Page:Studies in the Scriptures - Series I - The Plan of the Ages (1909).djvu/229

 me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne." Rev. 3:21.

The "Ages to Come," H, following the great reconstruo tion period, are to be ages of perfe&ion, blessedness and happiness, regarding the work of which, the Scriptures are silent. It is enough to know, at this distance, that they will be ages of glory and blessing under divine favor.

-Each of these dispensations has its distind: seasons for the beginning and development of its work, and each ends with a harvest manifesting its fruits. The harvest at the close of the Jewish age was a period of forty years, lasting from the beginning of Jesus' ministry, when he was anoint- ed of God by the Spirit (Acts 10 : 37, 38), A. D. 29, until the destruction of Jerusalem, A. D. 70. In this harvest the Jewish age ended and the Gospel age began. There was a lapping of these dispensations, as represented in the diagram.

The Jewish age ended in a measure when, at the end of his three and one-half years' ministry, the Lord rejected that nation, saying, "Your house is left unto you desolate." (Matt. 23 : 38.) Yet there was favor shown them for three and one-half years after this, by the confining to them of the Gospel call, in harmony with the prophet's declaration (Dan. 9 : 24-27) regarding seventy weeks (of years) of fa- vor toward them, in the midst of the last of which, Mes- siah should be cut off [die], but not for himself. "Christ died [not for himself, but] for our sins," and thus caused the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, in the midst of the week three and one-half years before the expiration of the seventy covenant weeks of Jewish favor. When the true sacrifice had been made, of course the typical ernes could no longer be recognized by Jehovah.

There was, then, a fuller sense in which that Jewish age closed with the end of the seventieth week, or three ano

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