Where Is the Church?

There is a question this book has carried with it for twenty-four chapters, and it is time to ask it aloud. The whole Old Testament speaks of the Day from a single vantage point: that of Israel. The Day gathers around Jerusalem; she breaks the nations and purges the remnant; the woman flees, the city falls, the King comes on the Mount of Olives. Everywhere Israel, the nations, the land, the temple. But where, in that whole tableau, is the Church? Where is the body of Christ — Jew and gentile joined into one new man, the Bride called out of the nations and out of Israel? Open the prophets and search for her, and you will not find her. Not because she is unimportant, but for a reason that touches the heart of this whole part: the prophets saw the nations coming (Isaiah 56:3-8; Zechariah 2:11), but not the form: one body, fellow heirs and fellow members (Ephesians 3:5-6). That was the mystery, and a mystery does not let itself be foreseen — it lets itself only be unveiled.

That is no makeshift solution; it is what the New Testament itself says in so many words. Paul expressly calls the Church a mysterion — a mystery "which in other times was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit" (Eph 3:5).1 And he says precisely what was hidden: "that the gentiles are fellow heirs and belong to the same body" (3:6) — Jew and gentile in one body, without the gentile first becoming a Jew. Whoever was once "alienated from the commonwealth of Israel" (Eph 2:12) is now a "fellow citizen with the saints" (2:19): the nations become fellow citizens in the citizenship of Israel. To the Colossians he repeats it: "the mystery that has been hidden from all ages and generations, but now has been revealed to His saints [...] Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col 1:26-27). This is the point: the prophets saw the first coming (the suffering) and the second (the glory), but they did not see the valley between them — the ages in which out of all the nations a Bride is gathered. It is like looking at a mountain range from afar: the peaks seem to lie against one another, and only as you draw near do you see the valley that separates them. The prophets saw the peaks; the valley — the Church-age — remained hidden from them. Hence the Day in the Old Testament leaps seamlessly from the suffering to the glory: the valley was not yet on the map.

And the event by which that valley is closed off bears the same stamp. The rapture too is a mysterion. "Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all fall asleep, but we shall all be changed, in an indivisible moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet" (1 Cor 15:51-52).2 Paul presents this as something new — a revelation, not a citation from Moses or the prophets. That is telling: had the taking-away of the living church simply stood in the Old Testament, it would not have been a mystery. It does not stand there, for the same reason that the Church does not stand there: both belong to the valley the prophets did not see. Whoever searches the Old Testament for the rapture searches in the wrong place — he is seeking a door in a wall that is opened only in the New Testament.

Now take those two data along — the Church is a mystery, the rapture is a mystery — and open the last book of the Bible, for there something happens that, read carefully, is telling. Revelation opens with letters to seven churches, and the word "church," ekklēsia, falls in those first three chapters nineteen times. Then, from chapter 4 on, begins the great vision of the Day — the seals, the trumpets, the bowls, the tribulation, the beasts, the wrath — and from chapter 4 through chapter 21, sixteen chapters long, the word ekklēsia falls not a single time more.3 It returns only in the very last verses, where the exalted Christ says: "I have sent My angel to testify these things to you in the churches" (22:16). Nineteen times in the letters, zero times in the whole tribulation section, once at the close. Now great caution is warranted with this datum, and this book will not shirk that caution: an argument from silence proves nothing on its own. From the fact that a word is absent, it does not necessarily follow that the thing is absent; perhaps John simply designates the believers in the tribulation section by other words (the saints, the brethren, the overcomers). Whoever builds a rapture doctrine on the bare ekklēsia-silence builds on sand. But — and here this chapter turns — the datum does not stand alone. It is one stone in a wall, and the wall is strong.

