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Pastor David Mitchell
Hebrews chapter 1.
I want
to talk to you this morning about the dispensations,
dispensations.
Let's look at Hebrews chapter 1 and let's start with verse 1 and go through
verse 3.
God who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the
prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son.
If that verse right there, verse 1 and the first part of verse 2 could be
understood properly in this country, it would stop a lot of heretical teaching,
just these little words.
Every word in this sentence is important, just like all the Bible is, but it says
God who once upon a time and in different ways
spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath
in these last days spoken unto us by his son.
He tells us two things there.
He tells us how he speaks today and he tells us how he doesn't speak today.
He tells us how he speaks today and he tells us how he used to speak in the Old Testament times.
And it's all right there and it's so very clear.
He says he hath spoken in these last days unto us by his
son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds,
who being the brightness of his image and the express image of his person, I'm sorry,
the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the
word of his power.
Focus in on that phrase this morning, the word of his power.
When he had by himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand
of the majesty on high.
Well, that passage of scripture, I wanted to point out the phrase, the word of his power,
but I had to read the first two verses because they do come into play in the message later on this morning.
And the first two verses tell us very clearly that the Bible has a front cover on it and
a back cover on it.
You've heard me say that before.
I guess, I guess I've heard Dr. Freeman say that before and that may be where I borrowed the phrase,
but it's very clear that God spoke to us in times past by the prophets.
They would have visions, they would have dreams and so forth.
And the book of Joel tells us that in the last days during the tribulation period that
those things will occur again.
But the Bible is also very clear that during this church age, this dispensation, which we call the
time of the church, God does not speak that way because he has spoken unto us by his son
and the revelation has been given.
And when this book was completed with the book of revelation around 80,
90, then the cannon was closed.
And those scriptures are clear.
Now let's turn to Hebrews chapter 11.
I
want us to analyze verse three for a moment.
And I think we will see that verse three will dispel two great heresies in the world
today.
One of those heresies has to do with the scientific world and the other heresy has to do with the religious world.
We might as well read from verse one so that it's clear to us.
It says, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
For by it, the elders obtained a good report.
Now verse three is really our text verse today.
Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God
so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
Now, before we get into what the verse is actually saying, there is one word we need to study because it's fascinating
to me and it's the word worlds.
Do you see that in the middle first part of the second sentence?
The worlds were framed by the word of God.
If you just read that in the English language, you would picture maybe Genesis one,
one and two.
You may picture even the creation story, the first day, six days of creation.
You picture the father creating the world, the earth, and perhaps you picture him
creating the stars and the universe and all of his glorious creation.
And the interesting thing about it is if you pictured all that, you missed what this verse is talking about and so did I
until I looked in the Greek and I saw that the word for world was different than the word I thought it was.
Now, who can tell me one of the two key words in the language
that can be both translated into the word world?
Can anybody give me one of them?
It's pretty common.
Cosmos.
And that's what I would have thought this word was, wouldn't you?
Because what does cosmos mean?
His order.
It primarily means the order, that God is a God of order and it connotates the order that's in the
creation of the universe and of this world and so forth.
And that's the word I would have expected to find there, but that's not the word.
Can anyone tell me what the other one is?
It's not quite as common.
Or maybe you could tell me what English word it's commonly translated into that makes more sense than the word
world.
Age.
And the Greek word is aeon, which our English word eon comes from.
Eons and eons of time.
We say that all the time.
And the word here is the word age.
It is not the word world.
So when we understand that, look what God is telling us here.
Through faith.
And the only way you can ever understand this is by faith.
By the revealed truth of God in the Bible.
But by faith we understand that the ages were framed.
Think about that a minute.
The ages were framed.
Now that begins to draw a picture in our minds a little different than the other picture, doesn't it?
Because ages has to do with segments of time.
We call them the dispensations of time.
And picture them being framed.
And God says that these ages were framed by the Word of God.
That powerful Word of God that we read about over in the first chapter of Hebrews a moment ago.
So that the things which are seen were not made of the things which do
appear.
Now it is a fact that the physical creation and the order of God's universe, even though that word is not
used in the verse, is obviously a part of this.
Because each age as it is framed includes what's happening in time and in space
and in matter.
So it's all here.
And it's all by the Word of God.
Now there are a couple of heresies that if particular verse
were understood properly that would vanish away.
