Time & The Universe: A Biblical View by Neal Fox - HTML preview

CHAPTER 17

THE BIBLICAL AGES OF TIME RELATED TO FALLEN MAN

After the fall of man in the Garden, God divided the appeal trial of Satan into stages.  Therefore a discussion about how God divided human history into periods of time related to fallen mankind, referred to as “Ages” in the Bible, helps us understand why and how Satan’s plans have changed in relation to the Ages God has put into place.  Although not part of this study due to its complexities, a brief explanation of Ages is necessary to see how they fit into God's overall plan since each Age has unique features.  This chapter will be a summary of the Ages, and the details will be explained in future chapters. 

God does not constantly change His mind and therefore change how He deals with man, but rather He has a multi-faceted plan for human history related to the appeal trial of Satan, which must play out in stages.  Those stages each have different requirements and rules (covenants) necessitating changes in God’s direction to man during the various Ages of time, which also requires Satan to change his plans.  The various Ages of time are defined by those covenant changes.  And God threw at least one major curve ball at Satan, a "Mystery Age" not prophesied in the Old Testament, although the Ages after it were prophesied.  We will discuss that issue shortly.  Fallen man was initially given a basic covenant from God, to believe in Him, multiply, and work for a living.  At first there was no Mosaic Law, which would be the covenant from God to Israel defining the second Age, the Age of Israel.  Then the New Covenant (Testament) was given to the Church to define the rules for the Church Age, and there will be another future Age called the Millennium with its own unique covenant.  So God has divided human history into Ages based on covenant changes as follows:

1) Age of the Patriarchs: from Adam until Moses

Covenant: The Basic Covenant of faith, family, and hard work

2) Age of Israel Part I: from Moses to the Cross, then an interruption inserts the Church Age

Covenant: The Mosaic Law

3) Age of the Church: from the Cross until the Rapture (Resurrection of the Church)

Covenant: The New Covenant (Testament) to the Church

4) Age of Israel Part II: resumes and finishes during the seven year Tribulation

Covenant: Revised Law Covenant without sacrifices (since it resumes the Age of Israel)

5) Millennium: the 1000 year reign of Christ completes human history.

Covenant: The New Covenant of the Kingdom

We see there are four Ages, however they cover five separate periods of time since the Age of Israel is split into two separate parts, with the Church Age inserted between those two parts.  The Tribulation will resume and finish the Age of Israel as prophesied in Daniel 7, since it was interrupted seven years short of completion when the Church Age was instituted after the Cross on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-3).  It is important to understand that the Tribulation is part of the Age of Israel since this explains many things about events which will occur during that period of time.  The Tribulation will include severe conditions on the earth as Satan sees his allotted time for his appeal trial nearing the end.

Satan's fall resulted in a very long-running angelic conflict in which mankind plays a significant role, and it continues even now although Satan has already been judged guilty and sentenced to the Lake of Fire.  Satan’s revolt against God resulted in 1/3 of all angels choosing to join with Satan, while 2/3 remained loyal to God.  This divided angels into elect and fallen angels.  Once this separation of elect and fallen angels occurred, each group was on a separate path toward eternity.  As we have discussed, this angelic conflict is why man was created, and the angelic appeal trial is now being played out in Ages of time with humans as the witnesses.  

The Age of the Patriarchs began with Adam.  Adam had been given rulership over the earth when God placed him into the Garden of Eden, which contained his throne room.  When man eventually sinned, following a similar pattern of Satan's sin, God provided salvation through faith in a promised Messiah, showing God's love and fairness to unworthy mankind.  Mankind was allowed to expand in numbers to provide a broader test to further disprove Satan’s assertions about God being unfair.  Man's role was then to accept the gracious gift of eternal salvation through the Messiah (eventually revealed as Jesus Christ the Savior), showing Satan that God is not only perfect righteousness and justice, but also perfect love and completely fair.  These combined traits can legitimately put Satan and all fallen angels into the Lake of Fire as punishment due to the finality of their rejection of God.  This eternal sentence will be carried out after human history has ended when Satan and all fallen angels will be put into the Lake of Fire.  This also shows how human history is tied directly to the angelic conflict.  In the meantime the ancient angelic conflict continues, with Satan attempting by any means to avoid his ultimate fate in the Lake of Fire which has already been decreed.  