For through that same tribulation section runs a division far sharper than a little tally. John divides mankind, from chapter 4 to 19, again and again into two groups. On the one side "those who dwell on the earth" — hoi katoikountes epi tēs gēs — an expression that returns like a refrain and that always designates the party of judgment: they are tested (3:10), they persecute the saints (6:10), over them sounds the threefold "woe" (8:13), they rejoice at the death of the two witnesses (11:10), they worship the beast (13:8,14) and stand amazed (17:8). "The inhabitants of the earth" are, from beginning to end, mankind under the wrath. And on the other side stand "those who dwell in heaven" — hoi en tō ouranō skēnountes — who are summoned to rejoice when the devil is cast down, while over the earth the "woe" sounds (12:12), and who are slandered by the beast (13:6). Two dwelling places, two destinies: the earth-dwellers under judgment, the heaven-dwellers above it. And then the question presses in with force: if the Church is present in that tribulation tableau, on which side does she stand? With the earth-dwellers, who bear the wrath? That collides with "God has not appointed us to wrath" (1 Thess 5:9). With the heaven-dwellers? But then she is no longer on the stage of the earth — precisely what the ekklēsia-silence suggested. The silence, weak on its own, becomes strong the moment you lay it beside the heaven/earth division: both point the same way.

And now comes the movement toward which this whole chapter works, for the place of the Church cannot be grasped in isolation — only within a larger whole that the Old Testament itself had already laid down. Open Hosea, the fifth chapter, the last sentence: God speaks, and says something staggering. I will go and return to My place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek My face; in their distress they will earnestly seek Me (5:15).4 God withdraws — He "returns to His place" — and He remains there until Israel, in its distress, seeks Him again. And then, in the next chapter, follows the answer that Israel will one day give: "come, let us return to the LORD [...] after two days He will revive us, on the third day He will raise us up" (6:1-2). There stands, in seed, the whole history of salvation: a period in which God has turned away from Israel and is "in His place" — and that period lasts until the distress drives Israel back to Him. And Paul traces exactly that same structure, now with the Church in it. "A hardening has come upon part of Israel," he writes, "until the fullness of the gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved" (Rom 11:25-26).5 Note that "until" — the same hinge-word as in Hosea. There is a time of partial hardening of Israel, and that time lasts as long as "the fullness of the gentiles comes in" — that is precisely the Church-age, the valley between the mountain peaks, the ages in which out of the nations the Bride is gathered. And when that fullness has come in, the parenthesis closes, and God turns again to Israel: "so all Israel will be saved."

Now see how everything falls into place, and why the question "where is the Church?" is answered not with one text but with a whole architecture. The Church is the mystery the prophets did not see (Ephesians, Colossians); she fills the valley between the two comings, the time in which "the fullness of the gentiles comes in" (Romans 11). As long as that valley runs, God has "returned to His place" as far as Israel is concerned (Hosea 5) — Israel is partly hardened, the Day is deferred, the door of grace stands open (chapter 15). But the Day is precisely the moment at which that parenthesis closes: the fullness of the gentiles has come in, the Church-age runs out, and God turns again to Israel — which now, in the distress of Jacob (chapter 8), will seek its Messiah "whom they have pierced" (Zech 12:10) and will say: "blessed is He who comes in the Name of the LORD" (Matt 23:39). And precisely for that reason the Church is not on the stage of the earth in the tribulation section of Revelation: not because a word happens to be absent, but because the Day is by its very nature the hinge on which the ministry to the gentiles passes over into the restoration of Israel. The lens shifts — from the Church to Israel — and that shift is the Day. It is no accident that the church drops out of the picture the moment Israel comes back into it; it is the fulfillment of Hosea's "until" and Paul's "until" at once.

That is this book's answer to the question "where is the Church?", and it is by design no answer of a single beam but of a framework. The Church is a mystery (well-documented). The rapture is a mystery (well-documented). The ekklēsia-silence in Revelation 4-19 is a given (well-documented), but proves little on its own: this argument is supporting, never load-bearing — whoever strikes it out loses no stone but a joint. The heaven/earth division makes that silence telling (weighed). And the whole rests on the redemptive-historical hinge of Hosea 5:15-6:2 and Romans 11:25-26: the Church-age is the "until," and the Day is its closing (weighed → strong). None of those stones bears alone; together they bear a wall that stands. Where exactly the Church appears on or disappears from the stage of the Day — and when — that is the question of the following chapters. That her place is determined by the hinge between the gentiles and Israel stands settled here. The Church is not forgotten in prophecy. She was the secret that prophecy left open. (The load-bearing arguments for the removal before the wrath, and the rapture models weighed against the text: Appendix E; the male Child of Revelation 12:5 grounded separately: Appendix F.)