The second part of the verse talks about so the things that are seen were not made of the things which do appear.
That totally would blow away the theory of evolution.
Because the theory of evolution is based upon a word that they call uniformitarianism.
That's mouthful, isn't it?
It's based on that premise.
And what uniformitarianism means to them is that everything that you
observe today such as the erosion of the earth by water or wind,
everything that you see today such as cosmic dust falling into our atmosphere and filtering its way down
to the earth, that all of that has happened the same forever as it happens today.
That it's always been the same in the past as it is observed today.
And based on that premise they have concluded everything that they know about evolution.
And so when you knock down the theory of uniformitarianism you have destroyed their entire
theory.
And the last phrase here it says that the things which are seen, the things that we see today
are not made by the things which appear today.
So you cannot observe scientifically what we see today and extrapolate that
backwards and come up with the right answer.
It is impossible to do.
So this destroys the heresy of evolution.
Now in the religious world when it says through faith we understand that the ages were
framed by the Word of God, this destroys a lot of things in modern
theology.
There are a lot of people today in the modern theology, and this is the modern theology, they call it
non -dispensationalism.
Now to understand what that is let's understand what a dispensationalist is.
Does anybody know?
Can you remember we've talked about it?
Through the years, what is it?
You are one so it'd be good to be able to tell what one is.
What is a dispensationalist?
Well what is a dispensation?
It's one of these framed, it's one of these framed things we're talking about, an age and then another age
and they are framed.
And they go like this and so they are a simple way to talk about it would be a division in time
in which God deals with man differently than he did in the other age.
Not that God changes but sometimes things change in his world because
he's ordained that they would and it changes the relationship or the way that he may deal with man.
What's the most obvious thing that would form a dispensation or
two different dispensations?
What's the most obvious event in history?
The death of Christ.
Well the birth would have to happen first so you both got it right.
The cross.
God has dealt with us differently today than he was able to deal with the people before the cross
because the cross changed some things.
When Jesus took his blood and presented it in the heavenlies
and sprinkled it on the throne which is the mercy seat, it changed some things.
That's why the Bible says we can come boldly before the throne of grace.
It never said that to any Old Testament character.
In fact if you remember when Moses and the people approached the Mount, God said don't let them anywhere around the border of this mountain.
If they touch it they'll die.
Remember that?
And they were amazed when Moses went up there.
And so we have different ages throughout time and the
Word of God framed these ages.
Now I want us to talk about this a little bit and let's let's look at the words.
This is a teaching teaching message today so you might want to jot some of these things down.
But the word world as we said is not cosmos but aeon which means the ages and the Bible
says they were framed.
Now let's look at this word framed for a moment.
The word framed comes from a Greek word katartizo.
It's hard for a Texas boy to say that word.
In the King James Version it is nearly always translated into the English word perfect.
Now we know that the old English word perfect carries the connotation of something that's finished and complete.
It doesn't mean sinless always.
It usually just means complete and mature and finished.
The definition of this Greek word means to render complete or to complete
something or to fit something out or to equip something or to put it
in order to arrange to adjust to fit or frame for one's own
purpose.
Now it's made as so many Greek words are by two little Greek words.
The first one is kata which means according to and the second one is artios
which means complete, perfect, having reference apparently to special
aptitude for given uses.
So when we put all this together, well it's kind of interesting I'll get into this in a minute, but when when you put this whole thing
together what this word means when it says that the ages were framed, the word
framed means they were rendered, complete, they were fit
or framed for God's purpose according to a special aptitude and for
certain specific uses that God had them there for.
All for his own purpose and it carries the very strong connotation of completion,
finished.
And so it's kind of interesting to look at this word artios.
When I say interesting you know I'm talking about to me it's interesting.
I don't know about you but I like to do word studies.
This word artios comes from an even smaller root Greek word
arti and this word mean is translated 24 times in the King James Version into the
simple word now.
It means just now.
That's what the word means, just now.
It means this moment, now at this time, at
this very time, at this moment is what this word means.
Now what's fascinating about this is you go back and you read the verse and you understand what the
word in the verse means.
Let's look at it together.
It says through faith we understand that the ages were
made perfect, are completed, and we
understand that the root word for this word framed means just now, right now,
they are complete and perfect and finished by the Word of God.
