Dispensations

(God’s plan for the ages)

Introduction
When we understand the doctrines of the angelic conflict and dispensations, all of a sudden the Bible begins to make sense. The two are integrally related.

Acts 1:6—the apostles were questioning Jesus before His ascension and they still haven’t gotten the picture as to just what is taking place and what God’s plan is. They are now asking Him—an imperfect, which is continuous action in past time: “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” The sense of the verb is that they kept asking this. Notice Jesus’ response: “It is not for you”—specifically speaking to these eleven disciples, the original twelve minus Judas who has now committed suicide—“for you to know times—CHRONOS [xronoj], or epochs—KAIROS [kairoj], which the Father has fixed by His own authority.” But that took place just a few days after the resurrection, just a couple of days before the ascension actually, and it wasn’t until another ten days before the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost and the beginning of the church age.

About 20 years later the apostle Paul is writing to the church at Thessalonica and says, using the same phrase, “Now as to the times [CHRONOS] and the epochs [KAIROS], brethren, you have no need of anything to be written to you.”

You see the difference? In Acts chapter one Jesus tells the eleven (Paul is not a part of them yet), “It is not for you to know.” But in Thessalonians it has been explained to every believer about the times and the epochs. Paul expects the Thessalonians to understand this because when he was there he taught them about the times and the epochs. And what that tells us at the very least is that this was part of the doctrine that was reserved for the apostle Paul, a part of the “mystery” doctrine, referring to something that has not been previously revealed. In the Old Testament, while there were many things revealed about prophecy and about God’s purpose in history and the ultimate destiny of history, there were many details, especially about the church age, which were not revealed at all. The present church age is not revealed at all in the Old Testament and those doctrines related to the church age were reserved for the ministry of the apostle Paul. The important thing to remember is that this was something that Paul taught when he was in Thessalonica. He was only there a few months, yet one of the key things that he taught was about dispensations and about prophecy. And we live in an era where some people in some churches just ridicule the idea of teaching anything about prophecy and they make fun of those who do. Prophecy is a very important aspect of Scripture. Almost a third of Scripture was prophetic when it was written, and probably one out of every twenty verses in the Scripture are prophetic and have not been fulfilled. It was written to be understood, to communicate, and to be lucid. The reasons people don’t understand it are many, but they have preconceived notions so they don’t spend a lot of time studying it, or they use allegory and other types of interpretation to get around it.

We have to understand the words “times” – CHRONOS – and “epochs” – KAIROS. The word for “times” is the plural of CHRONOS. Both of these words are used for describing time but they have slightly different nuances. CHRONOS emphasizes the events in their succession and often refers to events coming to pass as intended. It emphasizes the event aspect in the succession of events. For example, Jesus is born, according to Galatians 4:4, “in the fullness of time.” In referring to John the Baptist, the time of his birth was near. So it focuses on events within that succession of time. The word “seasons” or “epochs” – KAIROS – indicates a broader sense of time, the expanses of time with certain definable characteristics, very similar to the way we sometimes use the word “ages.” Then we have the word “age” – AIONOS [a)iwnoj] which refers to a period of time in human history. Then we have the word that we are familiar with as “dispensation”, but it you are using a modern translation the word “dispensation” has been replaced by the English word “stewardship” or “administration.” It still translates the Greek word OIKONOMOS [o)ikonomoj] and this word emphasizes the responsibility delegated by God to the human race during that period of time.

Definition of the word “dispensation”: If refers to a distinct and identifiable administration in the development of God’s plan and purposes for human history. Ephesians 3:2; Colossians 1:25, 26.

It is clear from looking at Acts 1:6-7 that there are three things.
1) First of all, that God has a plan which includes different time periods that have different characteristics. The apostles clearly saw this, that there was a distinction between the time in which they were living, where Jesus was in a resurrection body and hadn’t ascended yet, and the kingdom.

2) Secondly, Jesus’ answer indicates that the temporal boundaries, the time limits to these ages are determined in the decrees of God—“which the Father has fixed by His own authority.” So that God has determined the beginning and the end of each of these time periods. Jesus indicates that there is a temporal aspect to that. The fact that there are times, temporal boundaries, in the ages is clear from passages like Acts 1:7.

3) Doctrine related to God’s plan for human history was clearly taught by the apostle Paul in the first century church. Early in their stage of development he made sure they understood the dispensations, God’s plan for the ages, the distinction between Israel and the church, the Rapture—all of these things were taught in the first months after salvation. 1 Corinthians 2:7—“but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery.” That is, it was hidden from the ages, it wasn’t revealed before; “the hidden wisdom, which God predestined before the ages to our [church age believers] glory.” The mystery doctrine of the church age is for our glory, it is a unique spiritual life in the church age and distinct from all other times in human history.

So when we come to this we must ask, What is revealed in Scripture about God’s plan for human history? What is God’s plan for the church? What is unique about the church? What makes the church distinct in history? Why is it distinct from Israel? And what are the differences? What about God’s promises and prophecies related to the nation Israel in the Old Testament? Is He still going to fulfill them, or is somehow God going back on His promises, and is He going to give them instead to the church? There are those who say that. How you answer these questions provides a framework for how you interpret the entire Scripture and will affect how you view every category of theology, from theology proper, the doctrine of God, Christology, pneumatology, ecclesiology, including sanctification and spiritual life. It affects everything. Theology is like a seamless garment. You cannot start messing with one part of theology, of one doctrine over here and not have it affect something over there, everything is inter-related; because ultimately all true theology the thinking, the integrated, consistent, systematic, logical, rational thought of God. What we do when we study the Scriptures is, we extrapolate from the Scriptures and put together an understanding of what God has revealed to us. And none of us understands it perfectly or will understand it completely because we are all finite. That is why we continue to study and to push and to refine our understanding of the Scriptures. But when things are wrong in one place they are going to affect in several other places as well, as we can’t just start tweaking things and say, Well I’m a dispensationalist in prophecy, but not here. And that is exactly what goes on and is supposed to be okay today!

There are two major schools of interpretation for Scripture. No matter who you are or what denomination you are in you are going to fall into one of two camps. You are either going to be a dispensationalist or you are going to be into “Replacement Theology,” one or the other. Definitions: Dispensationalism understands that God will ultimately and literally fulfill all His promises and prophecies to the nation Israel. Replacement Theology says all of the covenants and promises that God made to Israel in the Old Testament have now been transferred to the church.

There are many different kinds of Replacement Theology. Covenant theology is the most dominant form and you find that among Presbyterians, Reformed theologians, people like R.C. Sproul. Mentioning these people by names is not to run them down, it is to inform as to whom you are listening to. Lutheran churches also hold to a Replacement Theology, as do Methodists, Roman Catholics. All these different groups who do not hold that there is a specific future in God’s plan for Israel all hold to Replacement Theology, and in order to do that, at some place you have to shift from a literal interpretation of prophecy to an allegorical or figurative interpretation. The questions come to mind: Why were all the first advent promises fulfilled literally? Why do you change the second advent promises to make them be fulfilled in a non-literal or allegorical manner?

There are a number of misconceptions that some people have about dispensationalism.
1) Charismatics will always say that dispensationalists are anti-supernaturalists because they don’t believe in tongues, and if it weren’t for dispensationalists nobody would be anti-charismatic. But that is incorrect.

2) The second misconception is that dispensationalists teach that there are two ways of salvation, that there is a way of salvation in the Old Testament that was based on the Law, and a different way of salvation in the New Testament. There may have been some dispensationalists here or there who have made such wrong statements but that has never been the view of most dispensationalists. They have always believed that salvation has always been by faith alone in Christ alone. In the Old Testament it was an anticipation of God’s provision of salvation, looking forward, that God has promised the Messiah who would come and save them. They may not have known all the particulars but they knew that the Messiah would come to save them from their sins. In the New Testament we look back, but it has always been by faith alone in Christ alone; either anticipated or completed.

