My friend, Danny Foster, started a blog two months ago today, and he titles it “Ultimate Reality = Everlasting Kingdom.” Today I’d like to feature his most recent post, written on January 30th. He makes an interesting comparison between the 40 year exodus during Moses’ generation, and what he sees as a 40 year exodus in the earliest years of the New Testament church. His post has been edited slightly, but not for content:

While Old Testament Israel’s exodus was from the bondage of Egypt, the New Testament Israel’s exodus was from the bondage of the Old Covenant Law. The most recognizable passage that depicts this “new exodus” is found in 1 Corinthians 10:1-11, where Paul wrote:

“For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food,  and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.  Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, ‘The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.’ We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction,on whom the end of the ages has come.”

Paul’s contextual foundation for this final statement was the Old Testament exodus from Egyptian bondage. He wrote that……

1) They passed through the sea (verse 1).
2) They ate manna and drank from the rock (verses 3-4).
3) They wandered in the wilderness (verse 5).
4) They became idolaters (verse 7).
5) They tried the Lord and were destroyed by serpents (verse 9).

This list shows us that just like the “type and shadow” of the Old Testament and their deliverence from bondage, the New Testament saints were undergoing the same exodus. The only difference was that Paul’s generation was the reality to which the Old Testament examples pointed.

The exodus for those New Testament saints started at the Cross (30 AD) and ended at the Parousia (70 AD), exactly a 40 year period just as with the wilderness wandering of the Old Testament exodus.

The end of the age came upon that generation, and we are now in the everlasting age (Ephesians 3:21).