01 - The Characteristics of the Age and Their Significance
The Characteristics of the Age and their Significance1
We are to consider some of the characteristics of our age. It must be assumed that my hearers know that there is a plan of the ages clearly revealed in Scripture, and that by an “age” is meant a distinct period of time, marked off from other ages, and distinguished by certain marks peculiar to itself. Thus, the age preceding the present age was the day of Israel or the day of the Law; the present is the day of Grace or day of salvation; the next will be a day of Judgment, or the day of the Lord, when God’s judgments, described in the Book of Revelation (chapters 4-19), will be in the earth; and that age will be followed by the millennial day, or the age of Christ’s Reign upon Earth.
Our present purpose is to throw the light of Scripture upon the conspicuous marks of this age, and to examine them under that light. By no other means could we possibly understand their significance; and when viewed in that light the doings and achievements of the age are seen to be totally different from what they formerly appeared to be. We shall see in that light that we have been totally deceived concerning the real source of the inspiration of the age, concerning the real purpose concealed beneath its grandest projects and achievements, and concerning the real end towards which all its prodigious expenditure of effort is tending. But we should not be surprised at this. Nay, we should expect to have our ideas about these things completely transformed under the light of the inspired Word; for we remember that those ideas were impressed upon us in our unregenerate days, and that they are the ideas which are everywhere accepted, and which are zealously contended for by the leaders of the age and the apostles of its progress and civilization. It is therefore to be presumed that they are altogether wrong; and such, indeed, is the case. I give you, at the outset, one word of exhortation, a word which fell from the lips of our Divine Lord (John 12:36): “Believe in the light that ye may be the children of the light.” Even though the light reveal a state of things exactly contrary to what you previously supposed; even though it show you that the things which you most highly esteemed are in their real nature thoroughly evil, nevertheless, I beg you to “believe in the light.” Our Lord else-where said, “that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God” (Luk 16:15). We are now about to view the boasted achievements of the age as they appear in the sight of God.
1Notes of an address.