Paul; As a Wise Master-Builder, Laid the Foundation of the Assembly

Christians had been warned to leave the camp. The breach of Christianity with Judaism was consummated. Christ could no longer take up the assembly, established in the remnant of the Jews, as His own seat of earthly authority.
The assembly, as Paul had established it, too, had already fallen from its first estate and could in no sense take up the fallen inheritance of Israel. All seek their own, says Paul, not the things of Jesus Christ. All they of Asia—Ephesus, the beloved scene where all Asia had heard the Word of God—had forsaken him. Those who had been specially brought with full intelligence into the assembly's place could not hold it in the power of faith. Indeed, the mystery of iniquity was at work before this, and was to go on and grow until the hindrance to the final apostasy was removed.