The Greater Ages of Humanity Simplified for a Child

The greater ages of God's Plan are not hard to understand, even a simple child can understand them.

God made two children. To the first set of children, He gave a revelation and grace of pictures, and to the second, the real meaning of the mere pictures. And each of them had to or will have to grow to be holy like God.

And holiness is really simple: we have a body, and a soul.

Our body must first be stung to obey the spirit, and then our spirit must know God better and then be stung to trust God even in darkness.

Then God will grant rest to the soul and body for a time, and then we will offer our body and soul together to God in suffering and death.

So then, the children of pictures shall suffer in the body, then the just of them in soul, and then they all rest and offer body and soul in martyrdom.

Then the second children will do so likewise, but in relation to the real meaning of the pictures.

But before God even formed the first child, an initial child was very bad, having just made himself bad when he started out good. He was so stubborn that he was given over to hating God's two great reasons to live:

!. To know and love Him in THIS life
2. To love him forever in the NEXT.

So God had to spank this child for each wrong doing:

The first spanking, because the child didn't know and love God, leading God to cleanse him in the Flood, and...

The second, because child didn't want to love the CreaTOR in the NEXT life, but wanted to join himself in perverse union to the CreaTION in THIS life, materialism, or building a big, arrogant Tower. So God split him up and then loved that first child of the pictures.

Hence, history is as follows:

Two great ages of sin against God's ultimate purposes for us.

Then the formation of the child of pictures

Then the picture child's three-fold way of holiness: sting the body, sting the soul, rest body and soul, and then, finally bear witness with both body and soul in ultimate suffering and death.

Then the Incarnate One comes

Then God forms the child of the fulfillment of the pictures, and he also goes the threefold way

Then Incarnate One comes back, and the New world ushers in that shall never end.

2 + 3 | + 3 = 8

That is eight ages, five in Old, three in New. And that is why I think there are 8 days of creation and 8 kings of the beast in apocalypse 17.

For, in Tradition, it is written by St Methodius of Olympus, regarding the days of creation model:

"Five are the ages of the Old Law, the sixth is designated to the Church, the seventh is the Millennium of Rest, and the eighth is Eternity."

And Apocalypse 17:9-11 on the Beast:

"Five [kings of the beast] have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come. And when he comes, he must continue a short space. And the beast which was and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goes into perdition."

This is perhaps a great mystery: regardless of what any other world might look like, these things would remain, they transcend anything else that might be.

For full treatment, this article.