What is the messianic age / messianic kingdom?

The "times of refreshing" and "restitution of all things" are expressions in which the Holy Spirit gathers together the hundreds of promises He gave through the different prophets of God concerning a time of great blessing for His people, and through them for the nations of the world. It would be impossible to mention all these promises and in what the times of refreshing and restoration of all things consist. These days of a coming age, the kingdom age, or as we call it because its duration will be a thousand years, the Millennium, are fully described on the pages of Old Testament prophecy. Not alone will the nation be blessed, but Jerusalem will be a great city; the land will be restored and become the great center for blessing; the nations of the earth will receive blessings, and groaning creation will be delivered from its groans and the curse which rests upon it. If we interpret the Word of Prophecy literally and cease spiritualizing it, we shall have no difficulty to behold the full meaning of the times of refreshing and the restitution of all things. The latter word does not include a restoration of the wicked dead, a second chance for those who passed out of this life in an unsaved condition. And these glorious times cannot come till the Lord Jesus Christ comes again.

That age should terminate, and the Messiah would inaugurate, by His coming, another and very different one. He would introduce what we call the millennial age.

The 'present age' was well understood by the Jews to be in contrast to that age which should be introduced by the Messiah. Saints in O.T. times looked forward to this, as for example Abraham. John 8:66; Rom. 4:13; Heb. 11:10. Christians are able by faith to enjoy even now the blessings of that coming age, when the Lord with universal sway will establish His kingdom on earth, and have everything under His administration. Cf. Rom. 14:17. Every moral question will be settled then. The world to come will usher in eternity. 1 Cor. 15:24, 28.

As to the expression, "completion (end) of the age," which occurs so often in the Gospel of Matthew, its application is to that condition of things during which Israel are found under the law and without their Messiah. The new age, on the contrary, will be characterized by their being under the new covenant. Their Messiah will then reign over them in glory. The Old Testament gives us, not only these ages, but the times before them, as the New Testament unveils the eternity that is to follow them. Practically the New, like the Old, speaks of these two ages as connected with Israel: the age that was going on when Christ came and was rejected, and that which is to come when He returns in glory. "In this age" there is a mixture of good and evil, to be closed by an awful conflict in which the Beast and the false prophet will fall. The age to come will see Satan bound and the Lord Jesus governing the earth in displayed power and glory. "End of the world" is an unequivocal mistranslation, which has led astray not only the mass of men but their leaders, particularly in their false expectation of earthly progress and victory for the church, and along with this their unbelief of Israel's restoration to favour and glory under the promised reign of the Messiah, and the universal blessing of the earth and the nation.

Thus the difference of the ages is of incalculable importance. If you do not distinguish the present age from that to come, all must be confused, not for truth only, but for practice also. For now it is a question of grace and faith, evil being allowed outwardly to triumph, as we see in the cross. In the age to come the evil will be externally judged and kept down, and the good will be exalted over all the earth, and fill the whole world with the knowledge of Jehovah and His glory. The completion of the age, therefore, is evidently future; and so scripture speaks. Thus for us it is "this present evil age," from which Christ's death has delivered us (Gal. 1:4); the new age will be good, not evil, as surely as it is a future time. Again, if we think not of the church, but of Israel, it is to be supposed that the age began with their being under the law in the absence of the Messiah. The new age will be when Israel have their Messiah not only come, but come again and reigning; for the presence of the Messiah in humiliation did not interrupt the age; and still less did their rejection of Him bring in the new age.

The "age," in their thoughts, as already said, could not be any Christian age of which they had no idea; it was the age in which they lived, and which was for the Jew the age of law. There would follow it the "days of Messiah," and the coming of Messiah would bring them in. There was no interval thought of as taking place between the two, and certainly for the disciples here, no considerable time to elapse before He would return to Jerusalem, and take the Kingdom now denied Him. That time the Lord shows them to be longer than they imagined, though still leaving it largely indefinite, and certainly not interposing a Christian or Gentile age between that present one and His coming to set up the Kingdom, rather making it a protraction of the Jewish "age" itself. Th gospel of the Kingdom is indeed to be preached in all the earth for a witness, and "then shall the end come" ― the end of that age about which they had inquired. There is no hint as yet of any Christian one.

In the present age, Christ is on high and does not appear in glory or reign over the earth. There will follow another age when Christ, instead of being hidden, will be manifested to expel Satan and remove all that contaminates men and dishonors God. This connects itself with the Old Testament prophets. They all refer to the times of restitution of all things, the kingdom of Messiah over the earth, as the apostle preached to the men of Israel in Solomon's porch (Acts 3:19). The mistake is in applying these things to the Church now. The principle often does apply in the New Testament: no one means to contest this, but there are limits. The fulfillment is another thing.

Clearly, the kingdom promised in the Old Testament (a literal kingdom, with its centre in Jerusalem, extending to the nations, introduced by judgment, and marked by righteousness and peace) has not arrived. For anyone trusting God and His promises, the conclusion is as inevitable as it is happy: The literal kingdom is still to come. Perhaps more precisely: the phase in which the kingdom takes the literal form predicted in the Old Testament is still to come. It is the same kingdom, but these are two very different phases. One is marked by the absence and the other by the presence of the king.

The objections to taking the prophecy in its strict and natural import are of no such weight as to call for a mystical sense. Thus it is said that "the promise cannot relate to exuberance of temporal blessings, even as tokens of God's favour. For he says 'a fountain shall come forth of the house of Jehovah, and shall water the valley of Shittim.' But the valley of Shittim is on the other side Jordan, beyond the Dead Sea, so that by nature the waters could not flow thither." But here lies the mistake; for the reign of the Lord over the earth (which St. John declares shall last for a thousand years) differs essentially from all previous ages, as well as from the eternal state which succeeds. And the fuller light of the New Testament makes it plain that its distinctive feature is the heading up of all things in heaven and of all things on earth in Christ, the glorious Head of the universe now enjoying the promised blessing for which the groaning lower creation still yearns. Hence there will be a perfect condition for those on high (including the church then glorified), a blessed but not absolutely perfect state for those below, among whom Israel, converted and planted in their own land under Messiah and the new covenant, will have the highest place.

It will be the administration of the fulness of times, when God shall gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him in Whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him Who works all things after the counsel of His own will, that we should be to the praise of His glory who first trusted in Christ. It is neither the present age, nor is it eternity, but the age to come, when the glorified Son of man with His heavenly Eve shall have dominion visibly over the subjected universe of God. Of this, His present exaltation (when we see not yet all things put under Him) is the pledge, as the Holy Ghost given is its earnest to the joint-heirs. For while He shall inherit all things, according to the glory of His person and His rights as well by creation as by redemption, there is an especial fitness, that over the earth, which cast Him out when He came down in infinite love, He should reign in power and glory, all kings falling down before Him, and all nations serving Him. But this state of things is as distinct from the present as from eternity; yet, as it has never been accomplished, so it surely must be, for the mouth of Jehovah has spoken it, and it is due to His Anointed.

This wondrous display of mercy to God's glory (to say nothing of the portion of the glorified in heaven) is necessary to fulfil the prophets, and establish His kingdom universally here below for a new age, after the present evil age is closed by divine judgments, and before eternity begins. Where it is not believed, there must be a gap left, which is in vain covered up by forcing the scriptures into a reluctant squeeze, some into this age, and others into the eternal scene.