In the previous chapter we said that God gave men a vision even in the Old Testament age. We cannot say that those who remain in the Old Testament visions do not have any vision at all. Yet their visions are not up to date; they do not match the age. In the New Testament, after the four Gospels we have the book of Acts. After Acts we have the early letters of Paul. Paul went into prison, was released, was imprisoned again, and then was martyred. By that time, he had written his Epistles. All of them concerned God’s visions. About thirty years after his martyrdom, around A.D. 90, the aged John wrote the book of Revelation. It was also a book of visions. We can say that the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation is a record of visions. Throughout the ages there were many saints who loved the Lord and who feared the Lord, but we cannot say that they all had the vision that matched their age. Some, like Gamaliel, were still stuck in the Old Testament age. I believe Apollos somewhat belongs to this category of people, because Acts 18 says that he was powerful in expounding the Scriptures (v. 24). He knew the Old Testament well, but he did not know the four Gospels; he only knew the baptism of John (v. 25b). His vision only went that far. He did not see any further vision after John the Baptist.
In Acts 15 we find James becoming the leading brother among those in the church in Jerusalem. Although he was a man in the New Testament, he had one foot in the New Testament and the other foot in the Old Testament. His two feet were standing on two “boats,” and his two hands were holding on to two “oars.” He was very pious, and he feared God very much. History tells us that he was so pious that the skin of his knees grew coarser than an elephant’s skin from kneeling. It was his piety that attracted many to the Lord. It was also his piety that made him the chief apostle among those in the church in Jerusalem. However, although he was spiritual, he did not have an adequate vision. History tells us that the Pharisees and priests thought that James was for Judaism. They even gathered together the Jews and the Christians around Jerusalem and asked James to speak to them. However, James feared the Lord very much, and he spoke concerning the New Testament on that occasion. This upset the Jews, and they killed him on the spot. This is how James was martyred. It is difficult to say whether James’s martyrdom was something pleasing to the Lord. How could God reward him for his ambiguous condition? All we can say is, “Only the Lord knows.” Although James was much more advanced than Gamaliel, he also did not have the vision that matched the age.
Then there was Barnabas. He was the one who ushered Paul into his apostolic ministry (Acts 11:25-26). In Acts 13, when the Holy Spirit commissioned him and Paul to the ministry, he was the leader between the two. Halfway through their journey, however, there was a turn in the ministry. When the crucial time came for someone to speak for God, Barnabas had nothing to say, and Paul took his place. From that day onward, Paul became the leader. In other words, the vision and the revelation shifted to Paul; they were no longer with Barnabas. At the end of chapter 15, the two of them contended, and they parted from each other. From that time onward, the Bible does not mention anything further concerning Barnabas’s fellowship and work. This means that Barnabas disappeared from the stage of God’s move at that time. He no longer played a role on that stage. Although he was still in the New Testament, the vision he saw was not adequate.
In Acts 18 Apollos appeared on the scene. He was a person partly in the Old Testament and partly in the New Testament. As we have seen, he went to Ephesus, and the church in Ephesus first received help from him. In the end, Apollos’s work dominated Ephesus by virtue of its early arrival. Once Apollos’s seed took root in the church in Ephesus, it was difficult to eradicate it. We can detect through various hints that the cause of Ephesus’s decline was its failure to rid itself of Apollos’s seed. From the standpoint of the New Testament, that teaching was a different teaching; it was a different doctrine. The work of Apollos left a lasting mark of different teachings on the church in Ephesus. For this reason, Paul was always concerned about the church in Ephesus, as evidenced by Acts 20.
From the time of Paul’s first imprisonment to the time he was imprisoned again was a period of about three years. During that period he charged Timothy to remain in Ephesus to take care of the church because there was a problem there. Some were teaching differently. During Paul’s second imprisonment, he wrote the second Epistle to Timothy to tell him that all the churches in Asia had forsaken his ministry. Here we can trace the source of the churches’ decline. The cause for the churches’ decline was the forsaking of the apostles’ teaching; they forsook the apostles’ ministry. Because of this forsaking, the teaching of Balaam, the teaching of the Nicolaitans, and the teaching of Jezebel (Rev. 2—3) crept into the church one by one. These three kinds of teachings represent the heresies. When the church departs from the apostles’ teaching, all kinds of doctrines invade the church. This is very clear.