Letters to the Next Generation: The Restored Church

A Letter to the Next Generation

The Restored church

by

David Borland

A Letter to the Next Generation: The Restored Bride

Trilogy Christian Publishers

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Copyright © 2024 by David Borland

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.TM. Scripture quotations marked NWT are taken from The Jehovah’s Witness Bible. © 2023 Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 979-8-89041-949-1 | ISBN 979-8-89041-950-7 (ebook)

This book is dedicated to all who live to see a pure and spotless bride. To those who live life by the truth and conviction of the Scriptures. To those who reject convenience, traditions, populism, and dead religious practices. This book is dedicated to truth seekers.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks go to Lynn and Gretchen Persing of Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, for their involvement in the production of this book. Their counsel, advice, input, and editing skills have greatly contributed to the text of this book. Also, my profound thanks go to Marvin and Rosie Harris of Sandpoint, Idaho, who have greatly contributed to the structure and layout of this book.

A comparative in-depth study of the church through biblical times, with types and symbols showing what they mean for us today.

Introduction

There can be little doubt that the church lives in a day of restoration and renewal. However, one of the great challenges is knowing what exactly the church is being restored and renewed into. It would help us a great deal if we had a blueprint, a detailed plan of what God wants the church to look like and how He wants it to function. In order to restore anything, it is extremely useful to know what the object looked like before it was destroyed. The definition of the church being a people redeemed through the sacrificial death of Christ for sin. Not simply practicers of religion but those who have repented of sin and been reborn by the transforming rebirth by the Holy Spirit.

When she was younger, my daughter often built things with plastic LEGO bricks. It was quite amazing what she could put together. One day when I came home, she had just demolished her latest creation. She tried to explain to me what it had looked like so I would know what a wonderful structure she had built. Unfortunately, all I could see was a pile of LEGO bricks lying on the floor in chaos. I could not possibly imagine how her creation had looked before it was taken apart. She had such a different perspective on what a house should look like than I did. I found that I could not put myself in her place enough to have any chance of imagining what she had created. I simply needed to have seen it with my own eyes. Then I would have been able to understand what she was seeking to enlighten me about and rebuild it for her.

This, for me, highlights one of the greatest problems is that when we talk about the restoration of the church, all we can see is what it looks like at the present, the broken-down pile of rubble that it has become. In addition to this, we approach restoration from our own perspectives based on our past experiences and spiritual imagination. Is God going to restore a Baptist church? A Pentecostal church? A Charismatic church? What will it look like when it is restored? Will it look anything like anyone thinks it should?

The answer to these questions is that it will look like it did before it was destroyed. The problem arises when we try to decide what that was. Thankfully, God, in His infinite grace and generous mercy, has given us the ability to start our search for that answer as we see the church exemplified symbolically in the Old Testament through literal representations.

1. The Living Old Testament

When Paul left Timothy at Ephesus to continue the work of overseeing and maturing the church there, he frequently wrote to him to encourage him and to continue instructing him in the faith. He did this in order that Timothy might not stumble in his ministry in Ephesus.

One of the clearest instructions given to Timothy by Paul was one that we as Christians need to take hold of in our day and generation. In 2 Timothy 2:15 Paul wrote, Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

One of the main reasons why so many false religions, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses or that of the Mormons, have made inroads into the church of Jesus Christ in terms of converts to their particular heresies is that, by and large, Christians are not taught or have failed to grasp the necessity of personal Bible study. For many believers, the Bible has been reduced to a resource book from which preachers find their sermons or provide a quick word of comfort when a need or crisis arises. Oftentimes, it is simply a tool used for seminars on various topics. If Paul saw the necessity of rightly handling the word of truth, then surely the importance of it should not be lost on us.

It is quite a revelation to note that the word Paul was referring to in his letter to Timothy was not the New Testament. It had not yet been written and compiled at that point in time. Paul was talking about the Old Testament writings of the Jews. He was instructing Timothy that through the Old Testament he could rightly divide (accurately handle and skillfully teach, 2 Timothy 2:15 [AMP]) the then-present word of truth. Clearly Paul was not encouraging Timothy to go back and follow the Jewish law again, so why would he issue these instructions to Timothy? How could he expect Timothy to know what God was presently saying through what God had once said to a people whom He had rejected and who had rejected Him unless the Old Testament continued to find relevance in the new?