Now the thing that makes this even more interesting is even though the word means right now,
the tense that the words are in in the Greek language where it says were framed, I mean even in the
English, does that sound like present tense?
They were framed?
No, that's past tense.
As a matter of fact, it's past perfect passive infinitive tense.
I wish I'd known that in Sunday school.
I could have gotten an A this morning.
I couldn't remember what a participle is.
Still don't know what one is.
Don't need to know it's not in my sermon, but I know what perfect tense means.
The perfect tense describes an action which is viewed as
having been completed in the past, once and for all, not needing
to ever be repeated again.
That's all carried just in the grammar, not in the word, but in the grammar.
It's in the past perfect tense.
Passive, of course, means it was acted upon by a greater force.
As we see these ages framed, it was not the ages themselves framing themselves.
That's what evolution teaches.
But it's in the passive, which means a greater outside force was framing these ages.
And the past perfect tense means it was done in a moment, never to be
done again.
Now what's interesting about it though, you look back at the word RT again, what did it mean?
It meant just now.
That's present tense.
I mean it doesn't just mean now, it means just right now.
In Texas we say right now.
How can it be that we have a situation here where it says the Word of God
framed all of the ages right now, but it also
says that it happened at one point in the past once and will never happen again.
How can both be true?
Well, we have our two viewpoints all of a sudden.
We have man's viewpoint and we have God's viewpoint.
From God's viewpoint, God is not bound by time like we are, is he?
In fact, he's not in time except when he chooses to come down here in the form of his son Jesus Christ, he
was in time, wasn't he?
And the Holy Spirit living in your body is walking in time in that sense, but God the Father, the Spirit, God
is not in time nor is he bound by time.
And to him everything is in the eternal present tense.
It's not so much that it's all already been done as it is, that it's all
it all is.
It all exists now.
It is all in the present tense to him and that's why he chose this word
RT right now.
These have been framed now.
From our point of view on the planet Earth, we're in time.
We're linear, aren't we?
We're headed this way if that's the future.
And as we live in time, this took place in our past.
This took place before time began for us.
This took place in what we call eternity past which is a strange phrase if you think about it because past
infers time.
There wasn't any of that stuff back there.
And so the point is that we understand by faith that by the Word of
God all of the ages of time that will ever be are already
framed.
They are already complete and mature and finished.
Why is it that you think the Lord can look at you and me today and say we're already glorified in Romans chapter 8.
It says those who he called, he justified those who he justified are glorified.
That's past tense.
To God it's now.
It's already done.
To us it's off in the future.
And so time is a kind of a blinder for us.
It keeps us from understanding God and it helps us to be more humanistic and makes us focus on self
more and on people and on man's point of view.
And we need to escape the gravity and get on out there away from time and think about it the way it
really is.
God has already framed the ages.
It's a done thing.
That's why you cannot surprise God.
That's why God is immutable.
He never changes.
If he could if anything could change it would destroy the whole system because it already is.
Even your future already is.
Young people do you realize that you cannot go out say two three years from now
and do some kind of sin and surprise God?
Because the day that you got saved he already knew every sin you would do and every one of them were placed in Christ
and they are paid for.
Now a lot of people don't think that way but that's the way it is.
Now if it's true that these ages were framed by the Word of God
and if it's true that the things which we see are not made by the things which appear today
then we certainly have some problems solved with some major heresies.
First of all let's think about this idea of
uniformitarianism and the theory of evolution.
You do realize that it's based on the fact that we can look at things today
and assume they've always been the same so therefore we can make some projections backwards.
It's all faith by the way.
Don't ever let them fool you.
Evolution is faith.
There's no fact in it.
They just want to believe it because it tries to leave God out of the picture so they don't have to play by God's rules
and yet the whole premise is based on a huge huge huge
numbers of billions of years because they believe that everything that we see happened by chance.
That we can look at the stuff that's here now and go back and figure out a time when it was all just
organic inorganic matter.
That means like a rock okay and somehow that rock grew some legs on it
and it became organic matter.
Now it didn't do that overnight.
It became a blob first.
That rock became a blob of jelly somewhat like an amoeba perhaps and that rock
had a will when it turned into an amoeba and it decided it wanted to go to the land and
somehow this organic blob that used to be a rock is now
thinking that it wants to go to land.
So now it oozes up on the land and it says you know this is sure hurting my belly crawling over these rocks.
I think I'll grow me some legs.
