he was addressing issues of who was superior in the church, Jews, Gentiles, who was grafted in,

who was grafted out.

And after discussing the relationship between the two and basically saying that either of you

can be grafted in or grafted out based on your faith, there's only one tree, there's only one sheepfold, only one branch, only one vine,

and that is the covenant, the church. There's not two covenants. There's not separate covenants.

All the covenants are one in the person of Christ, and they come to their telos at the first

advent. That is the inauguration of the end of Christ, and they come to their telos at the first Advent.

That is the inauguration of the end of the age.

The last days began at the first Advent, as the New Testament says, over and over and over again.

There is a end of the world, a resurrection, and so forth.

But that is not the kingdom. The kingdom is identified

as the church. The New Testament Church. The New Testament Church is not anybody who just believes.

It is a historic institutional reality that was set up in the first century. It has a historical lineage based on

the type of lineage that the Israelites had in the Old Testament. If you read numbers,

for example, numbers 12 or numbers 11, we'll see this in a minute. There's a succession

and laying on of hands.

That laying on of hands of the promised blessing that you see in Genesis that you see with the

Moses and the elders, that's a type of the way that the new Israel will be set up

instructed where Jesus, breeze on the apostles, commissions them at Pentecost, and then

they lay hands on their successors,

as we see from Timothy's, from Paul's letters to Timothy.

That passes on, Paul says, the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is that succession, which is that

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