theChurchAge

1. (Christianity, underdispensationalism) The current period ordispensation of human history that begins with events in theActs of the Apostles and ends at the futureTribulation.
   • 1957, Jesse Wilson Hodges, “A General View of Dispensationalism”, inChrist's Kingdom and Coming with an Analysis of Dispensationalism‎^[1] (Religion), Grand Rapids, MI:Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,→OCLC,page35:

     The New Testament Church is a parenthetical institution designed to fill the gap between the ancient kingdom of Israel and a more glorious future kingdom of the same order.¹⁰ The primary mission of the Church is not to evangelize the world, but simply to take outfrom among the Gentiles a limited number of people for Christs name.¹¹ When this number has been reached, thechurch age will come to a sudden close, and national Israel will come back into view as God’s representative and evangelistic people.¹²

   • 2000,Vincent Crapanzano,Serving the Word: Literalism in America From the Pulpit to the Bench‎^[2],→ISBN,→OCLC, archived fromthe original on29 September 2020‎^[3]:

     Unlike their antebellum predecessors, the new premillennialists were dispensationalists. They offered a systemic view of history in which biblical prophecies were thought to refer to real historical events.[…]They regarded the present era—theChurch age—as a sort of parentheses and insisted, contra the liberals and postmillennialists, that Christ's kingdom was wholly in the future, supernatural in origin, and discontinuous with the history of the present.

   • 2013 December 17, “US doomsday minister Harold Camping dead at 92”, inAP News‎^[4], archived fromthe original on15 October 2023‎^[5]:

     Each weeknight, Camping would transmit his own biblical interpretations in a quivery monotone, clutching a worn Bible as he took listeners’ calls. He first predicted the world would end on Sept. 6, 1994 and when it did not, Camping said it was off because of a mathematical error. Followers later said he was referring to the end of “thechurch age,” a time when human beings in Christian churches could be saved.

   • 2017 September 19, Mike Ellis, “It's not the end of the world this weekend”, inUSA Today‎^[6],→ISSN,→OCLC, archived fromthe original on15 October 2023‎^[7]:

     Meade said in an email to the Independent Mail that it would take a book, or a supercomputer, or God, to explain his astronomical cryptography calculations but they build on the eclipse that happened in August along with certain numbers that appear in the Bible.
     He cautioned that Sept. 23 is the end of the "Church Age" and is a spiritual sign but that later events in October would escalate with Oct. 21 being "the final date."

   • 2022,R. B. Thieme, Jr., “Church Age”, inThieme's Bible Doctrine Dictionary‎^[8], First edition (Religion), Houston, TX: R. B. Thieme, Jr., Bible Ministries,→ISBN, archived fromthe original on14 January 2023, pages37, 38:

     Church Age The time period beginning on the day of Pentecost A.D. 30 and ending with the Rapture (John 14—17, Acts—Jude; Rev. 2—3). Synonyms: Age of the Royal Family; Dispensation of the Church. This is the dispensation initiated by God to form Christ’s royal family on earth, to glorify the physically absent King of kings, and to prepare a generation of spiritual nobility to rule with Christ during the future Millennium (Eph. 1:5–6, 22–23; 1 Pet. 2:9; Rev. 2:26; 3:21; 19:16).[…]
     With theChurch Age ended, the time of tribulation on earth will begin.

   • 2023 August 23, Daniel Hummel, 18:55 from the start, in‘The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism’ — A Conversation with Daniel Hummel‎^[9],Albert Mohler, archived fromthe original on26 August 2023:

     But I think the key is that for someone like Darby who believed in seven dispensations, which is the most common number, we currently live in the sixth dispensation, or the dispensation of grace or sometimes called theChurch Age, which is a pretty unique dispensation. Among the seven dispensations, the other six are God really working through the people of Israel to redeem the world, to make right what was put wrong. But in theChurch Age, He is working with the church, with the mystery of the Old Testament. And so a lot of the rules that sort of govern God's relationship with humanity during those other ages have a slightly different play in theChurch Age.

   • For more quotations using this term, seeCitations:Church Age.

• “Church Age”, inGoogle Books Ngram Viewer.

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