Episode 29
Navigating the Church Ages: Insights from TS Wright Part 10
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In this episode of the Kingdom Crossroads Podcast, Pastor Bob Thibodeau and TS Wright delve into the different ages of the church, focusing on the significance of the sixth age as depicted in Revelation. They discuss the Great Awakening, its impact on individualism and governance, and how it shaped modern Christianity. The conversation highlights the role of key figures like George Whitefield and the spiritual movements that influenced societal changes, ultimately leading to the American Revolution.
Takeaways
Understanding church ages helps contextualize modern Christianity.
God's interaction extends beyond the church into world history.
The Great Awakening marked a shift towards individualism in faith.
George Whitefield played a crucial role in spreading the Great Awakening.
The sixth age of the church was characterized by spiritual revival.
Movements of the Spirit often die within a generation.
The Great Awakening influenced governance and societal structures.
The focus on individual salvation transformed church dynamics.
The Holy Spirit's role is central to the church's evolution.
Transcript
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Speaker B:Welcome to the Kingdom Crossroads Podcast with Pastor Bob Thibodeau.
Speaker B:Pastor Bob conducts personal interviews with Christian influencers from around the globe and helping Christian authors, recording artists, CEOs, entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, and yes pastors and ministry leaders to get the word out about what they are doing to impact the world with the gospel.
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Speaker B:Now here is your host with today's interview, Pastor Bob Thibodeau.
Speaker A:Hello everyone everywhere.
Speaker A:Pastor Robert Thibodeau here.
Speaker A:Welcome to the Kingdom Crossroads podcast today.
Speaker A:We're so blessed that you're joining us and Scott Wright is back with us again today.
Speaker A:Scott's been teaching us about the different ages of the church and and significant things the Bible in history has to say about them.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:If you missed any of the preceding episodes where we covered the church ages 1 through 5, go back to the archives and find them.
Speaker A:You'll be amazed at the information Scott has been sharing with us.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:Scott is helping us to understand each of the different ages of the church and why they are so significant, especially as we look at the modern day church age with all the societal problems that we're facing today.
Speaker A:Now today we're going to be looking at the sixth age of the church as depicted in Revelation chapter three.
Speaker A:And to do this helping me welcome back to the program Scott Rice.
Speaker A:Scott is so good to have you back on the program today buddy.
Speaker C:Appreciate it.
Speaker C:Hey, great to be here Bob and look forward to our to our fun expansion of the ages of the church.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:Now give us a brief overview of the reason why we should be aware of the different ages of the church and why is this important for Christians today.
Speaker C:Well, first of all, to understand what's going on, we need to understand how the church has developed over the years and one of the most exciting aspects of this is that if we look back at how the church has developed over the centuries, then it's going to show us why the church is where it is today.
Speaker C:And one of the things that, that we're doing here in this podcast that we've been discussing and what I'm going to be writing about is that it's not only that we're studying directly just the ages of the church, but we're running it in conjunction with that particular part of world history.
Speaker C:That's maybe a little bit why it's a little bit different than what some people when they like to look at this, I run it along side and look at the comparisons of what's going on with the church, what's going on just in basic history and seeing how those tie together and why that's important, that we look at all aspects of history, not just exactly what was going on just inside the church.
Speaker C:Yeah, we're going to get a, we're going to get a flavor of that.
Speaker C:And, and you can see when you look at it in that perspective, you can see how God is interacting in all of it.
Speaker C:It's not, he's not just interacting inside the church.
Speaker C:And I think sometimes we think that, but that's not true.
Speaker C:God is interacting with the world.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker C:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker C:And we have to remember.
Speaker C:And of course, if you go to my first episode of my actual podcast, I tell, it's called the Owner, and it talks about how God owns us and owns everything in the earth and all that, all that you see created.
Speaker C:So it all belongs to him.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:You know, as you were saying that, that, you know, God is the one who's, you know, the orchestrator of all these things.
