Depending on the ‘crowd you run with,’ the term dispensationalism is either accepted as sound Biblical doctrine, or something bizarre that is man-made and should be rejected. For the record, after nearly 50 years studying the Bible, I am unashamedly and unapologetically a dispensationalist. In this lesson, my intention is to give you the evidence that convinced me this is the only approach that makes sense. Let me begin by recommending the definitive work on dispensationalism aptly called, The Greatest Book on Dispensational Truth by Clarence Larkin. It is pricey. It is scholarly, so you may possibly find it difficult to digest. It is not ‘light’ reading, so be prepared to invest time in the book. I’ve been through it a dozen times, and still find some things hard to understand. THE JOURNEY BEGINS The mantra for our lessons which we will continually review is: All the Bible is written for you, but not all the Bible is written to you. Take time to consider that statement. Christians can be arrogant in the sense that we think everything in the Bible is about us when, of course, it is not. God is not willing that any should perish but that all come to repentance. The “all” of that verse means everyone without exclusion – that is, everyone in every age from the creation of Adam to the newest born baby. It is only reasonable then that as God designed the Bible that in the 66 books, 1189 chapters, and 31,102 verses (unless you have a modern version such as the NIV; it removes 14 verses and more than 60,000 words) He would offer a plan of salvation for every age. For example, the pathway to eternal life for Adam and Eve was eating of the tree of life (Gen. 3:20), but they were then banned from eating of the tree after they sinned. Before the Law, prior to Moses’s writing Genesis through Deuteronomy, think of all the people who lived: Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. Thousands and thousands of people lived with the only instructions given was when God spoke to them personally, face-to-face (see Genesis 18) or in dreams (see Jacob) or by prophets (such as Moses). Fast forward the end times are revealed in many places in the Bible, but the most familiar being the Book of Revelation. At a time when 100 lb. hail stones are falling from the sky (Rev. 16), and the man of sin is revealed, God has a plan of salvation, namely, how to survive the Tribulation. One thing you do not want to do is take the mark of the Beast (Rev. 13). We will discuss and describe this mark later in this book. Currently we live in the age of grace or the Church Age. The term “age of grace” can be misleading because this New Testament time is not the exclusive time of grace. God had grace toward Israel many times. God had grace with David in putting away his sins of adultery and murder. God will continue to have grace to the end of the age, including the time of tribulation and the millennium. God is full of grace, so every age will have multitudes of examples of him demonstrating his grace to his creation.
The differences in the ages (i.e., before the Law, the time of the Law, the Church Age, the Tribulation Age, the Millennium), is that God works in different ways during different times. For example, in the Old Testament, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord (Genesis 6:8), but he was commanded to “prepare an ark to the saving of his house.” (Hebrews 11:7) Had he not built the ark, he would have perished just like all the others He knew it because fear was his motivation for obeying God (Hebrews 11:7). He had to work. The Law required Israelites to bring a sacrifice for their sins (see Leviticus 1-7). If they refused, they were cut off from Israel, and the only avenue to God in those days was through the Tabernacle where God, the Lord of hosts, dwelt between the cherubims (2 Samuel 6:2). Thousands of other examples could be shown but these two show the truth that in other dispensations, God required people to work. The age of grace is an exception – Ephesians 2:9 says that salvation is “not of works, lest any man should boast.” Noah had some bragging rights; he was the only person in history to build a three-story ark that saved everything that has breath
You might look at it like time zones. God has divided the ages into sections. In the church age, God requires no works for salvation; He demands a person puts their faith in Jesus Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection (Romans 10:9-10) and it is only by faith, not of works (Eph 2:8-9). The works follow salvation, but not as a merit to earn salvation. In the church age, there is no human high priest to make a sacrifice on the tenth day of the seventh month as required under the law (Leviticus 23:27-28). This stood as an immutable law in the Old Testament! Jesus Christ is our high priest and the propitiation for our sin. It is no longer “do” (Old Testament) it is “done” (New Testament). The weight of this is understood when Jesus said, “It is finished.” Everything necessary to complete the redemption of mankind was completed. God did no longer have to “wink at sin” – or delay any longer the payment for sin – because Jesus Christ was the payment for sin for the entire world. He went back and picked up the weight of sin from Adam forward, carried it to the cross and paid the debt.
More to come in the next post!
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