God’s Program To Close The Age

The title of our theme during the coming weeks will be “The Headship of Jesus.” Those words may be not very familiar to you. I believe that in the years that lie ahead there’s going to be an increasing emphasis in the Body of Christ on the headship of Jesus.

I’d like to give a little background to what we will be dealing with about God’s plan for winding up this age. There is a passage in Acts 3 which seems to me to give a very clear outline of God’s program to close the age. It doesn’t mean that we know everything but it does give us a kind of outline. These words were spoken by the apostle Peter to a crowd of Jewish people in Jerusalem. But in a sense, they’re addressed to all God’s covenant people. This is what he said, Acts 3:19–21:

“Repent, therefore, and be converted [or turn back to God], that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. And that he may send Jesus the Messiah, who was before appointed for you: whom heaven must receive [and I add ‘and must retain’] until the times [or the period] of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began [or since time began].”

This is a theme of all God’s prophets. It’s the climax of the age, it’s the climax of all God ’s purposes of redemption. Peter, whether he was conscious of it or not, outlined the steps that will lead up to this climax. I’ve often said that you can summarize them in four English words, all of which begin with the letters RE. The first one is staring you right in the face. Repent. Whenever God’s people get away from Him and lose out and miss God’s blessing, there is one essential move back to God which you cannot omit. There’s no other way back to God but repentance.

When we repent and meet God’s conditions, God blesses us with refreshing. That’s a stimulation, it’s a new upsurge of life. A lot of people have been refreshed in the last two decades but many of them haven ’t realized that refreshing is not the end purpose of God, it’s just a step on the way.