Speaker A: that's scheduled to arrive in: Speaker A:And you know, the, the scientists all there say, oh no, it's going to miss it, it's not going to hit us.
Speaker A: it's going to be within like: Speaker A:You know, I mean, it.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker A:You know, and when you're dealing with space, I mean, you know, that's not just a near miss.
Speaker A:That is, you know, someone took a swipe at you with a razor blade type thing.
Speaker C:Right, exactly.
Speaker C:Barely missed you.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:That would not, you know, they wouldn't tell you that, you know, if it was going to happen, you know, type thing.
Speaker A:Because that's what they were saying when it, when it was first discovered.
Speaker A:This thing's going to impact her and then, you know, like three days.
Speaker A:Oh no, no, no.
Speaker A:Our calculations say it's going to barely miss us, you know, but, but the point is they're, they're saying, you know, this asteroid came from the deepest regions of the galaxy and all this stuff.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Well, if that's the case, that means God set it on that trajectory for a particular purpose.
Speaker C:Exactly.
Speaker C:That's.
Speaker A:That just thought popped in my mind when you're saying how he orchestrated all these things to the finest detail and all that.
Speaker A:Because, you know, if that's the case, then God's the one that started that asteroid or whatever comet, two comets impacted each other, that created the asteroid, you know, all that was orchestrated by God because he created the stars and all it was, you know, amen.
Speaker A:So amen.
Speaker A:Anyway, praise God.
Speaker A:Anytime.
Speaker A:Last time you shared that the fifth age of the Church ended with the First Great Awakening.
Speaker A:Now it was also one of the, the longest Church age lasts almost a thousand years.
Speaker A:But let's dive now into the sixth church age.
Speaker A:And if the fifth church age ended with the First Great Awakening, does that mean that the sixth Church started with the First Great Awakening as well?
Speaker C: ,: Speaker C:And if you read my book, eventually when I put that out, I'll, I'll say exactly the location of it and the address and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker C:But what happens is these guys start and, and they basically they're coming together in a prayer meeting.
Speaker C:And so this is going to be a very long prayer meeting.
Speaker C:And this prayer meeting lasts for almost a day.
Speaker C:I mean this thing goes throughout the evening, all the way into the late night, into the early morning and then finally and if you go back and you look at the, there's an entry into one of the Wesley's, one of their.
Speaker C:And they were one of the men that were there, John and Charles Wesley.
Speaker C:But inside John's Wesley's journal, he writes about this meeting and he said on that early morning that there was about 60 of them there.
Speaker C:And at about, it was about 3 o' clock in the morning, London time.
Speaker C:And this happened in London, there was some type of a movement within that group.
Speaker C:It says about three in the morning as we were continuing instant in prayer.
Speaker C:The power of God came mightily upon us in so much that many cried out for exceeding joy and many just fell to the ground.
Speaker C:As soon as we were recovered a little from that awe and amazement at the presence of his majesty, we broke out with one voice.
Speaker C:We praise thee, O God.
Speaker C:We acknowledge the.
Speaker C:To be the LOR.
Speaker C:All 60 men did that at the same time.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:And the Spirit moved upon them.
Speaker C:And that.
Speaker C:That is a lot like what's described in Acts 2.
Speaker C:And so this.
Speaker C:What's going to happen is from here, the Great Awakening is going to explode.
Speaker C:But it's this prayer meeting that it starts.
Speaker C:This is the kickoff.
Speaker C:Now, there are guys like a gentleman by the name of Jonathan Edwards who'd already been preaching, and some of the things that he had been preaching really help lay some of the groundwork for this to.
Speaker C:To expand and to go and to take off.
Speaker C:But the Wesleyan brothers, eventually the Methodists will.
Speaker C:The Methodist movement will explode through this process.
Speaker C:We're going to have guys like George Whitefield, who quite frankly, might be arguably the most influential and important American or human being in American history.
Speaker C:And I know everybody's like, what?
Speaker C:George Whitefield, who's that?
Speaker C:You know?