3) That it is new. Nobody was a dispensationalist until John Nelson Darby came along in the 1830s, therefore it is not biblical. Well if newness is any kind of criterion, then if you look at the whole scope of things over 2000 years of church history covenant theology didn’t develop until the 1600s. So just because they are 200 years older they are still the new kid on the block. They are damned by their own criticism. Not only is “new” not a legitimate criticism of dispensationalism but “new” is not a legitimate criterion because it is possible that people miss things in the study of Scripture, and there may be—and there are—strong historical reasons why nobody ever thought in terms of dispensationalism prior to Darby in the 1800s. There are three legs on the stool that support dispensationalism. One is a literal interpretation of Scripture, and from the late third century up until the middle of the sixteenth century and the Reformation nobody was thinking in terms of literal interpretation. The allegorical interpretation of Scripture dominated from Origen to the reformation and it took years for theologians to start applying and working out a literal interpretation of Scripture in areas other than salvation. The second leg is “pre-millennial.” You have to be pre-millennial in order to ever come up with an understanding of dispensationalism or pre-Trib Rapture. The third: you have to understand that there is a distinction between Israel and the church, and that doctrine really wasn’t restored full bore until about the end of the 1700s. It wasn’t much of a jump between about the 1790s and the mid-1830s when Darby first articulates dispensationalism. But the interesting this is that it is possible to go back in history and demonstrate that many theologians in the early church—2nd century, 3rd century—had all of the distinctives of dispensationalism in their writings—the distinction between Israel and the church, literal hermeneutics, literal thousand-year reign of Christ on the earth. It is just that they weren’t developing that theology consistently. They were fighting battles on fronts. They were trying to figure out who Jesus Christ was and the Trinity. The fourth thing is, you always get—especially from the Lordship salvation crowd—this: that the dispensational crowd are antinomian. That is, it doesn’t matter how you live your life, this is the age of grace and it doesn’t matter what we do. That, too, is false. The fifth is the accusation of being anti-intellectual.

What is a dispensation?

The English word “dispensation” comes from the Latin word dispensatio which is in the Latin Vulgate and translated the Greek word OIKONOMOS. It means to weigh out or to dispense. The main idea is to deal out something, to dispense something, or to distribute something. It is the action of administering or ordering something—bringing order to something, running something. It is secondly, the action of administering or dispensing with some requirement. Notice Webster’s 3rd New International Dictionary, defining the English word “dispensation”: There are four sub-meanings to the first meaning in the dictionary. (A dictionary lists meanings in terms of their more prominent usage).

First meaning:
a) It is a divine ordering and administration of worldly affairs.
b) It is a system of principles, promises and rules divinely ordained and administered.
c) It is a period of history during which a particular divine revelation has predominated in the affairs of mankind.
d) Any general state or ordering of things.

Second meaning:
A dispensing with or doing without something. For example in the Roman Catholic church you can get a Papal dispensation which means “done away with making something a sin”—as though it wasn’t a sin, you can get away with it.

Third meaning:
The act of dispensing or dealing out or distributing. Something that is dispensed or distributed.

The Greek word OIKONOMIA [o)ikonomia], which is one form of the noun is the word from which we get our English word “ecumenical,” “economy.” It
means to manage, to regulate, to administer, and to plan. The very concept of “dispensation” tells us that God has an orderly system. We know from 1 Corinthians 14 that God is a God of order, that he is rational, that He has a plan, and that that plan includes many different details. It is a combination word: OIKOS=house; NOMOS=Law. So it literally means a house law or house rule. Anyone who has had children knows that the rules of the house change over time. Rug rats under the age of five have one set of rules. When they reach their adolescent years and begin driving cars, staying out late, dating, and being involved in all sorts of school activities, have a different set of rules. Then, when they moved out of the house and went to college and come home on weekends, there was another set of rules. But there were similarities in each of those administrations. Sometimes the word is translated world, the inhabited world, but only in the sense of the management or administration of the world. It is a slightly different word than the word AION [a)iwn], for age, and it does not have an inherent time factor to it. Inherently it doesn’t have that time factor but when you talk about an administration it implies a beginning and an end. So it is not like it is contradictory to a time factor. It emphasizes the concept of management and an administration.

Forms of the word are used twenty times in the Greek New Testament. It is used one time as a verb, OIKONOMEO, in Luke 16:2 which means to be a steward, i.e. someone who was the manger of a household. Nineteen times it appears as OIKONOMOS, used ten times to refer to “steward” or “administrator,” Luke 12:42; 16:1, 3, 8; Romans 16:23; 1 Corinthians 4:1.2; Galatians 4:2; Titus 1:7; 1 Peter 4:10. The adjective OIKONOMIA is used nine times for a dispensation—Luke 16:2,3,4; 1 Corinthians 9:17; Ephesians 1:10; 3:2, 9. Colossians 1:25; 1 Timothy 1:4.

From Luke 16: Stewardship
1. There are two parties involved. The first party has authority to delegate responsibilities and the other has the responsibility to carry out those duties. There is an obligation imposed upon the steward.

2. There are specific responsibilities for the steward.

3. There is accountability as part of the arrangement. At any time the steward can be called upon to explain how he has fulfilled his responsibilities.

4. A change can be made at any time if unfaithfulness is discovered.

These parables were based upon everyday life and how society functioned, and it was very clear that when they used words like OIKONOMOS that the people who read the Scriptures understood what they were talking about. Later in the New testament Paul uses the word in a number of places. It is also used by Peter in 1 Peter 4:10 and there are seven features that are obvious in the epistle.

1. God is the one to whom men are responsible in discharging stewardship—1 Corinthians 4:1,2.

2. Faithfulness is required of those to whom a dispensational responsibility is committed—1 Corinthians 4:2. It is faithfulness, not success.

3. Stewardship may end at some time, it doesn’t go on indefinitely—Galatians 4:4-7.

4. Dispensations are connected to mysteries, i.e. hitherto unrevealed doctrine, spiritual revelation. A new dispensation comes with new revelation. This does not mean that new revelation will bring a new dispensation, but there will always be new revelation at the beginning of any dispensation.

5. Dispensation and age are connected ideas but they are not synonymous and they are not interchangeable—Colossians 1:25, 26. Dispensation emphasizes the responsibility of the administration aspect; age emphasizes the time aspect.

6. God has clearly demarked certain chronological divisions in human history. For example, Ephesians 1:10, with a view to an administration suitable for the fullness of times, i.e. the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and upon the earth. The fullness of times is a reference to the millennial kingdom, a future dispensation. Ephesians 3:8.9.

Definitions:

Charles C. Ryrie: A dispensation is a distinguishable economy in the outworking of God’s purposes in each administration.

R.B. Thieme: A dispensation is a period of human history expressed in terms of divine revelation [each stage has new revelation]. History is a sequence of divine administration divided into eras, each having unique characteristics as well as certain functions in common with the other ages. These consecutive eras reflect the unfolding of God’s plan for mankind. They constitute the divine viewpoint of history and the theological interpretation of history.

Robert L. Dean: A dispensation, therefore, is a distinct and identifiable administration in the development of God’s plan and purposes for human history.

That emphasizes the fact that each administration has identifiable characteristics that we can highlight and know when we move from one administration to another. It is thought through, it relates to God’s plan and His omniscience, and how God devised the strategy for human history from eternity past, that it is related to specific purposes that He has for human history, and that will tie it in to the angelic conflict and understanding that the outworking of human history plays a part in the appeal of Satan to God from his trial in eternity past. You cannot separate an understanding of dispensations from Satan’s rebellion against God and God’s purposes for creating the human race as an experiment. Sometimes people think of experiment as doing something to see what will happen. That is not a correct definition. A true experiment is designed to go through certain actions in order to demonstrate a truth. That is why human history is an experiment in that sense. It is to demonstrate God’s grace, His love and His mercy; and that God’s grace and love are compatible with His justice and righteousness, and that relates specifically to Satan’s charge in eternity past: How could a just and loving God cast His creatures into a lake of fire? So God says in effect, “Just wait a minute and I will show you how my grace and love are completely compatible with justice and righteousness, that it is only when the creature is completely submissive to my will that they can find absolute happiness.” And this is demonstrated through the use of man’s volition. So when Adam disobeyed God in the garden, God’s grace provided a solution that would not compromise His justice and righteousness but would provide salvation for the creature and demonstrate that volition is the issue—not God’s “injustice” or Satan’s power, but human volition.

