and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

He encourages them that that the hope they have will not disappoint. The word in Greek means “to be put to shame.” This is encouragement to hang on amid tribulations. He is saying that God’s love for you is so great that you will not be put to shame because the promises of God will come to their fulfillment.

I want to argue that eschatology was a key element of the early churches beliefs because what was at stake was the vindication of God’s people. That is, they preached an event soon to come that would vindicate the truth that Jesus was the Messiah and his followers were right in committing their lives to him.

This connects to what we study in Hebrews 11. The author mentions all of these people of faith in the Old Testament; Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and so forth. These are men and women who lived in the days when the culture was practicing the Old Covenant with its altars, sacrifices, and ritual. I think their attitude toward this culture was, “I’m not buying what they’re selling here. I really can’t believe this is the way God loves us, and we love him. There must be something better down the road.”

We had great discussions on Cain and Abel. Cain was one of the faithful practitioners of the Old Covenant religion. When Abel presents his idea that these sacrifices can’t be effectual, that there must be something better in the future, that our sacrifices are useless when it comes to actually knowing God, Cain rises up and kills him.

Cain is connected to the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day. Jesus addresses them in Matthew 23, telling them that justice for Abel’s blood shed by Cain was going to fall upon them. Abel was going to be vindicated that he was right, and his brother was wrong. Jesus was about to bring a reckoning that would vindicate all those in Old Testament history who have rejected the Old Covenant religion and looked ahead to something new. Jesus was about to vindicate all those who bucked the system.

It would be the same with Noah. He built an ark that was rebellion against the culture. Noah was a man who believed that there was no salvation in the wicked practices of the people, so by building an ark he vindicated his faith and a future deliverance. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, but it took destroying the world by a flood to prove that Noah was right to the culture.

Stephen brought a charge against the religious leaders of his day, accusing them of complicity in killing the prophets that God had sent. The message of the prophets was the coming of the Righteous One, but the fathers preferred what they had already established. The crowds were angry because of Stephen’s eschatology. It told them that their guilt would be proven, and the followers of the Righteous One would be vindicated.

The eschatology of the early church was affirming that those who turned their back on the Old Covenant religion and looked ahead to the arrival of the New Covenant were walking in line with God’s will. That is why trying to understand and define the eschatology of the early church is important. Jesus gave great hope to the tax-collectors and sinners of his day by preaching the Kingdom of God arriving and the Kingdom of the Old Covenant coming to an end.

He was saying to the tax-collectors and sinners, “You turned your back on what the temple stands for and those who defend it, and God will vindicate you in the end.” Their repentance in turning from the old to the new would be vindicated before many of them were dead. It is irritating that the church embraces a vindication yet to come, preaching an eschatology where we still wonder if Christ is truly God’s Redeemer.

Ty: When we see the promises in Isaiah about the new heart, and the new mind, it connects this to the Messiah. Am I correct? Having a new heart and mind is tied up in God’s Messiah. In this new government of Jesus, he has taken upon himself twelve disciples that are going to carry on this word and he has convinced them of his mission. They are still not truly convinced until after he has risen from the dead. They still do not have a true grasp of things before his resurrection.

Further, while much of the world thought there would be a physical change where Israel was delivered from Roman rule, Peter never addressed the issue with the Romans. Reading through the book of Acts, it is always the Jewish system criticized and not the Roman occupation.

Tim: And Peter was the apostle to the circumcised.

Ty: Correct! My point is that Peter and the rest of the apostles recognized Jesus as the Messiah, that he was the one to bring the new heart, mind, and soul. They understood it to be one big package all tied together in Christ.

When Paul enters the scene, he is also teaching about the hope of the new Kingdom with a new Messiah and a New Covenant. In him there would be a new mind, heart and strength. It’s all one package it cannot be separated as some people divide things up.

Ron: Do you think the people were disappointed when it was revealed that Jesus was not there to throw off the Romans?

Ty: I think Peter was disappointed when Judas sold them out and it became apparent that Jesus wasn’t going to lead a military coup on the Romans. He was disappointed that the Kingdom wasn’t going to be manifested in a physical way. They thought Jesus would be the next son of David and they would be in positions of power.

Tim: There are indications that before Pentecost there was disappointment among the apostles. Stephen was talking about the destruction of the temple, and that message permeated the teachings of the early church. There was a physical manifestation when the people saw the armies surrounding Jerusalem. That was a noticeably clear message from Jesus that when they saw the Abomination of Desolation or the armies surrounding Jerusalem, they were to get out.

Ron: The destruction of Jerusalem was a huge physical change!

Tim: Right! I don’t think the early church had a spirit of disappointment in their preaching. They were not arguing about the timing of the rapture, whether it was pre-tribulation or mid-tribulation, and they were not drawing charts and wondering where to put the prophecies of Daniel. The fruit of their preaching was not disappointment, but a joy inexpressible and full of glory.