Speaker C:Well, he was friends with Benjamin Franklin.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:And as we move into the discussion, one thing that's going to happen is the Great Awakening takes off.
Speaker C:George Whitefield is going to travel further and more than any other person and preach more to spread this.
Speaker C:To spread this movement.
Speaker C:And he is going to come over to the colonies now, the United States, and he is going to spread this all over the United States or in the colonies then.
Speaker C:And this awakening.
Speaker C:What.
Speaker C:What's so significant about it, Bob, is that it.
Speaker C:It was a shift from the control boundaries and basically control structures of the church to the focus on the individual.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker C:And it's.
Speaker C:And this is the change right here.
Speaker C:It's this.
Speaker C:The Great Awakening shifts that thinking.
Speaker C:It was already happening with the Renaissance and a lot of the philosophers that.
Speaker C:That we.
Speaker C:You know, when you study US Government, you go back and you study some of the philosophers and I actually teach this stuff.
Speaker C:You'll get some of that.
Speaker C:Some of that flair.
Speaker C:But George Whitefield's message adds the spiritual component to it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:It's not just a human philosophy, but there is a spiritual movement of this that infiltrates the colonies and sends the colonies upward.
Speaker C:This guy was preaching almost every single day.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker C:And he would travel further than anybody else.
Speaker C:And it's.
Speaker C: specially, and this is in the: Speaker C:And he'll go from town to town literally preaching every day.
Speaker C:And all these different individuals that were involved in this, it wasn't just him will spread, will spread this message.
Speaker C:And of course it's the message of the good news of Christ, but it's also the movement of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker C:This is going to give rise to a lot of the denominations and even kind of the non denominational movement now.
Speaker C:This is going to lay the groundwork for how we see the church now.
Speaker C:And, and so it's going to spread this type of liveliness that will awaken the church.
Speaker C:So the dead church, which is the fifth age, is now becoming the live church, the Spirit filled church of the sixth age.
Speaker C:And that's a good way to think of it.
Speaker C:Some people call it the passionate Church, the Church of Philadelphia, Brotherly love.
Speaker C:And it's not going to last very long, but the Holy Spirit is going to be in complete and total control of this movement.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:How long did the sixth church age last?
Speaker C:100 years.
Speaker A:100.
Speaker A:Wow, that is short as compared to other churches.
Speaker C:Yeah, almost right to the year.
Speaker A:Oh really?
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker C:So there's going to be two movements here.
Speaker C:So there's going to be the first one.
Speaker C:Then after that, as it dies off, the American Revolution is going to happen.
Speaker C:We're going to have these revolutions born out of this.
Speaker A:So then after the revolution it was so short as compared with the other ages.
Speaker C:Well, it's an interesting that you bring that up.
Speaker C:There's a guy by the name of Lance Lambert that gives us an interesting quote that I love that probably sums this up best.
Speaker C:And you, and you probably, if you think, step back and think about any, any movement that has ever happened through the Holy Spirit that's been on a large scale, this always takes place.
Speaker C:He says every movement of the Spirit of God in church history has died within a generation or two.
Speaker C:It has been formalized, crystallized, institutionalized.
Speaker C:Man has taken over.
Speaker C:It is no longer a matter of the Holy Spirit and divine resources, divine qualifications, divine anointing, but it is man's resources, man's organizing ability, man's promotion and man's propagation.
Speaker C:Yeah, man takes over.
Speaker C:That's what always happens.
Speaker C:Yeah, that's why.
Speaker A:And number six is the number of man as well.
Speaker C:Exactly.
Speaker A:You know, so yeah, amen.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker C:So you mentioned that's what happens.
Speaker A:You mentioned this was a revolution of sorts.
Speaker A:Well, didn't that really happen already?
Speaker A:I mean we covered, you know, the invention of the printing press and Luther nailing the thesis to the church door and all that.
Speaker A:What makes this revolution.
Speaker C:Well, what makes this a revolution is that this becomes a revolution of governments, the way people are governed.
