The Age of Grace

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former desires you used to conform to in your ignorance, but as the one who called you is holy, you yourselves be holy in all your conduct, for it is written, “You will be holy, because I am holy.”  And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves with fear during the time of your temporary residence

1 Peter 1:14–17 (LEB)

Enter the phrase “age of grace” in any Bible search engine, look it up in a concordance or search the scriptures manually, and this term will not be found. How is this possible? Everyone in Christendom knows we are in the dispensational age of grace where we do not have to obey the God we serve. Why is this term not plastered throughout the scriptures? There are other commonly known tenants of this theology, such as the Old Testament prophets never saw the age of grace coming. Supposedly it is a parenthesis in the prophetic timeline that God had to create once Israel rejected the Messiah. This is where the “church” and “age of grace” got inserted in this make believe narrative called dispensationalism.

Does everyone who uses the phrase “age of grace” know by default they are also projecting the rest of this theological system, where their god made a mistake in judging the acceptance of the Messiah and then had to go to plan B, the church? Imagine, God having to postpone His kingdom because He didn’t know what was going to happen! They are also claiming that there are two distinct people groups of God, Israel and the church. The church will be whisked away to an ethereal place with Jesus while physical Israel has to duke it out with the antichrist on Earth.

2 Peter 3:14–17 (LEB)

¹⁴ Therefore, dear friends, because you are waiting for these things, make every effort to be found at peace, spotless and unblemished in him. ¹⁵ And regard the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as also our dear brother Paul wrote to you, according to the wisdom that was given to him, ¹⁶ as he does also in all his letters, speaking in them about these things, in which there are some things hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable distort to their own destruction, as they also do the rest of the scriptures. ¹⁷ Therefore, dear friends, because you know this beforehand, guard yourselves so that you do not lose your own safe position because you have been led away by the error of lawless persons.

Peter tells us plainly that lawless people will use the words of Paul to lead people astray into lawlessness. This word “lawless” in the Greek is defined as ignoring the divine ordinances. These are the instructions of the Creator, given through Moses, that are supposedly only to be followed in the “dispensation of law”, “which the ignorant and unstable distort to their own destruction” in the “age of grace”. What destroys people and attracts demons more than breaking the laws of God?

ἄθεσμος, lawless, ignoring the (divine) ordinances.

Alexander Souter, A Pocket Lexicon to the Greek New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1917), 7.

We have many people deceived into thinking that for some magical reason everything the Creator said to do is on pause and will get turned back on again once “the church” is removed from the Earth. This is pure fantasy and a trick from the enemy. It may even be designed by God himself to see who really loves Him enough to search out the words He gave us.

Deuteronomy 13:3–4 (LEB)

³ you must not listen to the words of that prophet or to that dreamer, for Yahweh your God is testing you to know whether you love Yahweh your God with all of your heart and with all of your inner self. ⁴ You shall go after Yahweh your God, and him you shall revere, and his commandment you shall keep, and to his voice you shall listen, and him you shall serve, and to him you shall hold fast.

“The church” is not a new concept created after the cross. The word “church” comes from the word that means assembly, and Stephen uses it to describe the twelve tribes assembled at Mount Sinai.

Acts 7:38 (KJV 1900)

³⁸ This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us:

Qahal is the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek word ekklesia, translated to “church” in the New Testament. The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology shows us how it was used just as Stephen used it.

In Deut. qāhāl means above all the congregation gathered to conclude the covenant at Sinai (Deut. 9:10; 10:4). It is qualified by being linked to the name of Yahweh (cf. especially Deut. 23:2ff.). The word stands here for the people which Yahweh has summoned, which is bound by the rules he has given (→ Commandment; → Law), and whose participation in Yahweh’s → Covenant is only maintained by obedience. Thus qāhāl had also a religious element alongside that of a special, solemn assembly.

L. Coenen, “Church, Synagogue,” ed. Lothar Coenen, Erich Beyreuther, and Hans Bietenhard, New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1986), 293.

The term “church” now is used for a group of people who have no obligation to do anything their God said to do according to such doctrines as the “age of grace”. I am not implying anyone can save themselves by keeping rules. Salvation has always been a free gift. If we are serving a loving God, we should automatically be interested in His character and what we can do to please Him. God had love for His people first, it just so happens that if His people love Him back, they will show it by doing what He said to do.