So he grows some legs.
Now he did this by chance.
It was just luck that it happened.
I mean aren't you glad that it's luck that your nose is pointed down instead of up because when it rained yesterday you'd have drowned if you'd
gone out of the house.
Mother Nature is wonderful isn't she if we want to give her the credit and they believe that luck created
everything that is and then it crawled out.
You know it finds its legs.
It crawls out there.
It sees a tree.
It crawls up the tree.
Starts swinging from the limbs.
It says I like this.
I think I'll grow longer arms and some legs and a tail and I'll eat bananas.
Then all of a sudden it grew some glasses and it fell down on the ground and it became a PhD that believes in evolution
and that's what happens.
Now to make this happen though you've got to admit if it all happened by luck you got
to have a lots of years because it's trial and error.
So they propose that the universe is between 15 and 20 billion years
old and the earth itself I don't know why they think it's so much younger but it's only 4
.5 they're very accurate.
4 .5 to 5 billion years old.
Now that's the belief that it takes in order to put together this monkey business but I want to
show you some things.
When the Bible says that God framed everything out of nothing
by the power of his word and he says you cannot look around today Mr. Scientist and examine what
is here and figure out what was there in the Garden of Eden.
You can't figure it out.
Things have changed.
They don't believe that.
They believe in uniformitarianism.
Everything is uniform.
It's always stayed the same.
They used to believe in what they call the steady state theory and that was their answer for well how can you
explain everything when there's no God.
They said oh it's just always been here steady states it's always been the same and that is the basic theory
and you have these 4 .5 to 5 billion years now for us to
be sitting here rather than squirming around like a blob or even being a rock.
We could have been rocks you know and isn't that fortunate and lucky.
Well I'll tell you what's interesting.
A lot of people don't understand this but the the part of science that studies the age of the earth
is called geochronology and they don't put this in the newspapers.
They don't put it in the public school textbooks.
They don't put it on the news on Friday night but there are probably
80 different categories in this field of science.
There are probably 80 or more different ways that they have to age the
earth and they won't tell you this but the huge majority of those methods
prove a young earth rather than an old earth and when I say young they're
saying five billion years old.
We're talking more in terms of 10 ,000 years old more on that order.
Huge difference.
They both can't be true.
They're far enough apart where they cannot both be true.
So I wanted this morning to point out a couple of kind of fascinating things.
How many of you, let's find out how old we are this morning.
How many of you can remember watching Neil Armstrong step onto the moon the first time?
Raise your hand.
Nobody?
Hardly on the front row.
One person?
Alright.
How many of you cannot remember seeing that?
Well that's the other people.
Okay.
Didn't you see that Brian?
Now come on.
Now do you remember what he said when he first stepped on the moon?
What'd he say Greg?
You can paraphrase it and
that's the first thing he said right?
Wrong.
That's the first thing that was put on television.
Do you know what the first thing he said was?
Something to this effect.
Here I'm going to be him.
It was quite a step if I remember kind of like this.
He went, that is very important for this reason.
Scientists are able with our modern satellites to study the amount of cosmic dust.
Yes.
Which part?
About what he said?
Afraid it didn't go through this thing.
The first thing that Neil Armstrong really said when he stepped onto the surface of the moon was, he looked a little
astonished and a little happy, and he said, I didn't sink.
Now the reason that's significant with our modern satellites, we can study the amount of cosmic dust
that comes into our atmosphere and comes to the surface of the earth.
And these are our same scientists who believe in the evolutionary theory that have come up with all this.
But according to them, there should be 50 feet of cosmic dust on the earth and the age of the moon, they
think, is approximately the same age of the earth.
Duh, that's pretty good.
They got that one right.
Now the reason you don't step out of your house and sink in 50 feet of cosmic dust on the earth is
because of erosion of wind, erosion of water, it just smooths it all out, makes it part of our dirt and you can't tell the
difference.
But on the surface of the moon, which has been out there in cold outer space for a lot
less than 4 billion years, I'll tell you that, but it's been out there in cold outer space,
there is no wind erosion and no water erosion of any kind.
And therefore there should be 50 feet of cosmic dust on the face of the moon that has
not ever been disturbed by anything.
And that's why if you guys who raised your hand the first time, you remember all this stuff, do you remember what the feet
of the lunar module looked like?
They were probably as big around as this stage.
