The second stage is the stage of His work from His ascension to His descension at His second coming. This is the age of grace for the building up of the church. This may be called the church age. Revelation 11 reveals that when the Lord descends in His second coming, He will take the earth with all the nations, making them a part of the eternal kingdom of God (v. 15). At the sounding of the seventh trumpet at the Lord's second coming, not only will the great tribulation end, but also this age will close (16:17), the mystery of God will be finished (10:7), and another age, the age of the kingdom, the millennium, will begin.

The age of the kingdom, the millennium, beginning from His descending to take the earth, is the third stage. That thousand-year period will conclude God's holy work for His new creation, and the New Jerusalem will be consummated. After the one thousand years, God's work in the age of the old creation to gain His new creation in full is ultimately finished (Rev. 21:5-6). Then the new age of the new heaven and new earth with the New Jerusalem will be for eternity. In that eternal age, there will be no work, just rest. That will be an eternal Sabbath with no more work.

The entire age of grace is the time of the Lord's ascension. He is in the heavens doing a lot, but today's Christians do not pay adequate attention to this part of Christ's ministry. Today He is both in the heavens seated at the right hand of God (Rom. 8:34) and in us (v. 10). This is very mysterious. He is in the heavens in ascension, and His presence within us is in the ascension. Today we are in ascension. We are not earthly persons but heavenly persons. Philippians 3:20 says that our commonwealth, or citizenship, is in the heavens. We are the heavenly citizens, so we all are in the ascension (Eph. 2:6b).

Christ is in ascension both in the heavens and in us, and His heavenly ministry is working, is going on, at the same time in the heavens and in us. Christ as our High Priest is praying for us (Heb. 7:25). He is interceding for us both in the heavens and in us. Today He is always doing the same thing at the same time both in the heavens and in us. Television is a good illustration of this. If something is taking place in Hong Kong, we can see it on television at the same time here in the United States. Christ is working in the heavens, and at the same time He is also working in us according to the heavenly television. This is God's move in man in the ascension of Christ, so it is also God's history.

God's history is from eternity past to eternity future, and we have been included in His history. When we repented and confessed our sins at the beginning of our Christian life, God was involved. If God had not done anything, how could we have repented? Our repentance was motivated by His operation. He operated, He motivated, and then we repented. God's motivation plus our praying was our repentance. When we confessed our sins, God was there working. If God had not been working, we could not have confessed.

We were regenerated, but it was the Triune God who regenerated us. We were born of the Triune God and from that day we became His children. A little child's life is wrapped up with his mother's life. The mother and the infant live together. The infant eats, and the mother feeds. Without the mother's feeding, how could the infant eat? Thus, we can say that the history of the mother is the history of the infant. In a similar way, the history of God is our history. Today most Christians see this history only from their side. They do not see it from God's side. They do not see that their history is one with God's history.