61 - Dispensationalism, Part 3

Welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We're glad to have you with us and as we do these classes we hope that you are learning a lot.

We will give a warning today, there have been a couple of technical difficulties, hope those don't affect the class, but in our

School of Systematic Theology we have been going through several books, we are now in book number three, we're calling this

God Speaks to the World. This is the Doctrine of the Bible. We're on the last lesson which is lesson number eight.

Lesson number eight we are referring to as Dispensationalism. This is actually our third lesson on Dispensationalism.

If you have a syllabus, I encourage you to get one, if you don't have one you can pick one up at our store at strivingforeternity .org.

You can pick up book number three of the Systematic Theology syllabus and then you can follow along with all of the notes that I have for you and some other notes that you can fill in.

It helps for quick reference. This lesson I am being told there is no way

I am going to get through four pages of notes considering it took two lessons to get through, well, two pages of notes.

But I think that we're up to the challenge. Right class? Alright, let's see. So we dealt with before the definition of Dispensationalism and really we dealt with a dispensation that is just a period of time of how

God works with his people for a time period, for a specific time period. After that we talked about the essentials.

What defines Dispensationalism? We mentioned in that that there were three things that we called the sine qua num.

The sine qua num which means without which there is nothing. In other words, these are the essential teachings and there were three and this is the definition.

I keep stressing this and I'm amazed that, well, I shouldn't be amazed because the people who are criticizing these classes on Dispensationalism have been doing so and it's interesting because they aren't watching the classes.

If you're going to criticize something at least watch it, just saying. But those who have watched,

I've been very encouraged by those who, Covenant theologians who have been watching or Reformed theologians and who've been watching and saying that they feel

I'm doing a fair representation of their position. That is how we should be doing things.

I've been noticing that several people want to attack Dispensationalism and these classes based on end times views.

If you remember I said the sine qua num, the essentials of Dispensationalism have nothing to do with the end time position.

That is a byproduct. To argue Dispensationalism against the end times view that it might hold is like arguing against Covenant theology based on infant baptism.

That's a byproduct of it. That doesn't mean it's right or wrong. It's just that's not the way you'd argue.

You'd argue it based on the merits of what is the essentials of the teachings. So what were the sine qua num or the core essentials of Dispensationalism?

Well one would be that there is a distinction between Israel and church. They would see, recognize and maintain a distinction between Israel and the church.

A second would be that it would employ a consistently normal or literal interpretation of the scriptures.

In other words, there are passages that it would not see a spiritual meaning unless a normal literal meaning doesn't make sense there.

And then third is that it employs an underlining purpose of God being for God's glory and not the redemption of man.

So those would be the three. So in today's lesson we are going to do a survey of dispensations, a survey of dispensations.

So we're picking up now in our syllabus. By surveying these dispensations we are analyzing the history of God's plan with regard to mankind.

Now we're going to go over seven dispensations that are generally accepted. There's differences.

Some have more, some have less. There's five. I've seen some people that say five dispensations, some up to 13.

What you're going to notice is each one of these dispensations are going to have certain things.

We looked at this last week, but I want to make sure I word it the same way.

It's going to involve the giving of new revelation, the change of the

God -man relationship, and mankind having more responsibility.

And with each of those you're going to see that in the covenants that God has with His people.

And so when people argue, well, covenants are in the Bible, therefore covenant theology is right, that's a fallacy of equivocation because they're using the word covenant two different ways.

Dispensationalists would hold to covenants as well. They don't reject covenants. Actually the covenants define when

God is giving the new revelation, the new responsibility to man, and that new relationship is bound, it's with a covenant.

And so the covenants are part of dispensationalism. Both covenant theology and dispensational theology hold covenants as valuable.

So let's not use misnomers, right? Let's not use false attacks. One of the things we want to do,

I don't care if you disagree with my position, I want you to do it being able to accurately define my position.

And I should be able to do the same to you. I should be able to accurately define your position.

And if I can't, then you need to correct me. Now it might be that I use a term that's used for many people that would hold to a reformed theology, covenant theology, and you don't fit that category.

That's fine. Remember, there's a lot of movement in what we call covenant theology and dispensational theology, right?

Big gaps in there, big movements, wide range. And so you're going to find people that don't hold exactly as some would hold.

That's fine. If you're talking to an individual, find out what they specifically believe, and then address that.

