wn His glory, so that the
earth shall be covered with the glory of the Lord.

How near, how very near, these things that shall be are! The age in
which we live is the last stepping stone towards the glorious
consummation; and in this age there is but a little step left, and soon
darkest night shall end and give way to the brightest and most glorious
day the world has ever seen. In these studies of Prophecy we shall
first consider the present age, its beginning, progress and end. Other
studies will put before us from the infallible Word of God the coming
glorious consummation and what leads up to it.

I

+The Beginning of the Age+. In dealing with man and the earth, to work
out his own plan of redemption and restoration, God works in certain
periods of time which are called ages. Each age has a definite
beginning and a definite end. All the different ages which preceded
our own age were ages of preparation, for the present age in which we
live. In every past age God announced the coming of Him by whom He not
only created all things, but by whom He made the ages, that is, His
Son. He is the One in whom and for whom all is planned, and through
whom the things which have been shall be again, and infinitely more.

He was first announced in the Garden of Eden as the Seed of the woman
who should bruise the serpent's head. In the age after the flood Shem
was singled out in whom the Name, that is, the Lord of Glory, should be
revealed. Then Abraham, a son of Shem received the promise in the
Patriarchal Age that He would come from his seed; and later in the
Jewish Age He was promised as the Son of David, and David knew Him by
the Spirit as his Lord.

And so in the fulness of time He came, born of a woman, made under the
Law, the Son of God manifested in the flesh. His blessed earth life
belongs still to the Jewish dispensation, the age which preceded our
own age. He came as the minister of the circumcision; and as such He
fulfilled the Law and moved exclusively among His own people Israel,
bringing them the message of the Kingdom promised to that nation; a
Kingdom in which righteousness and peace is to flourish, and into which
all the nations of the earth are to be gathered.

The Jewish prophets had announced that Kingdom, but through God's
foreknowledge it was also made known that Christ should suffer first,
and be rejected by His people; and this came to pass. The nation
instead of giving Him the throne to