Dispensational Enlightenment 3

"Example:

Do you remember a time when you did not know Christ?

Do you have the same power and authority over your life that you had then?

Since you came to a personal relationship with Christ, has your faith increased?

Recently, have you learned or received from God new truths or revelation that has helped you develop a better understanding of yourself and increase your faith?

OK.  God is pouring out His Spirit in these last days.

For those who don’t think it is the last days or for those who just haven’t given it much thought, that’s OK, but God’s foreordained timetable for the length of years that He intends to allow mankind to function under this current dispensation (the dispensation of grace) is coming to an end.  

And at this end of the age or the completion of the dispensation of grace, there will be an escalation of sorts.  Everything will increase, multiply, advance, escalate at rapid rates, more rapid than any other time in all history.  The close - or the end of the age will be ushered in by God, very, very fast.

CI Scofield, in his commentary on Matthew, chapter 24 says it like this: “All (referring to all scripture references concerning the end of the age) - “All that has characterized the age gathers into an awful intensity at the end.” (i.e., the end of the age).

Technology is advancing so rapidly that it cannot even be tracked.  As soon as you think you are up-to-date, you find out that there is faster and better available, somewhere.

This ultra-rapid pace, in a spiritually declining world, is what God prophesied would happen at the end of the age.  There is an end of the age and it is accurately exampled in Matthew 24:3-14 and paralleled in Luke 21. 

Read Matthew 24:3

“And as He sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto Him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be?  And what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?”

Jesus addresses three issues here:

1    The end, i.e., the destruction of Jerusalem (that took place in AD 70)

2     The sign of the coming of the Lord, Jesus

3     The end of the world (age)

Luke better records the answer to the first question, “When will Jerusalem be destroyed?” and that is found in Luke 21:20-24

“And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.

V21 Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are i the countries enter thereinto.

V22 For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.

V23 But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days!  For there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people.

V24 And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”  The times of the Gentiles was not fulfilled until 1948.

Excerpt from Dispensational Enlightenment by Keith C. Powell 2016