Luke, the physician who wrote the books of Luke and Acts, commented in Acts 17:11 concerning Paul and Silas’ visit to the town of Berea, Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. Once again, we see the Bible commending people for having noble character simply because they took time to examine the scriptures and confirm for themselves that the message about Christ and His salvation was true.

A key to unlocking the Bible for us to note is that the scriptures studied by those who lived after Christ’s resurrection are from the Word of God as recorded in what we call the Old Testament. I recall one of the idioms I was taught as a young Christian, which said, In the Old Testament the New is concealed, and in the New Testament the Old is revealed. Clearly the early church was grounded and matured by the revelation that they received from the Old Testament writings. We, too, must look into the Word and search out meanings and answers.

Peter demonstrated this principle in telling the early church that the Old Testament was the basis for the forming of Christ’s nature for the maturing of the saints. He wrote this to the church in 2 Peter 1:3–4:

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

From where did Peter get his revelation of the very great and precious promises through which believers could become Christ-like? How could he affirm that they had everything they needed for life and godliness since the New Testament did not at that time exist? He could only have received this revelation, which was current to his day, through the understanding that the Old Testament finds a fulfillment, an application, and a new reality for the New Testament believers.

Paul’s exhortation to Timothy and the biblical commendation of the Bereans amply confirms the truth of this. We, in this day of renewal and restoration, need to firmly grasp the truth once again that the New Testament is not the complete scripture in itself; it is the fulfillment and revelation of the truth that God is seeking to teach us through all of Scripture.

Jesus Himself said about the Old Testament law in Matthew 5:17–18:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

In other words, everything in the Old Testament must find its fulfillment and reality in Christ. If we understand this, we can then view the Old Testament in a completely new way. It ceases to be a historical record of what God once did and becomes a prophetic statement to the church of what God has done, is doing, and will continue to do until all His word is fulfilled in and through the church.

2. The Symbolic Principle

One of the keys to understanding biblical Scripture is to realize that God’s Word, whether the Old or New Testament, was written and presented to us in different ways. Hermeneutics, the study of the methodological principles of interpretation of God’s Word, teaches us one method using the symbolic principle. When we apply this, we learn that God’s Word may be presented to us in three different ways: literally, figuratively, and symbolically. Often what is a literal event also has a symbolic application of truth and can even have a figurative application of truth. The following are some examples of this principle. They will help us greatly as we proceed together to look at the church in the Old Testament.

One example of the literal aspect of the Word of God would be Jesus’ command, You shall not steal (Matthew 19:18). There is not a lot involved in working out the meaning of these words. It is a command that you simply obey. There is no hidden meaning; it is to be taken literally.

An example of the figurative aspect of how the Word of God is presented to us is what Jesus said in His revelation to John on Patmos in Revelation 3:20, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and they with me. Clearly Jesus was not saying that He would literally stand at the door of one’s house and knock on the door so that He could come and have a meal with that person. He was demonstrating in a figurative way the opportunity to have fellowship with Him was open to every person who welcomed Him into their life.

An example of the symbolic aspect of the way the Word of God is written can be found in what happened in the upper room the night before Jesus was betrayed. In Luke 22:19–20 we read, And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.’ Jesus was trying to teach His disciples something important through the bread and the wine. The bread and the wine were symbolic of the fact that He was going to be put to death for them. His body would be crucified, and His blood would be shed for them. Through that sacrifice a new blood covenant would be established with God.

Here Jesus literally shared the bread and wine, but the truth He was seeking to convey to them and to us has a far more profound reality than His simple act of breaking bread and sharing a cup of wine. He wanted to make it clear that salvation and a renewed covenant relationship with God, ratified by the elements, was and is made possible through His death and resurrection.

The whole Word of God follows these simple principles of interpretation: it is literal, figurative, or symbolic. It is important to note at this point that those things symbolized are always greater than the symbols God used to demonstrate them. For instance, the bread and wine are far less important than their symbolic fulfillment, namely, the new covenant, which God was seeking to establish with mankind through the death and resurrection of His Son. Although the examples of the principle demonstrated are all New Testament examples, the key to the interpretation of the Old Testament lies in applying this same simple principle of hermeneutics.

Again, the Old Testament was written literally, figuratively, and symbolically. The events recorded there are not merely historical in nature but are God’s way of speaking to us in our day and in the days to come.

Going back to his instruction to Timothy, we see how Paul also understood and interpreted the Old Testament literally, figuratively, and symbolically. This is confirmed to us by his frequent use of Old Testament scripture to confirm what God was doing through the church in