A closely-connected but not interchangeable word is “age,” the Greek word AION [ai)wn], which introduces the time element. So it covers a period of time. God manages the entirety of human history. He manages the entirety of human history as a household, moving humanity through sequential stages of His administration. So that is each age different doctrines, different factors are on display. In the age of Israel, for example, it was demonstrated that man on his own, apart from God’s help, could not even approximate the demands of God. So in the church age we are given God the Holy Spirit so that we can understand doctrine better and to apply doctrine. The in the Millennial age there will be perfect environment, the curse will be rolled back on the physical environment so that the lion will lie down with the lamb, etc. But in perfect environment man will still reject the grace of God, thus demonstrating that the issue is not environment or any other factor other than man’s own negative volition. So each phase demonstrates certain facets of the truth about God’s perfect righteousness and justice, and how God in His grace has supplied everything for man. Only by complete and total reliance upon God can we have all that God has for us. The creature cannot succeed in any way at all on his own terms.

Each administrative period is characterized by revelation (There is always additional revelation given at the change of a dispensation) which specifies responsibility, a test in relation to those responsibilities, a failure to pass the test, and God’s gracious provision of a solution when failure occurs.

What do these dispensations have in common?

1. The distinct elements look at history from the viewpoint of God. God is always the issue, we always start with God and never from man. This is one of the greatest sources of problems in theology and churches and people’s lives: when we start from our experience rather than starting with what God has said.
2. In terms of dispensation there is a clear time when one ends and another begins. There is a clear demarcation, not a fade in and fade out over a long period of time. There are transition periods. For example, Christ’s death on the cross was the end of the law, according to Romans 14, yet Christ was on the earth for forty days before He ascended, and there were another ten days before the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost to begin the church age.
3. Dispensations emphasize the divine administration of history, that it is not simply a collection of haphazard events, not ruled by chance, but that God is moving everything in a specific direction.
4. New revelation designates the shift from one dispensation to another. Just because there is new revelation doesn’t automatically mean there is a dispensational shift but in every dispensational shift there will be accompanying new revelation that goes along with it.
5. Some thing remain the same; others are different. For example, salvation is always by faith in Christ alone. The object is the same but we are either anticipating it or looking back. Some things are different. In the Old Testament there were animal sacrifices which anticipated Christ’s atonement. In the church age there are no animal sacrifices. In the Millennial kingdom there will be a return to animal sacrifices, but they are not the same animals sacrifices or for the same purpose; they are for Israel and they function for Israel in the same way that the Lord’s table functions for the church as a memorial to what Christ has done for them.
6. Each dispensation has its own responsibilities and tests. In the church age the test is whether we are going to be filled with the Spirit and advance through learning doctrine under the filling of the Spirit, walking by the Spirit to advance to spiritual maturity.
7. Each successive stage moves God’s plan closer to conclusion. There is an end to history, it doesn’t just go on and on. There is a definite plan with a definite ending.

How do we know when a new dispensation begins? What is the criterion?

Erich Sauer: “A new period always begins when from the side of God a change is introduced in the composition of the principles valid up to that time.” In other words, God introduces a change. There have been principles that have been in operation up to a certain point and then God gives new revelation, invalidates some previous activity, and gives some new criteria. “That is, from the side of God three things occur: 1) The continuance of certain ordinances valid until then. 2) There is an annulment of other regulations until then valid [e.g. Mosaic law]. 3) There is a fresh introduction of new principles not before valid.

Summary

1) From God’s viewpoint a dispensation is an administration. He manages or administers human history.

2) From man’s viewpoint a dispensation is a responsibility. We are given responsibilities we are accountable for. That means there are certain obligations. Grace does not mean you can be irresponsible or have no obligations. Grace does not mean you can be irresponsible or have no obligation. Grace means that those obligations and responsibilities are not the basis for God’s relationship with you or the means by which you gain divine approval.

3) From the viewpoint of progressive revelation, that God progressively gives new information to the human race—so that Noah did not know as much as Abraham, Abraham did not know as much as Moses, Moses did not know as much as David, etc.—a dispensation is a stage in that progress of revelation.

4) It is the totality of all of human history that will stand as a testimony against Satan and his calumny against the righteousness and justice of God.

The characteristics of a dispensation

1) There are three primary or major characteristics that are found in every case.

a) There is a change in God’s governmental relationship to man. There is always going to be a change in how God is going to administer things in human history. One example is in Genesis 6:3. The word in the Hebrew translated “strive” is a hapax legomenon (only used one time in the Hebrew). It is very likely that the meaning of that Hebrew word isn’t “strive” but “abide.” It is possible that there was a personal interaction with God Himself on the earth up to the flood, and it is possible that God’s removal of Himself from this direct involvement in human history—direct judicial involvement—that also caused Him to delegate judicial responsibility to man. So there is a clear change in how God related to man from the antediluvian period to the postdiluvian period.

b) There is a change in man’s responsibility towards God. In the era of the Mosaic law man was responsible to worship God through Israel—specifically through the temple and tabernacle sacrifices. Those were abrogated at the cross so that in light of what Christ has done we have direct access to God. Before the cross there was a Levitical priesthood; after the cross every believer is a priest.

c) There must be a corresponding revelation from God to effect the change.

2) There are some secondary characteristics which are not necessarily found in each and every dispensation.

a) There is a test or responsibility, always a test of positive volition, a test of man’s obedience to God. For example, in the Garden of Eden the issue was the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

b) Failure. In terms of human failure there is a failure to fulfill responsibility for the test governing that administration. There is a failure to trust God for salvation. In any given dispensation most people fail, just a few do not. For example, at the end of the dispensation of human conscience there were only eight people who were obedient.

c) Divine judgment.

3) There is always an identifiable steward, an identifiable individual that stands at the beginning. For example, Adam in both the age of perfect environment and the one that followed. In the church age it is the church as a whole as the collective body of Christ that is the representative. Except for Adam and Christ most don’t live out the dispensation. In the Millennial kingdom Jesus Christ is the King of kings and Lord of lords.

What are the characteristics of a dispensationalist?

Most theologians recognize that there are certain distinctions in God’s plan for history. Charles Hodge, a noted theologian, held to four dispensations, but he was not

a dispensationalist. There are many theologians in history who recognize various dispensations, but that doesn’t make them dispensationalists. A dispensationalist is not someone who recognizes that dispensations exist. It has nothing to do with the number of dispensations, although we must hold to at least three. Dispensationalism is not necessarily equivalent to being premillennial—that Christ will come before the Millennium. Pre-Tribulational is something else—the Rapture comes before the Tribulation. It is not possible to get to a pre-Tribulation Rapture unless you are a dispensationalist.

Three things make one a dispensationalist: a) A consistent, literal interpretation applied equally to all Scripture against spiritualizing or allegorizing portions of the text, especially in relationship to prophecy, Israel and the church. The point is that if God literally fulfilled the first half of these prophecies in Christ then He must be literally fulfilling the second half in the future. b) On the basis of a consistent literal interpretation, then, a consistent distinction must be made between God’s plan for Israel and God’s plan for the church—that God has one plan and purpose for Israel, Israel is related to an earthly destiny, Israel has a specific plan and destiny related to Jerusalem and the land in the future; and the church has a heavenly destiny as the bride of Christ, and has a distinct role in history from that of Israel. This is really the acid test of a dispensationalist. c) God’s ultimate purpose. In dispensationalism the ultimate purpose of God, the overriding main theme of Scripture, is the glory of God. The overriding theme of Scripture is the glory of God, that God has instituted all of these different plans and programs, and is working in history in order to reveal His glory—the magnificence of His integrity, His righteousness, justice, grace and love.

