Age

A period of time characterized by a certain stage of development of God's grand scheme of redemption (aion) (Eph 2:7; Eph 3:5). The people living in the age.

There is the patriarchal age; the Mosaic age or dispensation; the Christian age, in which "the kingdom of God cometh without observation" (and evil predominates outwardly); and the future manifested millennial kingdom: the two latter together forming "the world (Greek: "age") to come," in contrast to "this present evil world" (age) (Eph 1:21; Gal 1:4). The Greek for the physical "world" is kosmos, distinct from aion, the ethical world or "age" (Heb 6:5).

If the 1260 prophetical days of the papal antichrist be years, and begin at A.D. 754, when his temporal power began by Pepin's grant of Ravenna, the Lombard kingdom, and Rome to Stephen II., the beginning of the millennial age would be A.D. 2014. But figures have in Scripture a mystical meaning as well as a literal; faith must wait until the Father reveals fully "the times and seasons which He hath put in His own power" (Act 1:7).

Messiah is the Lord by whom and for whom all these ages, or vast cycles of time, have existed and do exist (Heb 1:2), "through whom He made the ages" (Greek) (Isa 26:4), "the Rock of ages" (Psa 145:13). "This age" (Greek for "world") is under the prince of darkness, the god of this world (Greek: "age") so far as most men are concerned (Eph 2:2; Luk 16:8; Mat 13:22; 2Co 4:4).

"The world" when representing the Greek "age" (aion) means not the material "world" (Greek kosmos), but the age in its relation to God or to Satan. Continuance is the prominent thought; so "the ages of ages," expressing continuous succession of vast cycles, stands for eternity; e.g., Messiah's kingdom (Rev 11:15), the torment of the lost (Rev 14:11).