They put the, the scientists said, oh, this is a problem, but we need to solve this.
We're going to put these huge big round pods on the feet.
Why do you think they did that?
What were they expecting?
They were expecting that lunar dust to be so fine that that thing would sink totally
under it and it would kill the astronauts and they'd never be able to get back home.
So they put feet on that thing as big as this stage.
When that thing landed and when Neil Armstrong set foot on the surface of the
moon, he proved that the moon was only 10 ,000 years old because there
were only a few inches of cosmic dust on the moon.
And at the current rate, if everything's been the same, I mean we turn it back on their head, if
everything is uniform and everything's always been the same, and that same amount of cosmic dust that we know is falling
now has been falling on the moon for 4 .5 billion years,
Armstrong would have been gone.
You'd never seen him again because he didn't have pods on his feet.
They took care of the module, but not the person.
Now he should have had on snow boots.
I mean snow, what do you call those things?
Snowshoes.
But the fact is, it wasn't that way.
Why?
Because the moon is not old like they say it is.
Let me give you another interesting one.
They can measure the magnetic field of the earth.
And the interesting thing about the magnetic field of the earth is that it is slightly
decreasing all the time.
It has decreased 14 % over the last 130 years.
And they can measure that very easily and they know that that's a fact.
Now if you extrapolate that backwards and say all things have always been the same,
then 10 ,000 years ago and you go back 30 ,000 years ago,
which is not anywhere near 4 billion years like they think the earth is, if you just went back
30 ,000 years, the magnetic field of the earth would have been so strong that it would have been 5
,000 degrees centigrade all the time on the face of the earth.
That is hot enough to actually vaporize the elements.
There would be no earth if the evolutionists were true and the earth is as old as it is because the
magnetic fields would have been so strong just a few thousand years ago that it would have destroyed everything.
Now we're using their science to disprove their theories.
It's a fact also that the sun is shrinking.
Did you know that?
The sun is shrinking.
It shrinks about 5 feet per hour.
That's kind of frightening isn't it?
The Lord's coming back for us right on time though so we don't worry about that.
But the sun is shrinking.
It's burning up.
5 feet per hour.
It gets 5 feet smaller in diameter every hour that goes by.
Now if you take that change and you take it backwards in
history, and we don't have to go back 4 .5 billion years, let's just go
back about 20 million years, which is a small fraction of 5
billion.
If you went back just 20 million years, the sun would have been so large it would touch the earth.
Now that's impossible of course, but the circumference of the sun based on the fact that it's
shrinking 5 feet per hour, if you go backwards in time and you add 5 feet, if you just went back 20 million
years, the sun would have been so large it would have come all the way to the edge of the earth and burned everything
up.
So we wouldn't be here.
Wish he weren't here.
When you're through, we'll continue.
That guy doesn't go to church on Sunday, does he?
Now, there are some others.
You can look.
How many of you have ever seen a comet?
Has anybody actually seen one?
Who got to see Haley's Comet when it came last time?
Do you know we had an elderly lady that came to our home and saw it for the second time in her life?
And my dad helped her see that through his telescope.
And she was thrilled because she had seen it as a little bitty girl.
Well, this is an interesting fact.
Every time a comet circles the sun, the solar winds tear off part of it.
Tear some of the debris away from the comet.
And so one question I would ask our evolutionist friend is if it's true that the earth is 5 billion years old, how
come comets have tails on them?
Because they wouldn't.
They would have passed by the sun so many times that they would not even exist anymore.
And these are just simple little questions you can ask them.
When you kids get to college, I want you to get a list of these and ask your science teachers these questions.
They'll love you for it.
Now, what about erosion?
Do you realize that at the present rate, and by the way, all of these are ways of aging the earth.
There are 80 different ways.
I'm just giving you a few.
But if you look at the current rate of erosion on the planet, if you went back
14 million years ago, which is not even anywhere near 5
billion years ago, if you went back 14 million years ago, then the fact is all of the earth
would be at sea level.
And so the sea would cover everything.
That's an interesting thought, isn't it?
You don't have to go back very far at the current rate of erosion where there wouldn't be any mountains, no hills, no anything.
If the earth were really as old as they say it is.
If our earth were only 14 million years old, it would truly be flat and it would be wet
because the seas would cover it.
Everything would be gone by now.
And they're saying it's 5 billion years old.
