What was the apostolic age?

After the ascension of Christ, and the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, John became one of the chief apostles of the circumcision. But his ministry goes down to the end of the first century. With his death the apostolic age naturally closes.

24 "The cessation of the apostleship should itself, however strange this may appear, be looked at as progress … The apostles were for the Church, in its state of infancy, tutors and guardians. But, when the divine child had begun to grow, when the hour of its coming of age, of free and spontaneous development, had sounded for it, as God had given apostles in His grace, He also withdrew them in His grace."*

"The church was consolidated over a pretty large extent of country, and the church, in divers places at least, had taken the form of a regular institution. Elders were established and recognised. The apostle could send for them to come to him. His authority also was acknowledged on their part. He speaks of his ministry as a past thing — solemn thought! .... Thus, what the Holy Ghost here sets before us is, that now, when the detail of his work among the Gentiles to plant the gospel is related as one entire scene among Jews and Gentiles, he bids adieu to the work; in order to leave those whom he had gathered together, in a new position, and, in a certain sense, to themselves. It is a discourse which marks the cessation of one phase of the church — that of apostolic labours — and the entrance into another; its responsibility to stand fast now that these labours had ceased; the service of the elders, whom 'the Holy Ghost had made overseers,' and, at the same time, the dangers and difficulties that would attend the cessation of apostolic labour, and complicate the work of the elders, on whom the responsibility would now more especially devolve.

In men's thoughts, those are the fresh first days of the Church's history. The vigor of youth was still upon her. In the memory of him who wrote the words before us, Pentecost yet lived; and on every side around him, as he wrote, the word of God was growing and multiplying. More than two centuries of struggles and of triumphs were yet to precede its conquest of the whole Roman world. Yet here, before the very earliest "antiquity," to which men so fondly now look back, — before the canon of Scripture yet was closed, or the last apostle had passed away, the words of that surviving apostle himself, (inspired words — Scripture which "cannot be broken,") assure us that even then the end, morally, had already come for the professing Church; not triumph (alas!), nor a millennium — "the last time," and "many antichrists."

In men's thoughts these are the fresh first days of the church's history. The vigour of youth was still upon her. In the memory of him who wrote the words before us, Pentecost yet lived. And on every side around him, as he wrote, the word of God was growing and multiplying. More than two centuries of struggles and of triumphs were yet to precede its conquest of the whole Roman world. Yet here, before the very earliest "antiquity" to which men so fondly now look back, before the canon of scripture yet was closed, or the last apostle had passed away, the words of that surviving apostle himself (inspired words, scripture which "cannot be broken") assure us that even then the end, morally, had already come for the professing church; not triumph (alas!) nor a millennium — "the last time" and "many antichrists."

Firstly, that though God's ways with Israel reached their great climax in the cross, He, nevertheless, continued certain supplementary dealings with them until the death of Stephen, and perhaps even until the destruction of Jerusalem. Nor were the full designs of God as to the church made known in their entirety at the very outset of the present age. They were gradually revealed through the apostles, particularly through Paul, though the church itself began its corporate existence as stated.

The book of Acts covers a period of over thirty years, and carries us nearly to the time when both Paul and Peter were martyred, and Jerusalem destroyed in A.D. 70. Later came the time when the Apostle John became the vessel of the Spirit to write that which would meet the developing evil, while linking up with what had gone before. Here we get that which abides; the glory, power and majesty of God from eternity to eternity, against which the forces of evil will be for ever broken to pieces, as shown in the book of Revelation.

If we look into the age of the Christian church – by this we mean the time between Pentecost and the rapture – we can easily recognize the character of the Nazarite in the time of the beginning: the history of the early church in Acts chapters 2–4 shows that there was genuine devotion at the time and that believers lived for God.

It is an evident fact that by the close of the apostolic age these miraculous gifts mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12 had ceased. The Apostle Paul indicated that they would in 1 Corinthians 13:8, just as the miracles of the days of Moses and Elijah had passed away. What happened when the apostles were gone? Just what happened when Moses was gone and when Elijah and Elisha were gone — rapid declension. If bestowed to accredit a people and a message as being indubitably of God, what is likely to happen when both people and message begin to be corrupted? Obviously, the withdrawal of the authentication. From a worldly church and a defective or corrupted gospel, no longer "approved of God," the signs and wonders were withdrawn.

This was the general state of things in the church before the last of the Apostles left the scene, and it continued getting worse till the character of things described in Smyrna gradually took its place.