What is the Church Age? Where does the Church Age fit in biblical history?

Up to the time of Christ a dispensation ran its course in which the prominent feature was Israel, the chosen nation of the stock of Abraham. The period in which we live, from Pentecost to the coming of the Lord, is marked by altogether different features. Not Israel, but the Church is prominent in God's thoughts to-day.

The fifth period shown on the Chart is from the Ascension of our LORD till the translation of the Saints to Heaven. "Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. 5:21.) It is the present age, an indefinite period, during which a world-wide testimony to the Risen Son of GOD is being proclaimed; it is the day of salvation, too, during which the heirs of GOD, and joint-heirs with CHRIST are being gathered out from all nations by the effectual testimony of GOD'S SPIRIT and Word. The Age of God's longsuffering grace to a guilty world, the times in which our lot is cast.

Beginning with verse 27 of Daniel 9, all is future. However, the present Church-Age or Age of Grace, like a great parenthesis, is intervening between the end of the 69th week and the beginning of the 70th week. God is not now directly dealing with the nation of Israel, but with the Gentiles, "to take out of them a people for His name" (Acts 15:14)—the Church. By sovereign grace, a few Jews are being saved today and become part of the Church, but the Church is primarily Gentile.

We have seen the Lord shewing out His own rejection, in grace, followed by an entirely new order of things. The church, brought in subsequently, is not an age, properly so called, but a heavenly episode between the ages. There are three ages spoken of in Scripture: the age before the law; the age under the law; and the millennial age. Christ was "made under the law," and that age is not finished yet. The disciples said to Him, "What shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the age?" That was the age when He was there, but when they rejected Him, the age was suspended. As He straitly charged Peter to tell no man He was the Christ, saying, "the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected," etc. Therefore He says to them, "Ye shall not see me, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." We, who form a part of the church of God, and not having anything to do with the earth, are in no sense an age, but are a heavenly people united to Christ above, during the suspension of this age, filling up the gap between the Lord's leaving the Jews, and His return to them again. So in Romans 11 we have the olive tree with some of the branches broken off, and others graffed in. This is the tree with its root in the earth, and consequently it could have nothing directly to do with the church in heaven. Some of the branches were broken off, and some left; but this could never be said of the church, the body united to its head, at the right hand of God. The church, of course, does fill up a certain place and time, but it is during the suspension of the age to which Christ came. Characteristically we belong to that which is above and beyond anything connected with this world. It is grace that has set us there, and that is not of earth but of heaven.

But we have not yet made clear the force of the expression "the end of the age." That it is not the end of the Christian era must surely be plain to every careful reader. It is the end of the Mosaic, or "law-age." Are we then living in the Mosaic age? By no means. Here is the key to the situation. The age of Moses has suffered an interruption, due to Israel's rejection of Christ, and Christianity has come in as a kind of parenthesis. Daniel 9 puts this beyond dispute. In that chapter we have Gabriel's message to the prophet in answer to his intercession. Daniel longed to know more about the future of his people, and he was told that seventy sevens were determined upon them ere their sorrow would be ended for ever. That period, he was informed, would commence with the going forth of a commandment to restore and build Jerusalem. The commandment in question will be found in Neh. 2 and was issued in 455 B.C. The seventy sevens are divided into seven, sixty-two, and one. Sixty-nine sevens, four hundred and eighty-three years in all, bring us down to Messiah the Prince. Then we have His cutting off, with an indefinite period following, ere the final seven begins. This is where Christianity comes in. We are living between the last two verses of Dan. 9. Once it is understood that the Christian era, or Church period, is an interruption of the Mosaic age, everything becomes plain. When the Church is complete, the Lord will descend into the air, and take His heavenly saints away. Then that which remains of the Mosaic age will run its course, and will be brought to an abrupt close by the appearing of the Lord from heaven.