Well, why are we still here?
And then I'll give you one that I personally am aware of, being in the oil industry.
Everyone that studies, all the petroleum engineers know this is a fact and it puzzles them.
In fact, I get a kick out of it when I go out to the lease.
I'll ask them questions like this.
In fact, I had one of them that was just furious because his son got saved out
there.
And he just couldn't believe it.
And just 10 minutes before his son got saved, I'd been talking to him about the age of the earth.
And he was mocking me.
He said, you don't believe that really, do you?
And I said, sure I do.
But this is interesting.
The oil and natural gas deposits that are found in the earth are always found in porous rock and
sand.
It won't be there if the porosity is not high.
When we drill and we do a log trying to find oil and gas, we want high porosity.
We want to bring up samples of rocks that are very, very porous because then we know we're getting close to where
oil and gas will be.
Now, there's a second truth about oil and gas and that is that they are found under extremely high
pressure.
And Richard's experiencing that right now.
What's the situation today?
They had a pressure buildup on the offshore rig that Richard was on and they were all very concerned about sleeping
at night.
Because when you go down and you break into a formation for the first time, you have no idea what's there.
Isn't that right?
You don't know.
I mean, it literally could blow that entire platform off of the water, even
pipe and all.
When you first pierce it, it has that much pressure.
Now, the question that we have to ask is if the earth were merely 100 ,000
years old, how could there be any oil and gas pressure left?
Because it all would have permeated and bubbled up through the soils and out into the air.
And so the earth could not possibly be more than 100 ,000 years old.
And many of these ways of dating the earth show it to be right
around 10 ,000 years old.
Now, what about carbon dating?
Have you ever had a problem with that when they say, well, we can date these things?
Well, let me just give you some quick things about carbon dating.
Carbon dating is based upon the principle of uniformitarianism.
If you can destroy that principle, then it's totally inaccurate.
And we know for a fact that the earth's magnetic field is changing, which changes
the amount of carbon atoms that can come into our atmosphere from outer space.
Also, we have volcanic activity that greatly changes the amount of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere.
Also, we have solar flares that will change that number.
Also, they've proven that the nuclear tests that the different countries have done on their nuclear
weapons have changed and greatly increased the rate of radiocarbon
formation.
And not only that, but there was an asteroid that hit the earth in Siberia back in 1908.
And when it did, they could examine trees years later when they cut trees down and they could find that the
amount of carbon dioxide was far greater that year than normal
just because a meteor hit the earth.
And so it is absolutely impossible for carbon dating to be accurate.
There are too many things changing all the time.
And yet, if you read anything in science, it's going to be presented as a fact.
Oh, this is accurate.
It's just as accurate as your clock is.
And so the earth is 5 billion years old.
There'd be an awful lot of things that wouldn't be working right now if it really were that old.
So, when you go into Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 3, at the bottom of the verse, you might want to put the
word uniformitarianism just died.
Okay?
Now, I don't have any time left.
I'm negative four right now.
But I do just want to mention this.
The first part of the verse where it says, through faith we understand that the worlds, the ages of time were
framed by the word of God.
That destroys any religious system that's based on non -dispensationalism.
Any group of people who base their beliefs on the fact that there are no
dispensations are wrong.
The charismatic movement in this country is the fastest growing movement in the country.
The fastest growing movement in the world, at least Christian movement, not nearly as fast as Islam is.
Muhammadism is growing much faster.
But they believe that all of the gifts that you can read about in the apostolic
age and the time of Christ are still operative today.
And they base that belief on non -dispensationalism.
That there are no dispensations.
Everything is the same as it's always been.
It is the religious form of uniformitarianism.
Nothing ever changes, they say.
And they argue the point, well, God never changes.
So how can things change?
Well, no, God doesn't change.
But we know things are changing all around us.
The clock is ticking down, you guys.
Everything is moving towards a state of decay.
Things are not getting better in the physical world.
The clock is winding down until the Lord Jesus comes back.
And things change in the physical world, but they've always changed in Bible times as well.
So when you take some of these passages of scripture, like the one in Hebrews chapter 1, where it says,
in the former days, in the times of old, God spoke, that's past tense, by the prophets in
dreams and visions.
But in these last days, He speaks to us by the sun.
It clearly shows a change in dispensations.
There's a different way that God speaks to us today.
He does not speak to us with visions and dreams.