Okay? So let's do a survey. Let us start with our survey, and I want to talk about something which may cause me to have to rush through some of the lesson later, but it is important to understand that revelation was progressive.

We got revelation through time. This is a chart, if we could put that up, a chart that I developed when I was in seminary.

As you look through time, you see that there was, and each of these are going to talk about each of the dispensations as well.

And so you're going to see that through time, what I'm giving there is each of these covenants that God gave.

And with each of the time, as time went on, what you're seeing is that God gave more and more and more revelation.

And what happened with Adam and Eve, when it was just the one man and one woman, they didn't have as much revelation as Noah as a family might have had.

And so what you see is that there was more revelation given at each one of these steps. And as the revelation grew, so did the responsibility.

There's another slide I have, a similar thing that, again, I put this together in class. This again shows each of the dispensations.

But this is what I mean when I say progressive dispensationalism, meaning that it's, and I know that I'm using this not to define progressive dispensationalism as the theological system.

What I'm saying is that the dispensations, these time periods, these epochs of God's dealing with mankind, they have progressed.

That's what I mean by that, okay? So I'm not defining progressive dispensationalism as a theological system.

But what you can see here is that I'm showing that it starts with one man,

Adam, and then you have eight people, Noah. You have one nation of Israel. You have all the nations, the church.

And then what I would see in the future is nature being in the millennial kingdom, and then creation, the redemption of creation.

And so, but what I'm trying to point out in those two slides is that revelation kept, there was more and more revelation and it kept expanding and you got a wider, toward the end you get more and more revelation given.

And let's put that first one up. That was a little bit easier to read. But what you see here is actually what we would say, what

I would say, are the different dispensations, okay? Many of which have already been fulfilled and with each one of these is a covenant and we're going to look at those.

So let's look at the first one, the dispensation of innocence. And that's your blank in your syllabus, if you have a syllabus, the dispensation of innocence.

And if I'm talking fast, it is because, well, I have a bet with someone, not really a bet, it's kind of just a joke.

They think I can't get through all four pages. I think I can. I'm just not going to read every single scripture verse, okay?

But the first is the dispensation of innocence. So what was the time period of this?

Well, this was from creation until the fall, not probably a very long period of time.

Some think one day, but you know what? We have no idea. Did Adam and Eve sin on day nine of creation?

Or day eight of creation? Or day 12 of creation? Or day 350?

We have no idea. Just a thing to think about. But whatever that time period is, from the time that Adam and Eve were created, from creation until that fall, this is what's called the time of innocence.

Because this is the only time that man actually was innocent, I know. You look at that little baby in the crib and you go, such innocence.

No, it's a viper in a diaper. I mean, that little child, as lovely as you want to look at it cooing at you, it's selfish.

It is. And it's sinful. But it's not innocent. It's not innocent in the way that we mean the term of being without sin.

And Adam and Eve were that way. So you see the time period. Let's look at the revelation and responsibility.

Because remember I said, new revelation given. With that revelation is new responsibility. There's a change in the relationship between God and man.

So this is God giving His revelation. So He gives us several things.

One, Genesis 128, replenish the earth. By the way, it's interesting because we get hung up on the replenish because people think they have to replenish again.

It's just the English word that's used, but it means to fill the earth. Okay. There's two times that command is given in the first two covenants.

And so I think it's interesting both times is when there's really no one there. So you have the replenishing of the earth, letter

B, to subdue the earth, Genesis, also in Genesis 128, to subdue the earth.

Man was supposed to keep the earth in charge, to guard it, to maintain it.

And that was his responsibility. So you could say that, yes, Adam was an environmentalist in the true sense of the word, right?

But letter C, exercise dominion over the animals, same verse. Letter D, dress and keep the garden.

This is Genesis 2 .16. Another thing, another command that was given in Genesis 128 -30 was to eat vegetables.

The command to eat meat doesn't come until later. So at this stage, you see a change that will occur later.

But at this stage, I believe that Adam and Eve and the people before Noah only ate vegetables, only ate of the fruit of the trees.

And then one more command in Genesis 2 .1 -17, do you know what it is? Abstain from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Very good. So they had certain things. Now you and I today don't have that rule to abstain from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because, well, we don't know where it is.

But that was something given to Adam and Eve at that time. Now with that came a failure.

The failure is knowingly partaking of the tree, okay?

They knowingly partook of the tree and that caused a failure. And then came a judgment. And this is the way many will see these different dispensations.