In covenant theology, which is the most systematic of the replacement theologies, salvation is the main theme. What is wrong with that? It doesn’t account for the creation of the angels, it doesn’t account for the destiny of the angels, it leaves many things out. For dispensationalists salvation is important but it is only one program in God’s overall plan. God has other plans and purposes for angels and other creatures.

In conclusion, the essence of dispensationalism is the distinction between Israel and the church, which grows out of the consistent, plain interpretation of Scripture and reflects the basic purpose of God in His dealings with man in ultimate glory.

How did God advance the dispensations?

What is the mechanism for advancing from one dispensation to another? This is through revelation. There is always accompanying revelation. God is the one from His viewpoint who determines the advance in history and shift in dispensations. This is always given by means of a covenant. Not all covenants institute a dispensational shift but all dispensations are marked by a new covenant.

What is a covenant? If you just want one word to hang it on, it’s contract. A covenant is a legal contract between God and man. The interesting thing is that in all of the world’s religions it is only Christianity, only in the Bible, that God is entering into a legal contract with man and binding Himself to the terms of that contract. So definition: A covenant is a contract between God (party of the 1^st part; He institutes the contract, not man) who makes a sovereign disposition, obligating Himself in grace. God obligates Himself and will restrict Himself in different ages. He obligates Himself in grace to bless man (party of the 2^nd part). Two covenants are between God and Gentiles—really it is one covenant. The original Edenic covenant is modified by the Adamic covenant because of the Fall. That covenant is then modified again by the Noahic covenant because of the Flood. But they all have basically the same stipulations. There are certain hindrances on man’s part because of sin that come into play, but they all are basically the same thing. So basically there are two covenants. There is the one covenant between God and all peoples (not just Gentiles, it would include the Jews as well who come in later) and then there is the Abrahamic covenant. All of the covenants with Israel are just modifications and addendums to the Abrahamic covenant. The Abrahamic covenant is further developed in the real estate covenant (also referred to as the Palestinian covenant), i.e. the land covenant, the Mosaic with Israel, the Davidic covenant, and then the New covenant. Only the blessings of the Mosaic covenant were conditioned on the obedience of the people. The promised blessings of the other covenants are unconditional.

Conditional covenant: This is a proposal of God whereby He promises in a conditional contract with man by the formula, “If you will,” [In other words, “If you do this, then I’ll do that.” God’s promises of blessing are conditional upon man’s obedience] to grant special blessings to man provided man fulfills certain conditions. Failure on man’s part, however, will result in punishment. In a conditional covenant God fulfilling His terms is dependent upon man fulfilling his terms. If man fails to fulfill his terms then God is free from any obligation to the contract to fulfill His part. God never intended for the Mosaic covenant to be a permanent covenant, that is the whole argument of Hebrews chapter eight.

Unconditional or permanent covenant: This is a sovereign act of God whereby He establishes an unconditional or declarative contract with man, obligating Himself in grace by the formula, “I will.” God is going to fulfill what He says in the contract regardless of how the recipient responds. God is going to make Abraham’s name great regardless of how Abraham responds. The unconditional covenants are the Adamic, the Noahic, the Abrahamic, the real estate, the Davidic, and the New covenants. They are permanent covenants as well.

There is a progress to revelation, and what moves, what shifts these dispensations, is that God changes His management strategy. He usually lays that out in terms of a legal document called a covenant—the Hebrew word berith or the Greek word DIATHEKE [diaqhke]. That is basically a term for a legal contract.

The first contract is called the Edenic covenant because it takes place during the period when Adam and the woman—and she is not called Eve until after the fall—were in the Garden, from the creation of man in Genesis 1:25-28, to the fall of man in Genesis chapter three. This is the period of perfect environment. It is sometimes called the period of innocence. Innocence sometimes conveys the idea of naivety or something less positive, so the idea of perfect environment is preferable because there is no sin, and man’s volition, for or against God, is tested at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

There are really three major overall subjects that we want to pull together in this subject of dispensations. The first is the whole idea of dispensations and the development of God’s plan and program for human history. The second is the mechanism that advances each age from age to age, and that is the covenants. The third is to answer the overall question of why God even began human history, what its function is, and how the dispensations relate to this overall issue. That overall issue we call the angelic conflict. It is the angelic conflict which is going to provide the framework for understanding why each dispensation has the tests that it does, and why there is this incremental advance through history and the emphasis of each age and each era.

Genesis 1:1. There is a lot of controversy on this verse. It starts off with the Hebrew word bereshith, which is also the title for the book of Genesis, the Jews always titled their books with the first word in the book. It is translated “in the beginning.” The beginning of what? The beginning of the space-time continuum. Prior to this there is no second or third heaven. When God spoke to create the heavens and the earth, that is what created the space-time continuum. Space and time are co-relative to one another. In Hebrew there is not a phrase, a single word as you do in English, “universe.” So there has to be used two different words that together encompass the totality of something. For example, in the Psalms it talks about meditating on God’s Word day and night. The words day and night are opposites but together they encompass the totality of time. What we have here is the heavens and the earth, and together they encompass the totality of the universe. That tells us, therefore, that the universe is finite. That is just one of the observations we can make that is contrary to the evolutionary scheme. God is the subject of bara which is used only of God’s creative activity. Only God is ever the subject of the verb bara. God created out of nothing the heavens and the earth, and that refers to the beginning of time.

The question that arises is when exactly did this occur? Among conservative evangelicals there are basically two views. (By “conservative” is meant the exclusion of anyone who is trying to compromise with evolution) We reject that there is any way that creation and evolution can be brought together and merged. They are two opposite, antithetical, competing views of the universe and there is no way that you can bring them together whatsoever. What happened in history is that years and years ago—back into the early middle ages, 9^th, 10^th century—Rabbis interpreted Genesis 1:1 as the original creation. Then the restoration did not begin until verse 2, so there is some period of time lapse between 1:1 and 1:2. Into this lapse of time is placed the fall of Satan and his trial before God. So the creation of man in what becomes six days of restoration plus one rest day becomes a period of recreation or restoration of planet earth in relation to Satan’s fall. That view was popular for many years, and then in the 1820s a Scottish Presbyterian theologian by the name of Thomas Chalmers came along, and by that time there was the development of historical geology and the thesis that there were lengthy periods time, that the earth really wasn’t just 5000 years old, or 6000 years old, as most people believed up to about the middle of the seventeenth century. Most scientists believed that, in fact all of modern science in that day was established on the principle that Genesis was taken literally. What Chalmers did was really disastrous. At that time in history the historical geologists, the evolution crowd before Darwin, was saying all the earth was obviously older than 5-6000 years, it was probably 25,000 or maybe 50,000. That is not really a tremendously long period of time and so there were attempts to try to figure out how to stretch Genesis from 5,000 to 25,000 or 50,000. One of those attempts was made by Chalmers who said that in the gap between 1:1 and 1:2 was all of the historical geologic ages, and crammed all of the fossils and ape-men and other ideas that are come up with between those two verses. There are a number of problems with his theory, not the least of which is that if you have anything dying prior to Genesis 3:6 when Adam sinned [in Adam all die], then physical death is no longer the consequence of spiritual death, and spiritual death is not therefore an abnormality in the creation order, but death and suffering are normal. Chalmers was one of many Christian evangelicals who are accommodationists. They try to accommodate the Bible and compromise the findings of what was coming to be known as modern science.

