This Age, the Age to Come, and the Last Days

[Ephesians 1:21] “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.”

The contrast between “this age” and “the age to come” was very common in Jewish rabbinic teaching. Together, they represented the entirety of existence. In Jewish thought, history could be divided into the current age and the future age that would begin with the Messiah’s coming—what they referred to as “this age and the age to come” (Matthew 12:32; Mark 10:30; Luke 18:30).

However, the New Testament further teaches that the “age to come” has already dawned with the arrival of the Lord Jesus. We are now living in the “last days” (1 Corinthians 10:11), a period where the two ages overlap. Believers have already been rescued from the present “evil age” (Galatians 1:4) and have begun to taste the “powers of the coming age” (Hebrews 6:5).