Mid-ages Musings (Part 2)

See the Mid-ages Musings Series here

See the Human History Ages Series here

In mid-2023, I came to understand The Lord’s plan for 7 ages of human history -- 6 on this current version of Earth, and the 7^th on the new, eternal Earth He promised Isiah. In response to my strong curiosity, He showed me 6 planned age-transition, global judgments, the first 2 of which are historical. ¹ These sharpened my focus on The Bible’s predictions of precursors that would ramp-up significantly, to signal the rapidly-approaching close of this current (3^rd) age. I initially perceived history as perfectly balanced on a fulcrum, like a see-saw. Thus, age-wise, the end of this current age, will signal the end of the first half of human history on this Earth, according to The Bible’s prophetic timeline. But…

As that image settled in my mind and spirit, The Lord shook me to think broader! I then recalled how unusually short each of the next 3 ages will be, relative to the first 3 ages, according to The Bible’s predictions:

• The 4^th age will be only 7 years, namely the predicted 70^th week of 7 years in the Prophecy of Seventy Weeks, in Daniel 9;
• The 5^th age will be a full millennium, the long-promised thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ, with all His resurrected/raptured saints from the first 4 ages, plus all His angels (Heaven emptied onto Earth??); and
• The 6^th age will be an undefined ‘little while’, after the Millennial Reign age.

Thus, years-wise, according to Bible predictions, the future of humanity on this version of Earth, is far less than our past years. That’s when I jettisoned that image of our history, perfectly-balanced on a fulcrum, and concluded that our focus on the relatively fewer years ahead, must be sharpened.

With an understanding of the 6 age-transitions global judgments, and the precursors signaling the close of this current age, my focus shifted to ponder what might be the equivalent precursors for the next 3, short ages. It stands to reason that The Holy Spirit might strategically shed some light on these, though not in a ‘chapter and verse’ format. Thus, The Lord directed me to review His lengthy transition pattern that led to the first two age-transitioning global judgments.

Precursors for/of the Flood

Genesis 6 summarizes the ramping-up of wickedness and evil across the Earth, as mankind was enjoying prolonged lives, with NO predators, pestilences, predilection for righteousness, or power to resist sinfulness that was m-a-g-n-i-f-i-e-d by the sexual union of demons with women, per Genesis 6. Verse 11 identifies the cumulative result: Earth, fully corrupted and filled-full with violence. By the time the flood began, humanity’s ‘cup of iniquity’ was apparently overspilling its rim!! On the other hand, righteousness on Earth was figuratively ‘hanging by a thread’, to the point that The Lord could only declare one man, Noah, to be righteous! Imagine such depths of wickedness on the planet! ²

Precursors for/of the Crucifixion

In Galatians 4:4, Paul wrote,

‘When the fullness, the appointed, the proper time had fully come,

God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the [Old Testament] Law.’ 

(NKJV, YLT, AMP)

So what precursors may have reached their fullness by the time Jesus was born as a man, and 33 years later, was crucified? Here are some historical points worth considering:

1. The predicted duration of exiled Jews from Israel (10 northern tribes) to Assyria in 721 BC, and Jews from Judah (2 southern tribes) to Babylon in 597 BC, were significantly different. The Lord promised to return both remnant groups to the small part of the massive promised land their ancestors had conquered - Palestine. ³ For centuries, the descendants of exiles in the Assyrian invasion, became ‘the lost/scattered tribes of Israel’. However, The Lord had predicted Judean exiles in the Babylonian invasion, would be allowed (by a yet unborn king named Cyrus), to return to Judah if/as they so desired,  after about 70 years, circa BC 538. This happened at the start of the Persian Empire, when Cyrus was king!! The Lord’s apparent strategic rationale for a more timely return of Jews from Babylon, compared to Jews from across Eurasia, was to allow time for the restoration of: the Jewish nation, people, temple, and religious practices in Judah and Jerusalem, well before His birth as the Jewish Messiah. This required considerable time for each point to reach its fullness.

2. During the ensuing centuries, several pertinent historical factors reached their fullness:

(a) The first three empires (Babylon, Persia and Greece), signified in the prophetic statue dream of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, which Daniel interpreted (Daniel 2), reached their fullness, then collapsed, as predicted. And the fourth, the Roman Empire, rose to power in 27 BC, following the collapse of its nearly 5 decades old, predecessor, the Roman Republic. The Roman Republic had expanded significantly, including the annexation of Palestine (including Judea) as a province of Rome. Administration of this province under the Roman Empire , beginning in 27 BC, was politically rough, especially for the Jews in Judea. ⁴

(b) Greek culture and language had spread widely, enabling broad, cross-cultural communications. This also facilitated the translation, publication and wide distribution of the Hebrew Old Testament, into Greek (The Septuagint). This would also, in the first AD centuries, facilitate the writing and spread of what would eventually become The New Testament.

(c) The Roman Empire launched an extensive roads system that greatly facilitated transportation across its expansive empire.

(d) After the last book of The Old Testament was written, prophetic Book of Malachi, there were 400 years of silence from Heaven -- inter-testamental silence. For many centuries earlier, Jews had disregarded, silenced and even murdered prophets whom The Lord had sent, with dire warnings of His pending cataclysmic judgments, unless the Jews repented from their increasingly gross wickedness. Then, suddenly, there was silence, exactly what what The Lord had promised in Amos 8:11. We know in some contexts, …silence can be scarily deafening!

See Part 3, 

likely precursors that will reach their fullness

in this current age of history. 

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¹ See the footnotes in Part 1.

² Though Noah’s immediate family members were saved with him in the ark, The Lord never declared them to be righteous. See: Humans’ DNA Hacked (Poem)).

³ Recall, the land promised to Abraham and his descendants through Jacob, was from the Nile-to the-Euphrates rivers. Ancient Jews only conquered parts of Palestine, then settled down among the locals (Amorites and Canaanites), and became …gross-fully sinful, just like the locals, as The Lord had fore-warned. 

⁴ This situation literally sowed the seeds for the Jewish revolt that triggered Rome’s invasion of Judea, and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, in AD 70. This invasion fulfilled the prediction Jesus made in Matthew 24:1-2. NB: The transition from ancient Judah to Judea occurred during the Hellenistic period, around the 4th to 3rd centuries BC. The term, Judea, became more widely used under Hellenistic influence.