When the church gathers together in all of her peculiarities, she engages in war. The church worships as part of the “already not yet” kingdom in order to engage the principalities of the air (Eph 6:12). The bride of Christ exists as an eschatological institution and movement designed to push back darkness as a sign that the kingdom of God has come in the person of Jesus Christ the Nazarene (Mark 1:14–15).

Mrs. Spencer sits in her pew, the same one she sits in every week, and takes out her Bible. She knows the time will come when the pastor will announce today’s text. Until then, she waits. The “Welcome” does not really apply to her because the young pastor wants to make the guests feel welcomed. She’s been there over fifty years, so she’s as about as welcomed as she could be. Mrs. Spencer barely knows any songs, but she sings anyway. The drummer drums too loud, at least for her taste, and the worship team doesn’t help as they direct with their hands like the old music minister used to do. The pastor preaches longer than Mrs. Spencer remembers the former pastor preaching, but she follows him along in her trustworthy large print KJV. After the service ends, young children fill the halls. The seasoned church veteran can hardly walk with out tripping over a rogue toddler, but there’s a peculiar glory in it all…this is the church, the bride of Christ, and every Sunday is warfare.

If you want to draw a crowd, preach a sermon series on sex or the end times. There is something in us that longs to know how the end will come. What will the last days look like? How will we know that the end is upon us?

The New Testament shows that Jesus’s ministry was built around questions about the end times. As G. K. Beale writes, “Just as when you put on green sunglasses, everything you see is green, so Christ through the Spirit has placed eschatological sunglasses on his disciples so that everything they looked at in the Christian faith had an end-time tint.”^[1] The very nature of the New Testament and the church are end-times related.

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