Valori: They were not hoping to be removed from the situation. They knew they would have to go through that.

Tim: Many of them knew they would be alive when the day of the Lord came. They also had a clear view of the signs that would alert them to get out of Jerusalem. They did not need complex charts or anything like that. The indicators would be clear as to when they needed to leave the city. They knew this would be the time of their vindication, but it would be messy.

It would be evident that the Old Covenant would be unable to save them when this new way was revealed. The eschatology of the early church was one of a future victory. They can look at the resurrection of Christ as being the past victory for them. Paul invoked the resurrection as the metaphor for dying to the Old Covenant.

They talked much about Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and how that death had no power over him. In his Pentecost sermon, Peter drew heavily from Psalm 16 where the psalmist declares that God would not abandon his soul to Sheol. He rejoiced that God would not allow his Holy One to undergo decay. This was preaching the victorious nature of the resurrection.

That was the past victory that strengthened the church, and the hope laid up for them in heaven was the future victory that would reveal the sons of God, that those who walk by the spirit would be vindicated. The fulfillment of the hope would declare that the way into the holy place was Christ himself after the temple was in ruins.

Dwight: If that act of vindication hasn’t happened, we’ve been waiting 2100 years to find out who the real sons of God are.

Tim: That is what I have said when describing modern futurism as being narcissistic. It preaches that we are the special generation that will be vindicated at the coming of Christ. It ignores thousands of Christians in the last 2100 years. It declares that the present generation has special favor over the one that walked with Christ and witnessed the temple’s destruction.

We looked in Hebrews where the author declared to his audience then that God did not fulfill the promises to the Old Testament faithful because he had something better for them, his readers living on the eve of Jerusalem’s downfall. To poach a phrase from Hal Lindsey, that was the “terminal generation.” They were the last generation that had to live in the days of unfulfilled promises. Those days were ending.

That was the beauty of their eschatology, the glory of that hope laid up for them in heaven. Like I said, modern eschatology is narcissistic because it preaches that we are the generation who will be vindicated at the coming of Christ coming ignoring the generations who have had to struggle with an unfulfilled Christianity.

Dwight has already alluded to Romans 8, but it’s a great passage! For clarity, verse 14 sets it off: For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. Let us take this next passage apart:

¹⁸ For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.  Here is Paul inserting his eschatology into his letter. As we’ve noted before, there is that little Greek word mello in the text rendering it, “…the glory that is about to be revealed to us.”

¹⁹ For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.  Paul states that this is what is supposed to happen when the glory is revealed. When the glory is revealed, then it will be unquestionably revealed to the world who are the children of God. During the time Paul writes this, there is a question about who are the true sons of God. Are they those who were faithful in keeping the temple worship or are they those who follow this Jesus? Who would be left standing in the end?

²⁰ For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope… Here is the word “hope” again. This word will appear three more times in this passage, all in verse 24. The coming of the glory would end the futility that the creation suffers. Why do we preach a Gospel where we are still in the grip of futility waiting for Jesus to come back? What kind of victory is that?

²¹ (in hope) that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  When he speaks of the creation, he could be referring just to the existing population of that day. I’m thinking he refers back to the beginning, going back to Genesis and referring to all the faithful from Abel to Zechariah the son of Berachiah. Everyone from Adam onward who suffered under the failure of the Old Covenant, the corruption of a system that could not save.

²² For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.  I don’t understand the delight of modern futurism where groaning and suffering the pains of childbirth, waiting for Jesus to come back and vindicate his people, is a Christian virtue. The delivery of a child is an occasion for great rejoicing! Why do we think it’s strengthening to continue groaning and suffering while we wait for the end? A Gospel that preaches first century fulfillment preaches that the pains of childbirth are over!

²³ And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.  Here is an opportunity to consider audience relevance. He uses the pronoun “we.” He is referring to himself and those who have “the first fruits of the spirit.” It was the early church that was groaning, awaiting their adoption. I believe “the redemption of our body” (their body) was the corporate body, not individual bodies, plural. The revealing of the glory was going to unveil a corporate body, a vindicated community living out the Gospel.

²⁴ For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. So, what were they eagerly awaiting? What would this glory unveil? It’s all in the text; the revealing of the children of God, liberty from the slavery of corruption, the adoption as children, liberty from the suffering of waiting, and the establishment of that corporate body.

The hope that was within their grasp would be a possession of the church in AD 70. They would see the vindication of all the bloodshed in the Old Testament. Then all the faithful from Abel to the last Christian to leave Jerusalem before its destruction would be exonerated in the eyes of their accusers. Then the culture would see that those left standing before God were the followers of Christ, not the practitioners of the Old Covenant. This was affirmation to all of creation that those who stuck with the promises of Christ, those who put no confidence in the flesh, those who turned their back on the Old Covenant system and went through sufferings because of that, were going to be justified.