What we have in Scripture is Isaiah 14:12-15 and Ezekiel 28:12ff, the description of a creature who goes through a mammoth fall that reverberates through the universe. It exemplifies Satan’s antagonism to God, his lack of humility which translates into arrogance, and his attempt to supplant God with himself, and to do and function as a god. That is Satan’s agenda, he wants God to let him function as God and to show that he can do it. So what we have here is a picture of the Satanic fall and the arrogance of Satan. That can only take place in one of two places scripturally. One has got to be at the end of the seven creative days, according to the scheme that these are literal and that there is no time lapse between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. That means that the creation of the earth and the creation of man would be irrelevant to what was going on in the angelic realm. There are many arguments that militate against that particular position. The other place to put this event is between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2—but you don’t do what Chalmers did and use it to compromise with evolution.

Job 38:4, 7—God is addressing Job here. Job is trying to get God to tell him why he is suffering, but God is not going to tell him. Job is simply to trust Him. Job wanting to know why he is suffering and the purpose for his suffering is like saying. “Lord, let me evaluate this and see if there is really an adequate reason here, let me be the judge of things.” So God is making clear Job’s ignorance: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth! Tell me if you have understanding. Who set its measurements, since you know? Or who stretched the line on it? On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone?”—a description of the original earth. And then God said that at the time that He did this, “when the morning stars [a term for the angels] sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” The “sons of God” is a technical term in the Old Testament referring to angels. It does not refer to believers, to human beings in the Old Testament. Notice is doesn’t say some of the sons of God shouted for joy over the creation of the earth, all of the sons of God shouted for joy over the creation of the earth, which means there is no division among the angels at that point.

It is believed that planet earth is the place where God established an operations base in this space-time universe He created, and He established a throne room there. It was called Eden. This is the mount of God, not to be confused with the Garden of Eden later on in Genesis 2 &3, but this was the primordial throne room of God on the earth before the angelic revolt. So it is at this place where the creature in Ezekiel 28 is said to be “in Eden, the garden of God, until sin was found in you.”

Then something happened. Genesis 1:2—“And the earth was without form and was void.” The word “was” is a past tense of the verb to be and it indicates a static position—the earth was. The first word is translated with a continuative conjunction “and” which indicates that there is no break between verse two and verse one. However, based on a number of factors in Hebrew syntax the three clauses of verse two—“the earth was formless and void,” “darkness was on the surface of the deep,” and “the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters”—because of the way they are constructed in the Hebrew, they are dependent upon verse three, not verse one. Furthermore, in Hebrew when you are writing narrative and you go from one thing happening, then the next and the next, the Hebrew conjunction is called the waw consecutive. It is set up as a prefix to a word. When you are just saying that this happened and this happened and this happened, you have a waw plus a verb. In Hebrew syntax the verb always takes the first place in the sentence, and then the noun. However, if the noun and verb are reversed so that you have a waw plus a noun, then the verb, it becomes a disjunctive conjunction. That means there is a break between what preceded and what follows. It should be translated the strongest disjunctive form. You could translate it “Now” but the strongest disjunctive is “But,” indicating that something occurs between 1:1 and 1:2. And the verb translated “was” can also mean “became.” This should be translated, “But the earth became formless and void.”

There are three important phrases that are used here. In the English the first is that “the earth was formless and void.” The second thing that is said is that there is “darkness on the face of the deep.” The third is that the Spirit of God was moving “over the surface of the waters,” the Hebrew word always refers to the dark, tumultuous, uncontrollable salt sea. It is not used of fresh water, it is used of salt water. Each of these always represent divine judgment in the rest of Scripture. For example, Jeremiah 4:23-25 which is not talking about original creation, it is using very poetic and figurative language to refer to God’s judgment that was coming on Israel from the Babylonians. The point is that there are two elements here, tohu wabohu and the absence of light are in a passage describing divine judgment in Israel. Isaiah 34:11, also talking about judgment: “the line of desolation and the plumb line of emptiness.” Isaiah 45:18—“and did not create [bara] it a waste [tohu] place.” So the earth was not created tohu. If Genetive 1:2 was continuative it would indicate that the earth was created tohu in contrast to Isaiah 45:18.

In 1 John 1 we read that “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” So prior to the creation of anything there would be light because that is the essence of God. Then we look at a passage like Revelation 21:23-25—“And the city [in the new heavens and the new earth] has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. And the nations shall walk by its light, and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory into it. And in the daytime (for there shall be no night there)…” Why? Because the glory of the presence of God is going to illuminate the new heavens and earth.

So we can suppose that in the very beginning there was the heavens and the earth, and there is light, and it become something. One of the things it becomes is darkness. Darkness everywhere in the Scriptures suggests judgment, evil, sin. Exodus 10:21-23; Psalm 35:6; Joel 2:2; Matthew 4:16; John 3:19; Isaiah 13:10. Three things come together in Genesis 1:2 which indicate judgment.

In Revelation 21:1 is John’s description of the new earth: “And saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.” He is not saying there is no longer any water but that there is not going to be any more salt sea. Here again we have the indication that the deep is not something that is consistent with God’s perfection and holiness, and all three of these terms individually are used to speak of judgment so the threefold combination in Genesis 1:2 indicates that something catastrophic has taken place to the perfect creation of God that the angels had rejoiced over. We are told then that there has been this divine judgment on Satan—Ezekiel 28; Isaiah 14—and the indication of the sentenced that is passed in given in Matthew 25:41.

Question: Why aren’t Satan and the angels in that fire? Something took place that has caused God to postpone the execution of that eternal judgment, and that is a challenge from Satan. There is no scripture that states this but this has been the assumption and conjecture and is well founded on many passages of many theologians throughout the centuries that Satan hurled a challenge at God.

First of all, in a very broad sense Satan challenged the integrity of God. How can a righteous God send His creatures to the lake of fire? So God is going to demonstrate that His love is completely compatible with His righteousness and justice and that all of this is expressed through His perfect grace as exemplified on the cross. There His righteous and just standard is satisfied by the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the gift of Jesus Christ as the expression of His perfect love, so that God does all the work and man does nothing but accept it as a free gift.

Satan builds his platform on a threefold ideological base. It includes three attitudes or foundational philosophies. One is antagonism, hatred or enmity toward God. Second, this involved a mental attitude of arrogance that distorted reality. Third, it involved the rejection of his divinely-ordained role.

One of the reasons we can extrapolate this is because of what is emphasized for the believer throughout almost every age in human history, and what is exemplified to the utmost in the person of Jesus Christ. Instead of antagonism toward God the emphasis is on love for God. Instead of arrogance the emphasis is on genuine humility. The issue of authority orientation is inherent to love. You can’t love somebody if authority orientation is not there.

The covenants

The Gentile covenants are the Edenic covenant (then the fall), the Adamic covenant which ends with the world-wide flood, the Noahic covenant which goes on until the end of the present heavens and the present earth—so there will still be the rainbow, capital punishment, and all the provisions of the Noahic covenant are in effect until the Millennium. The Millennium is when they will begin to be rolled back because the fear of the animals is going to be reversed in the perfect environment of the Millennium.

The Jewish covenants are all unconditional. They are the Abrahamic covenant which has three paragraphs—the land, seed and blessing. The land is developed as the real estate covenant—Deuteronomy 30. The seed promise is developed as the Davidic covenant in 2 Samuel 7. The blessing promise is expanded in the New covenant in Jeremiah 31. The only conditional or temporary covenant is the Mosaic covenant—Exodus 20-40.