Now God would have His own spiritually intelligent as to the true position of affairs at the present moment. We are not living in the first days of the Church of God, but the last; a fact which should, of itself, suggest the most serious considerations to the mind. What is the character of this Church of God, whose earthly history is drawing to its close? And what was its testimony and responsibility as set up by God at the beginning? It has often been pointed out that the Church has been introduced parenthetically into the ways of God. Israel's deep failure as God's responsible witness in the midst of idolatry, and, above all, their rejection of Messiah, has necessitated the complete setting aside of that nation for the present. Not until Christ appears in glory will Israel again truly have God's testimony committed to them. During the interval, while Christ sits at the right hand of the Majesty on High, the Holy Spirit is present on earth engaged in the formation of the Church of God. The very day of His descent from heaven (Acts 2) witnessed the inauguration of the new system — a spiritual one in contrast with Israel's national one. The saints on earth (at first merely a remnant from among the Jews) became at once the body of Christ and the house of God, though the doctrine of these was not unfolded until some years later. What freshness and power characterised the new testimony! What Divine love amongst the saints, what renunciation of the world, what zeal in the propagation of the truth, even in the face of fierce persecution!

The divisions do not overlap. The first is a complete vision by itself. The second is as distinct as either the first or third. The successive phases of Church history, traced from the close of the first century, are a full and comprehensive account by themselves. The third division is so plainly a prophetic outline that neither its details nor principles can be made to fit into the present. “The things that are” are running their course. The Church is yet publicly recognised and owned of God, and it is its history which is chronicled by the Spirit of inspiration in chapters 2 and 3, and not that of Jews and Gentiles to which the Seals, Trumpets, and Vials apply. Introduce these now and you make the Church the present subject of judicial judgment, which, in point of fact, it is not. It is the loathsome rejection of the professing Church (Rev. 3:16) which terminates its history as God’s public witness on earth, and introduces us into the prophetic scenes of the last days. The Church fills up the gap between the break with Israel and the resumption of divine dealing with the ancient people. Ecclesiastical history forms, in brief, “the things that are,” whereas a prophetic crisis of but a few years is the period covered by the “things that are about to be after these things.” History characterises the second division. Prophecy is the distinguishing feature of the third division. Ecclesiastical history for nearly nineteen centuries is graphically and energetically sketched in chapters 2 and 3.

Undoubtedly the work which God has now at heart in the calling of the church, founded on the accomplished redemption of the Son, and accompanied, nay, effectuated, by the presence of the Holy Spirit, while the gospel goes out to every land and in every tongue, transcends all that ever preceded in His ways. But this in no way interferes with the fact that, as the calling of the church is a heavenly parenthesis, so also are "the times of the Gentiles" a still wider earthly one, which fills the blank in the earth's history since God governed in the midst of His people under law, as He will by-and-by when they are under the new covenant.

This is the spirit that we should cultivate. Daniel looked back over the centuries, and we should do likewise. The Spirit of God came from heaven at Pentecost to form something far more blessed and favoured, and therefore far more responsible than the nation upon which the Lo-Ammi sentence was then resting, and is still resting. The Church is the body of Christ, set up in the world to represent Him during His absence, and to be the vehicle by means of which He could work for the glory of God, and for the blessing of men. The Church is also the house of God, in which He dwells, where His power is known, and from which His power goes forth for the good of all. No one pressed these important truths more earnestly than the Apostle Paul, yet he lived to see unfaithfulness spreading in every direction. His warnings to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:17-35, and his second letter to Timothy are full of foreboding. What has been the history of the succeeding centuries? The will of God has been set at nought, and the will of man has prevailed. Ecclesiasticism with its heavy hand has oppressed the people of God. The divine call to REPENT has been ringing out through the years, but how few have responded to the call! As surely as Josiah lived in the late evening of Israel's national history, so are we living in the late evening of the Church on Earth. But it is never too late for those to return to God and His Word who desire to do so. Josiah felt this and acted accordingly. Shall we not do the same?

The preface to his story, and especially verse 3, is very striking. He mentions first 'His signs' and 'His wonders.' We live in an age that is characterized by faith. The Apostle Paul could write of a time, 'before faith came,' and again of a time, 'after that faith is come' (Gal. 3:23, 25). Signs that appealed to sight had a special place before the epoch of faith began. But it is also a fact that, when God inaugurated a fresh dispensation, He authenticated what is new by signs of a miraculous nature. It was so when He brought Israel out of Egypt; and the law epoch began at Sinai. It was so in supreme fashion when He manifested Himself in His Son the Lord Jesus Christ; and again when the church age began, as we see in the Acts of the Apostles. So it was, as we see here, when the times of the Gentiles began.