With this background of the angelic conflict in mind, we will now begin to discuss how Satan’s plan affects earth and the human race.  First of all, Satan is the legitimate ruler of the world despite stealing it.  He stole it from Adam at the time of the fall of man in the Garden when Adam was ruler.  God put Adam in charge, but Adam lost the rulership to Satan when he sinned.  In his role as ruler of the world, Satan is a despot and generally incompetent, even though a genius.  He opposes all of God’s desires for mankind to have individual freedom, engage in enlightened self-interest, and have the freedom to choose between God’s plan and Satan’s plan.  In contrast to God's plan, Satan wants to force mankind to choose his plan over God’s plan for man, and he wants man to submit to him.  Satan’s plan is one of force and subjugation of mankind, while God's plan is one of grace and freedom of choice. 

Satan does not like mankind, and does not care what happens to anyone unless they can help further his plan.  But he does care about staying out of the Lake of Fire, and he is determined to use mankind to do so.  Of course, it is all foolishness on Satan’s part and certain to end up as God has already ordered, but God is allowing Satan every opportunity to prove his point.  This is where mankind suffers in the process at the hands of Satan’s plan.  

Once Satan had become ruler of the world, and God had promised a Messiah to provide salvation to mankind, Satan’s new plan was to thwart God’s salvation plan.  This required preventing the Messiah from completing the mission of reconciling man to God.  Therefore Satan became highly focused on preventing the Messiah from fulfilling His mission.  Satan reasoned that if the Messiah were prevented from fulfilling His mission, God would be a liar and no better than Satan.  That would make the appeal trial a draw, and Satan and his angels would not be put into the Lake of Fire.  

During the Age of the Patriarchs this period of time was defined by the expansion of the human race and the basic requirement to believe in God and His future Messiah, work hard, support the family, and prosper by fulfilling God's will.  It was a very basic set of requirements, based on a very basic covenant between God and mankind.  People lived a long time and they were focused on family life.  During the latter period of the Age of the Patriarchs, God began to develop a new race of humans called the Jews.  

Next came the Age of Israel, when the Jews formed a separate nation under the direct rule of God.  Satan learns from history as it unfolds.  So when he saw God forming a group of humans called the Jews as His own people to spread the message of salvation and to keep the scriptures, Satan became intensely focused on destroying them.  The history of the Jews is one of Satan bringing intense pressure on them to distract them from God’s plan, and to generally seek to destroy them.  The developing Scriptures, which Satan has carefully read and memorized, showed that the Messiah would come from among the Jews.  This became the new focus of Satan’s plan, namely to wipe out the Jews and prevent the Messiah from being born.  And it is interesting to note that Satan believes the Bible.  For him it is his intelligence system to try to thwart God’s plan.  Satan has engaged in numerous attempts to eliminate the Jews, including Egyptian slavery, ancient regimes which conquered the Jews such as Assyria and Babylon, and numerous anti-Semitic nations throughout history.  All have failed.  But Satan is not done with this plan.  His best efforts are yet to come, and it will be called the Great Tribulation.

Throughout human history Satan has focused on preventing the promised Messiah from fulfilling His mission to provide salvation.  Satan, being a student of the Bible, uses it to try to figure out what God will do next, so he knew the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, and that this Messiah would accomplish His mission at the time announced in Daniel chapter 9, which was 483 years after the decree of Artaxerxes Longimanus to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem in 445 BC.  Satan knew He was coming, and tried to head Him off.  He used Herod, the head of Judea who ordered all Jewish babies under age two to be killed when Jesus was under two years old.  But Jesus had been taken to Egypt to live until the danger passed.  This was also why the Wise Men who met with Herod gave the family of Jesus gold, to enable them to live out their time in Egypt.  The Wise Men were called that because they understood Daniel chapter 9 and other Bible prophecies, and knew the Messiah was coming in a certain specific timeframe and would be born in Bethlehem.  But they are misrepresented as being three stargazers who just happened to follow a shiny object in the sky.  To the contrary, they were wise because they understood the Word of God.  That is God’s standard for wisdom, and the Bible calls them wise because they did understand His Word, and knew when to watch for the Messiah and then understood the star as a sign to them when it appeared.  Then they went to meet Him, and took Him gifts fit for a King.

Overview Timeline of Fallen Mankind

The Bible provides quite a lot of information about the timing of the fall of man, the closing of the Garden of Eden, and subsequent events during Old Testament times.  Bible genealogies and other events described in the Bible show us within a fairly narrow range that the timing of the history of man since the fall is close to the following:

This shows that man has been on the earth since the exit from the Garden of Eden for only approximately 6000 years.  But the confusion comes from thinking of Genesis 1 as describing the origins of the universe and the creation of man during the same six day period.  That is not what the Bible teaches.  By the time man was put on the earth, the universe and the earth was ancient, with the angels having previously occupied earth for a very long time.  The six days of Genesis 1:2 and following are the restoration of the earth and universe prior to the creation of man, not the creation of the original universe for the angels.  

Now we will move on to discuss the details of each Age of human history.