In each of these periods what is emphasized are three character qualities, three facets. The first is orientation to authority. It was Satan’s rebellion—“I will be like God”—where he violated the authority that God had established; among the angels he violated the authority of the creator-creature relationship, and so what God is going to emphasize is that in every dispensation is the importance of humility. Enforced humility is where you are in any kind of system where you are forced to learn and you have to submit to authority whether you want to or not. You have to go along with those who are in authority. Sometimes that is in the family. When you are a child and have parents you have enforced humility. When you are in a marriage there is a role authority which is endemic for all of it; there are role distinctions. So first you must have orientation to authority. It happens at the job, it happens everywhere. Everywhere we are under authority of one type or another. In relationship to God this means that we need to orient ourselves to God’s integrity, which is specifically referred to under the category of holiness—Isaiah 6:1-8. It is orientation to divine righteousness in Philippians 4:3-9, and submission to divine authority in Luke 10:39. Part of Satan’s attack in the Garden of Eden was to subvert the authority structure that God had established between Adam and the woman. There was a direct attack there, and that is why in Christian marriage, as a secondary level of testimony, when the husband and the wife are both believers and are both oriented to authority and to their roles that they can demonstrate and have a level of testimony in the angelic conflict that has never before been seen in history. It was in the corporate union between the husband and the wife which earlier took place in the Garden and so all the aspects of the curse related to marriage can to a large degree reversed and rolled back when the husband and wife are both advancing to spiritual maturity. This is the whole point of Ephesians chapter five.

The second is orientation to role. Satan as Lucifer had a role to perform prior to the fall. In rebellion against God he rejected his role. He thought it was wrong to be a servant. He was not oriented to his role, he rejected divine authority and thought that a role of submission and being a servant was somehow demeaning to his person. We hear that argument again and again today, and it is a lack of authority orientation and a lack of role orientation. This is emphasized in the Hebrew of Genesis 2:15 where man is created to do two things. The Hebrew word translated “cultivate” does not really mean to cultivate. The Hebrew phrase contains a preposition for purpose in both verbs, so what is being emphasized is purpose. The first verb is an infinitive and a word which in the noun means slave or servant. It means to work, to minister, to cultivate, work, labor, sometimes it merely means to do, it means to expend considerable energy and intensity in a task or function. In the qal stem in many cases, especially in the covenant literature of Exodus and Leviticus, it means to worship, to serve, to minister, to work in ministry. That is, to give ministry or devotion to God or a god. Genesis 1 and 2 is covenant literature. Hosea wrote that Adam broke God’s covenant, so even though the word covenant isn’t used the Holy Spirit makes it clear in Hosea that this is a covenant. So in covenant literature the word has to do with serving the Lord of the covenant. So the point is that should not be translated simply “work”. It is that, but it is more than that. That is his worship. As a believer, at the moment of faith in Christ we enter into full-time Christian service. The second word is really fascinating. It means to guard, to protect, or to watch over. What is Adam supposed to guard the garden from? Lucifer! Satan! He’s fallen. Adam has a task: to guard the garden from something that is going to be intrusive. That is inherent in the meaning of the word. Adam’s role is to serve God and to obey God by not eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and he is serve God in the garden to protect the garden from any encroachments of evil.

These words are used again and again in terms of the integrity of God. The whole issue in the angelic conflict is God’s righteousness and justice. In 1 Kings 3:6 Solomon prays to God: “….thou hast shown unto thy servant David.” The whole idea of being a servant to God is foundational in the Old Testament. The believers who advanced to maturity are all called servants of God; “according as he walked before you in truth”—literally in the Hebrew it is “by means of truth”; “and righteousness and uprightness.” “Uprightness” is the verb form given to the spiritually mature of Israel later on, “Jeshurun.” So this is that which is upright. David is said to be upright, i.e., he is walking consistently with the integrity of God; “of heart” – his innermost being, his thinking, his aligning with God in submission, and serving God. These three work together. When the believer reaches spiritual maturity, that is when they are there. They are not there beforehand. It takes maturity to develop those character qualities. Jesus Christ demonstrated this in His mission. Matthew 20:28—“Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.” The Greek word is DIAKANEO [diakonew] which is very similar to DOULOS [douloj], but DOULOS is never applied to Jesus because it emphasizes total dependency. We are to be DOULOS, completely dependent upon the Lord, but a DIAKONEO kind of being a servant emphasizes volition. So this indicates that Jesus put Himself in this position volitionally. Volitionally He subordinated Himself to God the Father because of His love for God the Father. So we have all three of these things linked together—personal love for God the Father, authority orientation, role orientation, and He doesn’t think being a servant is demeaning. That is the whole issue in Philippians 2:5-11 in the kenosis passage. This is all to show that these three are key in every dispensation.

The dispensations themselves

The Edenic covenant, God’s covenant with Adam

1. Key Scripture: Genesis 1:28-30; 2:15-17; Hosea 6:7. In Genesis 1:19 God said, “I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of the earth.” That means there is no plant on the face of the earth that was not for their food. That is not true today. And all the plants were food for all the animals. The terminology used in these scripture passage is clearly covenant terminology, even though the first time the word “covenant” is not until Genesis 6. But in Hosea 6:7 it says that Adam broke the covenant in the garden, so this has to be the covenant that he broke. Therefore we are justified in calling this a covenant.
2. Persons: God, and Adam as the representative head of the human race. God is the party of the 1^st part and Adam is the party of the 2^nd part as the representative or federal head of the human race; his decision goes for all of his descendents.
3. Provisions: All of these are related to the fact that God said He was going to create man in His image and in His likeness. Those two relate to inseparable aspects. One is form and one is function. Man is created in the form of the image of God. That is related to the image of material being, but he is created immaterially with that form so that he can fulfill his function, i.e. to represent God. That is the function of an image: it represents you. So his function is to represent God and to rule over the planet, for God gives him the internal make-up to do it. But that doesn’t just leave out the physical. That is not to say that the physical is the image of God, but don’t just dismiss it because God in His omniscience knows that He has to design this creature with the kind of body and the kind of physical ability that will enable Him to incarnate Himself and give the highest possible creaturely revelation of Himself. He could not reveal Himself as a lion, a crocodile, or any of the other gods of the ancient world. He creates man with a specific body because He knows that eventually He is going to incarnate Himself into that body, and so it must be a physical body that will give Him that highest possible opportunity to reveal who He is and what He is. “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth”—Genesis 1:28a. This shows that Adam and Isha were created, had sex in the garden in perfect environment. Man is to subdue the earth, a physical mandate in relation to the planet. We use the word “form” is a technical sense, the Greek sense of MORPHE [morfh] where it says that Jesus existed in the form of God in Philippians 2:6. That is a technical Greek concept of the inner character, the inner essence of a person, what makes a thing what it is. So the “form” is the inner essence of man. Why we argue that the image does not include the physical, although that is part of the package, because the image is marred at the fall an the next time you have an image is when you get into the New Testament, after Christ has come and we are being restored into “the image of His firstborn,” the image of Christ, and that is not physical but immaterial, i.e. in terms of our character, our immaterial make-up. So it is that immaterial part that is marred and it is recovered post-Christ, in the Church Age. The recovery is more than it ever could be before because now we can be in the image of Christ.

Husbands and wives: Because you are in the image of Christ, now you have the ability through spiritual growth to get back to the kind of perfect relationship that they had in the garden. Not sinless relationship, but in terms of role and function you can get back there only if you are growing and advancing in spiritual maturity.

So the first provision is to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth. The second provision: to subdue the earth. This is not a politically correct term. It means to bring into bondage, to force, to dominate, to tread, to subdue. It means that man was created above everything else in the physical, natural world, and he was to utilize everything for his purposes. He is given the raw materials and it is man’s job to go out and exploit nature and improve. This is the difference between the Christian view of nature and the pagan view of nature. The pagan view of nature is that you are a part of nature so you do everything to avoid changing nature. That is why in primitive cultures there is no technological advance—if you change nature that is the greatest sin that can be. That is where the tree-huggers are coming from and the liberal environmentalist mentality. This is pure, pantheistic paganism. Christianity says that God created all the natural resources to be used responsibly by man—not destructively—to advance and improve the earth and his condition on the earth.

