Claim. A new providential dispensation does not begin on the ashes of the old. It sprouts inside the final phase of the old age, overlapping it and coming into conflict with it. The beginning of the new and the end of the old occupy the same span of time, which is exactly what makes the transition disorienting for those alive through it.
Elaboration. Per 5.2. Our Attitude in the Last Days: “When we examine the progress of history in the providence of restoration, we find that a new dispensation begins when the old dispensation is about to end. Accordingly, the beginning of the new overlaps the conclusion of the old; as darkness falls on the old history, the new history is already dawning.”
The overlap explains why Last Days populations suffer: “those who live in this period suffer internally from anxiety, fear and confusion due to the absence of a guiding ideology or philosophy.” Two sovereignties exist simultaneously, with contrary purposes — internal tension is structurally guaranteed.
DP grounds the pattern in Jesus’s “new wine in fresh wineskins” saying. “The providence of the new age does not begin on the ashes of the old age. On the contrary, the new age sprouts and grows amidst the final phases of the old age and comes into conflict with that age.”
This is the structural ground for the persecution-of-new-age-saints claim (dp-new-age-saints-persecuted-by-old-age-pattern): the new dispensation must conflict with the old precisely because they coexist.
See also. dp-last-days-recurring-transition-not-single-event, dp-providence-progresses-in-spiral-with-parallel-periods