Three Dispensations, and What Didn’t Change

In this series we will deal with one of the most important aspects of Christian life.

The Bible reveals that God has dealt with the human race in different ways, in different periods of human history. The title, or technical theological word for that is “dispensations.” So over the recorded history of the human race, in the Bible, we find various different dispensations. That is, different periods in which God dealt in a specific way with the human race. Then later, in some respects, He changed His way of dealing. We would call that changing from one dispensation to another. I want to point out certain facts about the dispensations, ways in which they differ, and then one important way in which they do not differ.

Let’s take three main dispensations that are generally recognized in the Bible. The first is the ‘dispensation of the patriarchs’. That means the fathers of families, of people like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, even before them, people like Enoch and Noah. In that period, in that dispensation, God dealt primarily with individuals and with their families and they related directly to God.

Then there came the dispensation which is often called the ‘dispensation of the law’, when God began to deal with Israel specifically as a collective nation, and when He put them under a special law which was special for Israel and that did not apply entirely to other nations. During this period, this dispensation, for most of the time, Israel had a temple and a priesthood. So the outstanding features of that dispensation were the law, the temple, and the priesthood.

Then there came, what we usually call, the ‘dispensation of the Gospel’, which is really a proclamation to the whole human race irrespective of their race or their nationality. And this proclamation of the gospel requires from each person an individual response.

Tomorrow, we’ll look further into this, as we study this exciting subject ‘Hearing God’s Voice’.