Speaker C:It is no longer going to be about monarchies, but there's going to start being a shift to the power of the people, the power of the voice of the individual.
Speaker C:And the United States.
Speaker C:For the French Revolution had just happened.
Speaker C:Matter of fact, this prayer meeting, many call this the prayer meeting that saves Britain because the French Revolution has happened.
Speaker C:And some of that, those feelings are spreading throughout.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker C:They're spreading throughout England.
Speaker C:And they.
Speaker C:It's kind of a sense that maybe England is on the brink of the same type of revolution that the French had had.
Speaker A:Oh, really?
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker C:And almost into anarchy in this meeting.
Speaker C:And then what comes out of this meeting, these guys preaching and all that will actually help calm that down in England.
Speaker C:So it's going to calm that particular shift to potential anarchy.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:In England.
Speaker C:And then it's also going to.
Speaker C:After it phases out, the first Great Awakening phases out, it's going to give rise to the American Revolution.
Speaker C:It's going to be a part of that for sure.
Speaker C:And George Whitefield, who spreads this throughout the United States and the colonies, there was other guys, too, don't get me wrong.
Speaker C:It wasn't just him.
Speaker C:He becomes friends with the guy that you're going to be well familiar with, and his name's Benjamin Franklin.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Who.
Speaker C:Whose influence of independence, the Declaration of Independence and how he helped tweak it after Jefferson had wrote it and Adams had been wanting them to declare it and pushed for that.
Speaker C:Well, those three guys are very instrumental, obviously, in that process.
Speaker C:And Benjamin Franklin had been wanting this for a long time.
Speaker C:He had served in London.
Speaker C:Nobody knew England like he did.
Speaker C:Well, he knows George Whitefield.
Speaker C:He has an influence on Franklin for sure.
Speaker C:And you can read about their relationship also.
Speaker C:And this is important.
Speaker C:Benjamin Franklin's going to have a huge impact on our U.S. constitution.
Speaker C:He, you know, he's.
Speaker C:He's kind of the great negotiator.
Speaker C:This guy is a master ambassador, maybe probably the best ambassador we've ever had in this country.
Speaker C:And it's.
Speaker C:Some of that influence of George Whitefield helps develop some of his idealisms and will also formulate and help some of the idealisms of our founding fathers.
Speaker C:George Whitefield.
Speaker C:And it's going to not just expand just in that time period, but across American culture.
Speaker C:I mean, we.
Speaker C:Even to some degree, even though he did hold slaves on some Levels.
Speaker C:We have to hold a debt of gratitude for civil rights that comes from George Whitefield because it's the focus on the individual rising up.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:In the spirit of God.
Speaker C:So while some of the people of that time period just.
Speaker C:They just saw slavery as just something that was there, it was also his idealisms that will infiltrate into society even with minorities.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker C:And so we have to give a debt of gratitude to George Whitefield for a lot of these things because that.
Speaker C:That influence will carry, it will continue to carry even after the American Revolution, even after we become the United States, even after the US Constitution is formed under that particular form.
Speaker C:Our government under the U.S. constitution.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:You know, you mentioned that, you know, the.
Speaker A:This meeting and took place in England and that basically, you know, could have been what saved England, you know, Great Britain and all that.
Speaker A:But I was just thinking back to what we talked about before about the Church of England, you know, and the.
Speaker A:The king being the head of the church and all that.
Speaker A:How did this prayer meeting affect any of that?
Speaker C:Well, the thing is, is that obviously the.
Speaker C:The sentiment and the movement of the time, and you'd had to been there to maybe fully grasp it, but the sentiment of the movie of the time is that the people were tired of being ruled by monarch, and so they were tired of being ruled over by, quite frankly, not only a parliament, but a parliament that was being bought by.
Speaker C:By the British East Indies Trading Company.
Speaker C:I mean, that's a lot of what was going on.
Speaker C:Well, this particular movement brings a different mindset to England.
Speaker C:It does.