Ron: I’m just wondering how much input Jesus had on people before he ascended. I guess a lot of things changed after that his cross and resurrection. Who did he talk to and how many? How many years were there after he started? You said there was a 40 year interlude where things were being transformed. How much of that was Jesus showing himself?

Dwight: He was on earth 40 days after his resurrection.

Tim: Yes, after he was resurrected, he was on earth for 40 days. Paul says he appeared to about 500 people. He may have included himself in that he claims to have seen the risen Jesus.

Roger: He refers to himself as one “untimely born.” Many others had already seen him before he appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus.

Tim: Ron, when we read through the book of Acts, we are reading about a lot of things that were being unfolded to them in real time. There were certain things in which they had a hope, and some things that were still a mystery. They knew the temple was going to be destroyed and it would be done by a judgment of God. They understood it would be an army invading and destroying it just like Solomon’s temple was destroyed. I don’t think they were under any delusion, and I don’t think it was some mystical thing revealed. These would come from the plain teachings of Jesus.

Ron: What did Paul mean about his “untimely birth?”

Roger: To be considered an apostle, one was supposed to have walked with Jesus and seen the risen Jesus. Paul was introduced to Christ by a powerful vision rather than physically being with him. That’s why he was considered an apostle as one born untimely.

Tim: If you’re living in those days and you hear the Gospel with its prominent message of a coming apocalypse, and if your embracing that message leads to persecution, you’re going to want to hear a message that your commitment is not in vain.

Valori: The only way it could be fully revealed was to completely wipe out the old. That was the message.

Tim: They preached in a way that left no doubt. Stephen was accused of preaching that the temple was going to be torn down. It was shocking news, but it was central to the preaching of the early church. I think it touched the heart of everyone who found failure in the religion of that day. Even the faithful practitioners of the Old Covenant religion who made the sacrifices, kept the Sabbath and the feasts, and were faithful in tithing knew in their heart of hearts that God was not in it.

King David came to the place where he admitted that sacrifices were not God’s true desire. While the scribes and Pharisees revered David, they would likely rebuke him for saying such a thing to their faces. To suggest to the crowds that they should abandon the sacrificial system would be regarded as blasphemous. The early church injected steroids into this message and declared that the blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin, that they were weak and worthless.

The theology of the old religion was that any defect or infirmity would disqualify you from enjoying the worship. If you were a Gentile unconverted to Judaism, that would disqualify you from enjoying the worship. Gentiles had to remain at a distance upon pain of death.

Valori: I never thought about this before, but by having the temple and keeping the lame and blind out, they were cutting off part of what God created. They were denying inclusion into his own creation. The Gospel was letting them back in.

Tim: It’s almost like they took the role of the Cherubim who were guarding the gate of Eden. The religious leaders were forbidding the fallen to enter, but Jesus is letting them back in. I think this was the eschatology that invigorated the tax-collectors and sinners. Jesus and the apostles preached about a time to come where they were going to be the ones vindicated.

They were saying to the outcasts, “The day is coming when those who ostracized you because of your uncleanness would be cast from the garden. Rest assured that God has you in the palm of his hand and this generation will witness proof beyond any doubt that you are the ones accepted by the father.”

This goes along with what Ty brought up earlier. When we read the prophets looking ahead to a time when God would remember their sins no more, when the former things we’re not going to be remembered, when there would be a New Heavens and a New Earth and a New Jerusalem, they did indeed see those things manifesting within their lifetime.

Included in the Gospel or teachings that this New Covenant was about to come in historical time and space, that this would be the hand of God saying that the old heavens and earth couldn’t provide deliverance from sin. Jesus is bringing in the New Heavens and the New Earth, so hold fast in the midst of this persecution because you are about to be vindicated in the eyes of all creation.

The futurist’s teaching that we are still waiting for the New Heavens and New Earth, for relief from the sufferings of childbirth, for liberty from the corruption, is killing the joy of the Gospel, what Peter calls the “joy inexpressible and full of glory.” I grew up hearing sermons where this joy comes by increasing your efforts in religion, by putting caffeine in your worship. With a little more effort, that joy will be yours. This was a sham because all the joy we needed was in the Gospel of Christ, the message that the old, failed, ritual religion was eradicated, and the true children of God stand in grace.

We have a lot more to unpack in this chapter that will pertain to the eschatology of the early church. I’ve just been entertaining the idea that eschatology and particularly the end of the Old Covenant was a prominent feature in the preaching and writings of the apostles. Because of traditional eschatology, their belief that the end was imminent is ignored by many modern Christians. As a result, many great truths that could be strengthening the church are still somewhere in an unknown future.

Let’s pray. Father, thank you for this time and thank you again for this good word. Lord, continue to open our eyes to the beauty of this Gospel and the understanding of that joy inexpressible and full of glory.