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Page 77

And over and above the feast of every seven years there is yet another year, the so-called Jubilee, clearly to imagine whose nature even partially, or the true laws to be fulfilled in it, is for no one save Him who has contemplated the Father's counsel in reference to the order in all the ages according to His unsearchable judgments and His univestigable ways. In trying to reconcile two apostolic passages it has often occurred to me to raise the question how there can be consummation of ages at which Jesus has been manifested once for all unto abolition of sins if there are going to be ages following after this. The Apostles' passages are as follows: In the Epistle to Hebrews, but now at a consummation of the ages He hath been manifested once for all unto abolition of sins through His sacrifice; but in the Epistle to Ephesians, in order that He may show forth, in the years following, the exceeding riches of His Grace in kindness toward us.

Well, in conjecture as to matters so great, I believe that, just as the year's consummation is its last month after which arises another month's beginning, so probably the present age is a consummation of numerous ages completing as it were a year of ages, and after it certain coming ages will arise whose beginning is the coming age, and in those coming ages God shall show forth the riches of His Grace in kindness, when the greatest sinner, who for having spoken ill against the Holy Spirit is held fast by his sin throughout the present age and the coming one from beginning to end, shall after that, I know not how, receive a dispensation.

When a man has had vision of these things and has given thought to a week of ages with intent to contemplate a kind of holy sabbath--keeping and a month of ages to see God's holy new moon, and a year of ages to survey the feasts of the year when every male must appear before the Lord God, and the corresponding years of so many ages to discern the seventh holy year, and seven weekly years of ages to sing a hymn to the Enactor of Laws so great, how can he after such consideration cavil over what is the merest fraction of an hour in the day of such an age, instead of doing everything to become, through his preparation here, worthy of obtaining the needful bread and to receive it while it is today and daily, what daily means being already clear from the foregoing explanations.

For he who prays today to God, who is from infiniti to infiniti, not only for today but also in a sense for that which is daily shall be enabled to receive from Him who hath power to bestow exceedingly above what we ask or think even things--to use extreme language--which transcend those that eye hath not seen and ear hath not heard and that have not gone up into the heart of man. These considerations seem to me to have been very necessary for the understanding of both the expressions today and daily when we are praying that the needful bread be given us from His Father.

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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/fathers/origen/prayer.asp?pg=77