Filter by: Products Articles
Filter by:

Bible Questions with Michael Pearl
Episode 082: Which Church time period are we living in?

By Michael Pearl

This Weeks Bible Question:

Why do you believe we are living in the Philadelphian Church time period and not the Laodiciean Church period?

Episode Transcription

[music]

Michael Pearl: This is Michael Pearl, and Jared behind the camera, and this is No Greater Joy Ministries, and we are here to try to answer your Bible questions. So, you’ve written these in to Jared. If you have a question, by the way, and you’d like to try to get an answer for it, email us, and we will address it.

Jared: Why do you believe we are living in the Philadelphian Church time period and not the Laodicean Church period?

Michael: Why do I believe we are living in the Philadelphian Church period and not the Laodicean? I don’t necessarily believe we are living in the Philadelphia age in terms of the quality or the characteristics of the Philadelphia Church. Furthermore, in my teachings with the Book of Revelation — let’s go back, some of you don’t know what the question is about.

The book of Revelation beginning in chapter two and going through chapter three. John addresses seven churches. These are churches that existed at that time at about 95 A.D., in an arch going up through Asia and coming back down. The first ones were pretty close to the coast, and the others were over here, like that. So, they are in an order that you would travel.

John was on the Isle of Patmos, right out here, and administered to these churches. So, in his imprisonment, he writes back to them to encourage them, to rebuke them, to challenge them. And what we have observed, and others have observed, is that the positive virtues and the negative virtues of each of these churches, put into one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, as they are given, put into order, could fit into seven consecutive periods of church history. The first one up through about 100 A.D., second one through about 300 A.D., about 600 A.D., about 900 something like that. I may have gotten some of the dates off, I don’t remember for sure the last one. The Church of Philadelphia would be about 1800 A.D., and the Church of Laodicea would be the present, right here.

Only two of these churches did he not say anything about. The Church of Smyrna was a suffering church, and so he had positive things to say about it. And the Church of Philadelphia was a positive church. But the Church of Laodicea, the last church period is negative.

Now, I actually think we are living in the Laodicean Church period, the last one here, not the Philadelphia one. If this whole concept of putting this into historical perspective is true. It could be. The Bible doesn’t force that interpretation. It doesn’t actually indicate that. Let me show you.

If you go back to chapter one in Revelation. He says in Revelation chapter one verse 11, saying, “I am Alpha and Omega. What thou seest John, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches of Philadelphia.”

He says, “Write what you have seen, the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter.” So, some of what John wrote were the things which were at the present time, not the things which should be after. This would be hereafter. But he was told to write the present.

So, I tend to think the primary interpretation was that it was seven churches existed during his era. It is sort of making an analogy of it to see it in its historical sense, which may be appropriate to do. But, if you ask me, I’d say we are in the Church of Laodicea, the lukewarm church, to be spewed out of the mouth, rather than the Philadelphia Church, which was faithful to the Word of God, and kept His word.

Voiceover: If you would like to ask a Bible question, email us at [email protected] or call at 931‑805‑4820.

[music]

Leave a Reply

Subscribe
Subscribe to our newsletter & stay updated