Deuteronomy 7:6–11 (LEB)

⁶ For you are a holy people for Yahweh your God; Yahweh your God has chosen you to be for him a people, a treasured possession from among all the peoples that are on the face of the earth. ⁷ “Yahweh loved you and chose you not because of your great number exceeding all other peoples, for you are fewer than all of the peoples, ⁸ but because of the love of Yahweh for you and because of his keeping of the sworn oath that he swore to your ancestors, Yahweh brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. ⁹ So know that Yahweh your God, he is God, the trustworthy God, maintaining his covenant and his loyal love with those who love him and with those who keep his commandments to a thousand generations, ¹⁰ but repaying those who hate him in their own person to destroy them; he is not slow with those who hate him in their own person; he repays them. ¹¹ And so you shall keep the commandment and the rules and the regulations that I am commanding you today to observe them.

We know through Paul that there are only one people of God. It is us who must be grafted in to Israel. There is nothing in scripture about a separate entity that separates itself from the children of Abraham.

Galatians 3:28–29 (LEB)

²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ And if you are Christ’s, then you are descendants of Abraham, heirs according to the promise.

Many of the people that have come out of the theology of dispensationalism and the “age of grace” could not bare the inconsistencies of this belief system due to the blatant contradictions in scripture. This means they were truly searching the scriptures for themselves and not just parroting what their favorite super evangelist preacher or pastor was telling them. Most pastors could not leave this theological system without loosing their housing and income. Imagine the consequences of a pastor telling their congregation that they were studying scripture and realized the Sabbath is just as important today as it was in the time when Jesus walked the Earth and we will be celebrating the Sabbath in the Millennium kingdom.

Isaiah 66:23–24 (LEB)

²³ And this shall happen: From new moon to new moon and from Sabbath to Sabbath all flesh shall come to bow in worship before me,” says Yahweh. ²⁴ “And they shall go out and look at the corpses of the people who have rebelled against me, for their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”

There are pastors leaving organized religion for this very reason. It is not just a matter of Sabbath keeping, once one enters lawlessness, that is defying the ordinances from God handed down through Israel, in light of Yeshua’s instructions, there is no end to the amount of sin that can be justified. This can be easily seen throughout the modern church. It is a terrible situation.

Amos 3:7 (LEB)

⁷ Surely my Lord does not do anything unless he has revealed his secret to his servants the prophets.

Much of prophesy is written against the “church” which has followed in the footsteps of the House of Israel with their worship of foreign gods through festivals, images, and lawless theology. The prophets saw the “age of grace” and did not speak well about it.

Jeremiah 23:16–20 (LEB)

¹⁶ Thus says Yahweh of hosts: “You must not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They are deluding you with visions of their mind, They do not speak from the mouth of Yahweh. ¹⁷ They are continually saying to those who disregard the word of Yahweh, ‘Peace it will be to you,’ and to each one who walks in the stubbornness of his heart they say, ‘Calamity will not come upon you.’ ¹⁸ For who has stood in the council of Yahweh, that he has seen and heard his word? Who has listened attentively to his word and heard it? ¹⁹ Look, the storm of Yahweh has gone forth in wrath, even a whirling tempest. It will whirl upon the head of the wicked. ²⁰ The anger of Yahweh will not turn back until his doing and until his keeping the plans of his mind. In latter days you will look closely at it with understanding.

This is the “age of grace” that the prophets surely did see and spoke about: “They are continually saying to those who disregard the word of Yahweh, ‘Peace it will be to you“.

Peter, quoting the Torah, told us, “you yourselves be holy in all your conduct, for it is written, ‘You will be holy, because I am holy.'”. This quote is taken from a couple places in Leviticus, right in the middle of the instructions telling us how to be holy. This quote does not stand alone, Peter was telling us how to be holy. It is not by making up rules of conduct in our own imagination or listening to the rules someone else made up. It is listening to every word that comes from the Creator.

Acts 17:10–12 (LEB)

¹⁰ Now the brothers sent away both Paul and Silas at once, during the night, to Berea. They went into the synagogue of the Jews when they arrived. ¹¹ Now these were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica. They accepted the message with all eagerness, examining the scriptures every day to see if these things were so. ¹² Therefore many of them believed, and not a few of the prominent Greek women and men.

Be like the Bereans, who examined the scriptures every day. Repent and be obedient to the God you serve. He will show the truth to anyone who takes a step of obedience.

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