Speaker C:I mean, you think about it, you can watch it in individual.
Speaker C:When somebody truly receives Christ and they have completely let it take hold in their life, you see the change.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker C:Now imagine this happening thousands and thousands and thousands of people across all these towns in England and in the city of London, which is by far the.
Speaker C:The most powerful and probably the most.
Speaker C:And the most technological advanced of that day.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So imagine that, man.
Speaker C:The change that that would have brought and then.
Speaker C:And in the colonies as well, because they viewed themselves as English citizens right at that time and they were.
Speaker C:So imagine this sentiment that comes from that.
Speaker C:That level of change.
Speaker C:You know, it's.
Speaker C:It's almost like when you're in a church and you see three or four people receive Christ and then of course they're going to get baptized.
Speaker C:And then you really see the changes in those people.
Speaker C:Well, again, put that on a scale of just hundreds of thousands of people.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker C:That's what.
Speaker C:And that's what happens in it.
Speaker C:And it also brings out the spirit of individual.
Speaker C:You know, it's the individual, it's the focus on the individual receiving salvation.
Speaker C:It's not through the confines of the church.
Speaker C:Now I will tell you that it's a double edged sword.
Speaker C:Some of the confines of the church are going to melt away after this.
Speaker C:And that is a double edged sword.
Speaker C:You know, there's, there's going to be a lot of good things from that, but there's going to be some other issues that will, we could discuss all day about and things that we see even now today, because the confines of the church have melted away.
Speaker C:But that focus on individuals receiving Christ, walking in the power of the Holy Spirit, that ideal is going to, that is going to be a game changer.
Speaker C:It's going to be a game changer.
Speaker C:It's also, it's, it's sort of a tipping point that we're heading towards the end here.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:In that the Spirit is going to move and you know, we're going to see, we're going to see people start prophesying.
Speaker C:They're going to see all kinds of things that they would have never imagined.
Speaker C:The Wesleyan brothers before this were very methodical.
Speaker C:That's why they were called Methodist in their action.
Speaker C:It was, it was, it was all about what they did.
Speaker C:But when the Holy Spirit takes hold of them and they're doing what they're doing and then you add the power of the Holy Spirit to that, that's gonna, that's a game changer.
Speaker C:That's a change in the way that you express yourself and the power that you get from doing the right thing.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker C:You know, it's, it's just going to embolden them to do more and to speak with more power, more authority and obviously in the Holy Spirit moving in front of them, you know, because at the end of the day, the Holy Spirit's the one that makes us happen, not us.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:And I think that's important to remember.
Speaker C:And we're going to see that come full.
Speaker C:We're going to see that culminate here in this age.
Speaker C:And this is important because there's going to be two awakenings.
Speaker C:There's actually going to be three.
Speaker C:The third one's not going to have the impact that the other two have.
Speaker C:So we're going to have the first one and then we're going to have kind of a period of settling down and that's where the American Revolution happens and all this.
Speaker C: at the very end of, like the: Speaker C:And so what I want to talk about now is to talk about why, what happens to make that die off, all right?
Speaker C:And it is going to lead into the era that we live now.
Speaker A:Hey, folks, Pastor Bob here.
Speaker A:We're all out of time for today's portion of this great interview with T.S.
Speaker A:wright.
Speaker A:Oh, man.
Speaker A:I mean, Scott is so knowledgeable about the Book of Revelation.
Speaker A:He's been sharing with us today about the sixth age of the church.
Speaker A:And folks, this is just so interesting to me because I've been studying the Book of Revelation for years, and the information that he has put together just takes my studies to a whole new level.
Speaker A:I mean, I just can't get enough.
Speaker A:I hope that you're enjoying these conversations.
Speaker A:Be sure to come back for the conclusion of this interview in the very next episode because he is just getting warmed up now.
Speaker A:It's gonna get better and you do not want to miss it, alright?
Speaker A:So until then, this is Pastor Bible reminding you, be blessed in all that you do.
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