And if you ever have one, don't put any faith in it.
Because it may just as well have come from the devil or from onions you ate the night before.
God no longer speaks that way.
We're going to get two trains today.
I must be preaching the truth pretty good.
He speaks by the Word, Jesus, the Word of God.
And He speaks to our heart by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.
Would you agree with me on that?
That's what it says.
And that's the way it is in this dispensation.
We just completed a study on the sign gifts and so forth.
And we showed very clearly that not only Jesus, but Paul and Peter
and John all pointed out that those miraculous gifts, which we call the
sign gifts, including tongues, ceased.
They were no longer on the scene, even when some of the Bible was still being written.
If you examine any book of the Bible written after the year A .D. 60, you will not find any of these gifts mentioned.
Because they began to pass away.
As you go into the book of Hebrews,
there are a couple of verses that are just very, very specific about this.
How shall we escape in Hebrews chapter two and verse three?
How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at first began to be spoken of by the
Lord and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him?
Was confirmed is past tense.
It means it's not happening anymore.
And what these miracles were, were they confirmed the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles.
In Hebrews chapter six, verse four, it says, for it is impossible for those who were once
enlightened and have tasted the heavenly gift and were made partaker of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God.
Now mark this phrase and the powers of the world to come.
It's a very important phrase to understand the dispensations.
Those who have tasted the powers of the world to come.
What does it mean?
Well, anytime you see an outbreak of miracles in this world, on this planet, it is nothing more
than a taste of the future kingdom age.
It is a little bit of the kingdom bleeding through into the earth.
It's only happened a few times.
It happened around the time of Moses for about 70 years.
And then there were 500 years or more before another miracle happened in the whole Bible.
Then around the times of Elijah and Elisha, it happened because God was vindicating and
authenticating the office of the prophet.
About 70 years and then another 800 years went by before there was another miracle.
And then the times of Jesus and the apostles came on the scene and you had a huge outbreaking of miracles and
signs and wonders.
Authenticating that Jesus was none other than the Son of God and that his apostles were God's chosen men.
And so what happened was those people tasted the powers of the world to come.
They got a little taste of the kingdom age.
You go into Isaiah and you read about the future kingdom.
It talks about miracles happening every day and it's not even miraculous.
It's just an expected thing in the kingdom age.
And when John the Baptist questioned whether Jesus was who he said he was or not, what did Jesus say?
He sent back and he quoted a portion of Isaiah and he said, I'm the one that heals the people.
I make the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.
And he was pointing out these things that are going to happen in the kingdom age.
And he said, I did those things because I'm the king.
And where the king is, you're getting a little bit of the kingdom.
And all of these things have to do with dispensations of time.
During the time of the apostles and the time of Jesus, we had the beginning of the
end of the Old Testament time and we have what we call the apostolic age where God authenticated the New
Testament and everything that Jesus said.
And then even Jesus himself said, blessed are you that have seen these things, but blessed are they that
believe and have not seen.
He's telling us right there we're going to live by faith.
We're not going to see these kinds of things until he comes back.
But you know what the book of Joel says?
When this dispensation comes to a close and we go into the tribulation period, which is another
dispensation, your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.
Why does it say that?
Because let me tell you, the first thing the antichrist is going to get rid of.
There won't be any of these around.
You won't have six of them on your coffee table.
If you're still here, you won't care anyway.
Because if you're saved, you won't be here during that time.
But they won't have Bibles.
So all of a sudden they have a need then again for the gift of prophecy and speaking a word of wisdom so that the people who
do get saved can hear truth because they won't have the word.
But when that which is perfect is come, the perfect word of God is the only perfect thing on the earth
that's a thing.
When that which is perfect is come, then tongues and prophecies and
words of knowledge shall cease, the Bible says.
And it did in fact happen sometime around the date A .D. 70 when Jerusalem was destroyed.
And from that point we go into the church age.
He spoke to us by his son.
That's a different dispensation.
And then we're going to go into the tribulation period.
And all of a sudden you're going to have prophesying and all those gifts will be there again.
Why is that?
Because they have to do with the kingdom.
And the king is coming again.
And so when we look at this one verse in Hebrews chapter 11 verse 3, it dispels
uniformitarianism in science and it dispels it in theology.
And it does away with a lot of heresy if we understand it properly.
Let's stand and have a word of prayer together.