Third, he is to rule over the animal kingdom. We are to rule over the animal kingdom and use them. They are not of the same order of life as man is. That is why there is nothing necessarily wrong (there may be methodological problems) with using animals for drug testing, for all kinds of things, because animal life does not have the value to God that human life does; and so you test things on animals so as to not harm mankind. Man is designed to rule over the animals. Animal rights activism is just another aspect of pagan thought. That is not to say that we should be cruel. Creation was given to man’s control to utilize responsibly.

Fourth, every plant was given for food. Man was not a meat eater, he was vegetarian from creation to the close of the flood. Every plant was give for food—Genesis 1:29-30; 2:16.

Fifth, there have clearly defined roles between a male and a female. God gave mandates to Adam, and he was to communicate them to Isha because he was the head, the responsible leader on the planet. Genesis 2:18—a “helper,” an assistant, someone who would help him achieve the goal, i.e. to be fruitful and multiply, to subdue and rule over the earth, so serve God, worship Him, and to guard the garden. The woman is to help him accomplish the job. He is the one given the responsibility; she is the assistant. The roles are defined.

There is one prohibition and the penalty for breaking it is spiritual death.

As a result of the fall man lost the authority that God had given him and it is stolen by Satan. Lucifer had it originally and lost it when he fell. God gave it to Adam and when Adam fell Satan usurped it. That is why he is now called “the god of this age” in 2 Corinthians 4:4; “the prince of this world” in John 16:31. God did not give it back to Satan, Satan simply stole it. But that he has the right to it, at least temporarily, is the reason Satan could offer the kingdoms of the world to Jesus. In Hebrews 2:5-9 we are told that when Jesus returns at the second coming man will finally recover authority over the planet and it will once again come under the control of man in perfect environment.

Outline of the dispensations

The Age of the Gentiles: The Edenic covenant in the age of human perfection or perfect environment. That ends with the fall and God modifies the Edenic covenant with the Adamic covenant, and that introduces the second dispensation of conscience. Conscience will end because the daughters of men will procreate with the demons in an attempt to destroy the purity of the human race and God will destroy the race with a world-wide flood and establish the covenant with Noah. That institutes the dispensation of civil government. The central person in the dispensation of perfect environment is Adam and God is going to work through him. This dispensation is sometimes called innocence, i.e. uncorrupted by evil, malice or wrongdoing. There is nothing negative, no negative influence; man falls purely of his own volition without any negative influence on him whatsoever. The responsibility in the dispensation is to the Edenic covenant and Adam abrogates that specifically at the point of the test, but in failing the test he fails in all of the other aspects related to character quality. By disobeying God he fails to show personal love for God. By wanting to be like God, which was the temptation, he is failing to serve God. And by disobeying God he is showing a lack of authority orientation. So the test in the garden is to obey the mandate not to eat of the frit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Their failure was that they ate and the divine judgment was the immediate judicial penalty of spiritual death. They immediately lost fellowship with God and God had to evict them from the garden. The point of grace is that God promised to provide a redeemer in Genesis 3:15.

In that dispensation Satan scored a tactical victory by getting man to yield to temptation and to disobey God. He gained control of the planet, wresting it from the man. Satan attacked man’s volition which is the focal point in the entire angelic conflict but in winning the tactical victory Satan lost the war. When he tempted the man and the man chose to sin it gave God the opportunity to demonstrate something He had never done with the angels. That was, to demonstrate His grace toward His creatures, that He was willing to go far beyond anything they could ever imagine in providing a perfect salvation that involved sending the second person of the Trinity to become a creature and to go through all the suffering and spiritual death and to pay the penalty for sin. This showed that God’s justice and righteousness are perfectly compatible with His love. In Satan’s tactical victory he truly destroyed his whole case because he gave God the platform to demonstrate aspects of His character He never had before. We know this from the passages of Scripture that talk about angelic observation of the human race.

The relationship of the age of perfect environment to the angelic conflict

a) Satan attacked man’s volition which is the focal point of character. The issue is volition, not environment. It is not whether you grew up in poverty or whether you grew up in wealth.

b) The failure of human volition mirrors the failure of angelic volition before the rebellion. When Satan sinned, uttered his famous five “I wills”, he had exercised his volition apart from any external influence. He had freely chosen to rebel against God and to reject divine authority, and to reject his own role as a servant of God. When God judged the angels and Lucifer and the fallen angels were sentenced to the lake of fire they challenged God’s decision in terms of its fairness, its consistency with His character. So God is demonstrating in human history that the issue is volition, not God’s character. He created human history as an experiment in which He would demonstrate the depth and the breadth of His own character and its consistency. He sets up a test which mirrors the volitional test that existed among the angels, and so man’s failure mirrors the failure of angelic volition.

c) Satan scored a tactical victory in the garden. He thought he had scored a major victory because now he had stolen rulership of the planet from mankind. He is back in charge and is going to attempt to demonstrate that he can indeed act like God and rule a creature and rule the planet. He doesn’t realize that it is a hollow victory that will ultimately destroy him.

d) In the midst of this tactical victory that Satan has won God already knew about and has provided a grace plan to deal with man’s failure. This grace plan, again, makes human volition the issue and demonstrates God’s integrity. It demonstrates that His grace goes beyond what anyone could imagine because God Himself in the incarnation of Jesus Christ will provide the perfect solution to man’s failure. So God has a plan in mind, and in that plan Satan will ultimately be defeated. So Satan’s apparent victory in the garden turns out to be Satan’s death knell.

e) Ironically, Satan’s tactical victory sounded his own eventual defeat. Because he was able to tempt man to disobey God it opens the door for God to demonstrate His love and grace in ways that the angels could only imagine before the fall. They had no clue that God’s grace and love extended this far.

f) In man’s fall Adam violate personal love for God, he reverses the male-female role, and he rejects his position as a servant of God.

g) As a result of man’s fall God would be able to demonstrate that His righteousness and justice is compatible with His love, and it would be demonstrated through His grace. The thing that we see in the Scriptures is the number of verses which indicate that man is the object of angelic observation and that this is part of the whole angelic conflict. They are watching us to learnt things that they could learn no other way. Cf. 1 Timothy 3:16, “seen by angels”; 1 Corinthians 4:9, “a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men”—a life that is a testimony to the grace of God; 1 Corinthians 3:10, “that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known”—a suggestion here that all of the ramifications of God’s wisdom could not be made known under the angelic system as it existed prior to the recreation of planet earth. So God is demonstrating his wisdom in a much broader way through the Church; 1 Timothy 5:21, “in the presence of His chosen angels’—we are being watched by the angels; 1 Peter 1:12, “things into which angels longed to look.” So this is all part of the angelic conflict.

With man’s sin entering the human race there is a modification of the covenant. So we have the Adamic covenant, Genesis 3:14-21. This is going to initiate the new dispensation of human conscience. The first point of the curse is outlined in verse 14. The curse on the serpent goes beyond the curse on the rest of the animal kingdom. This is clearly saying that every member of the animal kingdom is being cursed, not just the serpent. The specific curse of the serpent is that it would no longer walk upright. This first part of the curse indicates that there would be a transformation of the animal kingdom. In verse 15 we see what is known as the proto evangelium, the first mention of the gospel. This has ramifications in terms of the spiritual conflict because it is foreshadowing the conflict between Satan and the seed of the woman, who is Jesus Christ. This is a reference to the incarnation of Christ through a woman. The woman has been cursed in verse 16 in relation to her realm of responsibility under the Edenic covenant where she failed. She was to be a helper to the man and have an important role of fulfilling the command to be fruitful and multiply. She would have pain in child birth. The implication is that she was originally expected to have children but there would not be pain associated with it. She would be reminded of the curse with the monthly cycle. That is why when we get into the Mosaic law, at that time of the month she cannot go into the tabernacle because she was ceremonially unclean—not because she sinned, but because at that menstrual time it was a reminder of sin and the curse. The reason that is emphasized is because continuously in the Levitical offerings man is forbidden to touch anything dead, anything that would remind them of sin, and to show that sin separates man from God. Then the woman’s role as a helper to her husband is cursed: “your desire shall be for your husband.” The idea is control, to usurp the authority of the husband and to take charge. So instead of being a helper the woman now wants to “wear the pants” in the family and make the decisions, be the leader, be the one to sit in judgment on the husband, etc. Everything is cursed in relationship to the original Edenic stipulation. The man is now cursed in relation to his realm of responsibility, verse 17: “Cursed is the ground because of you.” Previously the ground was going to spring forth all kinds of vegetables and plant life, all for the benefit of mankind, everything was in perfect harmony. Because of one sinful decision man has devastated the entire physical environment. “In toil you shall eat of it.” Before Adam had to do very little and there was no toil involved, no difficulty because everything worked in harmony. Now everything is challenged, nothing is in harmony. Verse 18 expands this. The curse goes on to include physical death. There has been no physical death up to this time, at this time they still had access to the fruit of the tree of life. Man remains a vegetarian but this will change with the Noahic covenant. There is restriction now, not all plants are edible. Prior to the fall every plant was edible and good for man’s nourishment.

