Page:Studies in the Scriptures - Series I - The Plan of the Ages (1909).djvu/76

 yo The Plan of the Ages.

ter kingdom, the basis of which will be the strictest justice Paul was given a glimpse of the next dispensation, or, as he calls it, " the world to come." He says he was " caught away " (physically or mentally, or both, he could not tell, things were so real to his view) down the stream of time to the new condition of things, the " new heaven/ 7 hence the " third heaven." He thus saw things as they will be un- der the spiritual control of Christ, things which he might not] disclose. (2 Cor. 12: 2-4.) Doubtless these were the same things which John afterward saw, and was permitted to express to the Church in symbols, which may only be understood as they become due. John, in the revelation given to him by our Lord on the Isle of Patmos, was in vision carried down through this Christian Age and its changing scenes of church and state, to the end of the present evil world, or epoch, and there in prophetic visions he saw Satan bound, Christ reigning, and the new heaven and the new earth established; for the former heaven and earth were passed away. Rev. 21 : i.

AGES OR DISPENSATIONS.

We now notice the ages into which these great epochs are subdivided, as illustrated in the diagram below.

���The first of these great epochs (" worlds ") was not sub- divided : God's method of dealing with men dirt not vary during all that time from Adam'* fall to the flood. God hadgiven man his law, written in his very nature; but after he had sinned ho loft him measurably to his own coiinc* which was downward, "evil, and that continually," that

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