The Church of Christ in every age...

The Church of Christ bears witness to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it thinks from the end, it acts from the end, it proclaims its message from the end. "Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing" (Isa. 43.18-19). The new is the real end of the old; Christ is the new. Christ is the end of the old. He is not a continuation of the old; he is not its aiming point, nor is he a consummation upon the line of the old; he is the end and therefore the new.
Within the old world the Church speaks of the new world. And because the Church is more certain of the new world than of anything else it recognizes the old world only in the light of the new. The old world cannot take pleasure in the Church because the Church speaks of its end as though it had already happened--as though the world had already been judged. The old world does not like being regarded as dead. The Church has never been surprised by this, nor is it surprised by the fact that again and again men come to it who think the thoughts of the old world--and who is there entirely free from them.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
from the Introduction to Creation and Fall