As far as the dispensations go the Old Testament period is summarized under the heading of the “theocentric dispensations” because they focus on the rule of God, as opposed to the Christocentric dispensations of the Messianic age and the current Church Age which is focused on the person of Christ. The first age is the age of the Gentiles which goes from the creation to the call of Abraham in Genesis chapter twelve. The Edenic covenant is God’s original covenant established with man, although the word covenant is not used in Genesis but is in Hosea where it is stated that Adam broke God’s covenant. It is the dispensation of human perfection which ends with the fall when God establishes the Adamic covenant. This is where we have arrived at so far. The next dispensation is called the dispensation of human conscience or self-determination.

The dispensation of human conscience

The central person is Adam. God makes His covenant with Adam, the only man who is on the planet at the time of the fall, and therefore with all of his descendants. Adam and the woman, who was renamed Eve at that point, are expelled from the garden and they begin to fulfill the mandate to multiply and fill the earth. There is no central government, no delegation of authority other than to the head of the household. The patriarch rules, it is family altar, family sacrifices, and so the name that has been designated for this dispensation is that of human conscience because there doesn’t seem to be any higher authority established by God to govern the affairs of mankind other than the individual volition and conscience. It is up to each person to govern himself and we see the failure of that in Cain and the continual failure in those who follow him, as outlined in chapter four—his various descendants. What this is demonstrating is that man on his own is incapable of controlling the sin nature and the damaging social effects of sin. Man on his own is unable to solve the sin problem, is unable to control his own sin nature, and is unable to deal with the social consequences of sin. In each dispensation God is going to show that it is not environment, it is not something other than man, it is basically man’s own nature, his own choices that are the cause of his problems. Therefore God is going to demonstrate the necessity of man being in a place of authority. This goes back to the angelic conflict problem: Satan is not oriented to God’s authority, he wants to be his own authority, and God is demonstrating that creatures cannot function under their own authority because they will always end up in sin and self-destruction. This dispensation extends from Genesis 3:9 to 8:14.

The responsibility is to the Adamic covenant, to multiply and fill the earth and to operate under the original covenant as revised by the curse of Genesis 3. The test is whether they will operate under the divine mandates for spiritual life which specifically focuses on animal sacrifices. We see the failure of Cain because he brings the fruit from the fields, what he had produced, as opposed to Abel who brings that which God has stated—an animal sacrifice, a lamb without spot or blemish. So the failure is that man continues to try to solve problems on his own, but even in the midst of this there are still those who will follow the Lord. Each time there is a person, whether it is in this dispensation or any other, who seeks to follow the Lord and apply doctrine, then it is just another evidence against Satan. So the test is whether man will follow divine revelation or set himself up as his own authority in violation to God’s authority. The point that God is trying to teach is that man must rely exclusively on divine grace and that human resources and the creature’s own authority are inadequate to resolve the consequences of sin. Man fails totally. We see murder in chapter four, perversion on into the descendants of Cain, and then by Genesis 6:5 we are introduced into the angelic infiltration, an attempt by Satan to destroy the genetic purity of the human race. Because of that there will be divine judgment which is the world-wide flood at the time of Noah, designed to destroy the impurities in the human race.

The volition issue: For salvation the issue was belief in the promise of the seed of the woman, that the seed of the woman would destroy the seed of the serpent and that God would provide salvation. It anticipated the coming saviour. The spiritual life was based on the ritual of animal sacrifices and the family altar, family sacrifices and faith-rest—the application of faith to the promises of God as revealed during that age.

The angelic conflict: During the Old Testament Satan is trying to prevent the cross. He understands that God has a plan of salvation, which was announced in Genesis 3:15, and that God is working toward that goal. Satan’s job is to try to stop it in some way to prevent God from providing a solution to the sin problem and thereby casing God to either violate His own character or break His promise, or something along those lines. The attack in the age of the conscience is the attack on the genetic purity of the human race. This brings in the attack from the “sons of God” in Genesis 6. The phrase “sons of God” bene ha elohim, is a technical phrase used eight or nine times in the Old Testament and every single time it refers to angels. See Job 1 & 2. In Genesis 6 it refers to demons who are able to take on material form and function.

The dispensation of human government

God establishes His covenant with Noah in Genesis chapter nine.

Scripture: The covenant is given in Genesis 9:1-17.

Persons involved: God, party of the first part, and Noah, party of the second part. Noah is the representative head of the entire human race, just as Adam was the representative head of the entire human race in the Edenic and Adamic covenants. All humanity, therefore, is descended from Noah and his wife and therefore we are all part of the Noahic covenant. We do not escape just because we do not agree with certain provisions such as capital punishment or the eating of meat. There are seven provisions for the covenant.

a) The command is to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. They are not to stay in one location but to spread out and fill the earth. What is not repeated here is the command to subdue the earth. This was lost at the fall because man lost his authority over the planet, Satan stole it from him when man sinned. That is why Satan is now the god of this age, the prince of the power of the air. He has usurped that authority and stolen it from man.

b) Man is to be feared by the animals. So now there is fear between the animal kingdom and the human race. Before that there was an authority relationship because man was to rule, but now there is fear and antagonism.

c) Dietary changes at this point: “every living thing shall be food for you.” Man is now authorized to eat meat. Prior to that he was a vegetarian. At this point there are distinctions between clean animals and unclean animals but not for the purpose of diet, only for the purpose of sacrifice. (The purpose of the dietary laws in the Mosaic law never had anything to do with health. They had to do with the fact that God was teaching spiritual principles. Many of the animals that they were forbidden to eat under the Mosaic law were scavengers which ate dead things, and death comes from sin. So every time under the Mosaic law that you went into the presence of a dead person or you touched blood, or anything like that you were ceremonially unclean. God was making a spiritual point with the diet, it had nothing to do with nourishment)

d) There is a limitation: don’t eat or drink blood. God is making a point because blood is the means by which life is sustained. There needs to be a respect for life.

e) Capital punishment is mandated. You do not use the fact that man is flawed to justify a no-capital-punishment position. God is here delegating to the human race the responsibility for judicial action. That is what this represents. Prior to this time God was the ultimate arbiter in the judiciary on planet earth, but from the flood on God is not longer physically present on the planet and man is to clean up his own mess judicially. There is always failure to do that because men don’t want to take the responsibility for those actions.

f) There is a promise of no more universal flood. God will not destroy either the animal kingdom or the human race by a flood, and this is one reason why we know that the flood of Noah’s day could not have been a local flood because God promises that he will never again destroy mankind by such a flood.

g) The token of the covenant is the rainbow. Every covenant has a token. The tree of life is probably the token of the Edenic covenant and spiritual death the token of the Adamic covenant.