Now I’m going to carry on with what I was doing last week. We looked last week at this chart which was a chart of the dispensations.
There are seven dispensations: we have the dispensation of Innocence (1) which started with Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter 1 to 3.
Then, you have Conscience (2) which is the time from after the fall, after the expulsion from Eden, right through to Noah and The Flood.
After The Flood, you have the time of Human Government (3) which goes up to the Tower of Babel.
Then, you have Abraham being chosen and One Jewish people in the Age of Promise (4) coming into being as a nation – the descendants of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob – who end up in slavery in Egypt.
Out of that comes the Exodus and giving of the Torah through Moses which starts the time of The Law (5). From the time of Moses through to Jesus the Torah is the guide for the people to live by.
Then, we come to the time of the Lord Jesus, the Age of Grace (6), when he comes as the Messiah to fulfil the prophecies of the scriptures, to be the suffering servant Messiah and bring in the New Covenant under which we are put right with God through faith in Jesus the Messiah who died for our sins on the Cross and rose from the dead.
This age will come to an end with the time of tribulation which will lead into the last age which is the Millennial Kingdom (7) when Jesus is going to reign on the earth literally for one thousand years up until the end of the world which will take place at the time of the end of the Thousand Years and lead to the New Heavens and the New Earth.
Now, one of the things I said last week was that every age ends in failure, in some kind of rebellion and some kind of judgment. Adam and Eve sinned and were expelled from Eden. (From the Age of Innocence [1] to the Age of Conscience [2])
Then, they set up new way in which people called on the name of the Lord which brings in a separation between the ones who call on the name of the Lord, the descendants of Shem and those who don’t, the descendants of Cain. So, you have two peoples one of whom comes to rebellion against God.
By the time you get to the end of that second age, you have a world which is very much in total rebellion against God. There is widespread wickedness in the Earth and God deluges the Earth with The Flood Noah and his family go into the ark and survive then they set up after the flood, and they set up the human government (From the Age of Conscience [2] to the Age of Human Government [3]) which we find in Genesis chapter 9 going up to the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) which is a statement of human rebellion against God.
God scatters of the tribes around the earth and then God chooses one man, Abraham, to be His representative if you like. And, through Abraham, a revelation of the fact that there is One God is given (From the Age of Human Government [3] to the Age of Promise [4]). The children of Israel carry on the message but end up enslaved in Egypt and, basically, are out of the Covenant, out of the land of Israel and in slavery.
Moses comes along and sets them free and they go to the Mount Sinai to receive The Commandments of God, the Torah (From the Age of Promise [4] to the Age of The Law [5]). And you have the age from Moses right through to the Messiah in which people live under the Torah.
At the time of Messiah Jesus, Israel is occupied by the Romans. You have a substitution of the Torah which is given by the religious Pharisees, who add things to the Torah, and Jesus says that’s actually in conflict with the true message of the Torah. This leads to a conflict between Jesus and the religious authorities which itself leads to the Cross, to His death, His resurrection, the giving of the Holy Spirit, the birth of the church, the fall of the Temple in 70AD, and the dispersion of the Jewish people around the world (From the Age of The Law [5] to the Age of Grace [6]).
We’re now living in the time of the church which will lead up to the Second Coming of Jesus. And we see a rebellion which I’m going to talk about in a moment.
We will then go into the Millennial Kingdom Age or Dispensation in which Jesus is going to Reign on the Earth, according to scriptures, for a thousand years (From the Age of Grace [6] to the Millennial Kingdom Age [7]).
Satan will be bound and, at the end of the Thousand-Year period, Satan will be released. That last rebellion against God will lead into the end of the world and Heaven and Hell, and then there will be no more failures, and we’ll be with the Lord forever if you you are redeemed.
If you follow through this plan, you can see that every age ends in some kind of a failure, some kind of a crisis, all of which are caused by sin and rebellion against God and which are inspired by Satan.
Therefore, we have to ask a question: ‘Where is this leading in our time, today?’
I put here some of the meanings of the word dispensation:
As I’ve said, the scheme of things which I’m looking at here is what’s called dispensationalism and I do believe that you have these different dispensations through which God is dealing with people in different ways, during the different ages.