There's a time period, okay? There's this revelation, responsibility for the dispensation. There's typically a failure in that and this is the model we're going to look through.

What the failure was and then what was the judgment to come. So in the judgment, we see three things.

So we see that there was a curse upon mankind and the animals and the earth.

Genesis 3, 14 to 19. Also when I say the earth,

I would reference Romans chapter 8 where the whole earth is groaning because of the sin of Adam and Eve.

So the curse that occurred when Adam, not Eve, partook of that fruit was a curse on the entire universe.

And I would say then the law of entropy began. The earth and universe started to decay.

Now this is something that when we look at this, we see that sin and death entered the world at this point,

Romans 5, 12. And Adam and Eve, as a punishment, were expelled from the garden,

Genesis 3, 22 to 24, okay? So this is what you end up seeing, okay?

You see that there was a punishment, a judgment placed upon them because they failed in their responsibility, okay?

And so that brought in the next dispensation, which is the dispensation of conscience.

And that's your next blank there. The dispensation of conscience. And we're going to look at the same format here, all right?

The time period for this is the fall to the flood. Now, when you deal with people that argue against these dispensations, you'll often find that they will agree with these points.

This is the frustrating thing when you study this stuff is so many people argue without taking the time to know what it is you're saying, okay?

So, let's take a look at this, all right? We see here now a difference that occurs after the fall.

God deals with Adam and Eve differently. And from Adam and Eve all the way up until the flood,

He has a different way. He's given new revelation and He gives, well,

He deals with them differently. So the time period, again, from the fall to the flood, all right? What new revelation and responsibility does

God give? Well, He gives it in Genesis 3 .15 to believe in God's promised

Redeemer. From Genesis 3 .15, from the very beginning of the fall,

God gives the promise of a Redeemer that will save mankind. And that promise is something that they are to believe in, that person that would eventually come and be their

Redeemer. There's also, from Genesis 4, we see a demand for a blood sacrifice begins, okay?

Cain and Abel, many feel that the reason that Abel, that Cain's offering was not good and Abel's was, was

Abel's was a blood sacrifice and Cain's was not. Now, it depends on the type of sacrifice because there were sacrifices you could give in Leviticus that were grain sacrifices, but the assumption is that many have is that a blood sacrifice was required.

We do know that later in a different dispensation, but there again is a failure during this dispensation.

You can see it in Cain's rebellion and murder. You see it in the rise of wickedness and in the violent society that was formed.

And ultimately, by the time you get to Genesis chapter 6, you see that there is something that occurs within Genesis 6 that talks about these

Nephilim. These are giants. There are differing views of what the

Nephilim were. We really don't know for sure. Some take it to be that it is the line of Cain versus the line of Seth and that the line of Seth, so Cain killed

Abel, there were many other children that Adam and Eve had, Seth was another child of Adam and Eve, and that the line of Seth was supposedly a good line and they were the faithful line and that the idea being that they would be from that line would be the godly line and then

Cain was somehow the ungodly line and the wickedness was that the children of Cain married the children of the daughters of Seth.

Another view is that they are actually demonic angels of some kind that could physically in some way produce offspring with human beings and so these demons produced offsprings with women and created a demonic human breed somehow.

Whichever be the case, whatever it was, it was so severe that in Genesis 6,

God says there will be a flood to wipe out these people. That is the judgment.

You have a time, you have new revelation responsibility, you have some failure, you have a judgment.

Alright, so you move from Adam and Eve before, they're innocent, they fall, now you have

Adam and Eve and their children and their grandchildren and their great -grandchildren and so on and so on and so on until the flood and this time period we call the age of conscience just because this is a period where now they know right from wrong, that's why it's called the age of conscience.

The third we would call the dispensation of human government, that's your blank there, the dispensation of human government.

This time period is from that flood period, so after the flood all the way to Abraham.

Alright, if you have an early copy of the syllabus it says from the flood to the fall of Abraham.

It should just be to, really it should be to, it says

Abraham but it's really, it's the time of Abraham slash Noah and this is where some people have some differing views where these breaks are, some people, this is where some people see there's a break with Noah from Noah to Abraham and then

Abraham to Moses, so there's differing views of these, okay? But I'm kind of being some general and just saying that it's generally this time

Abraham to Noah, so the revelation responsibility that I'm saying is the new revelation was the noadic covenant, okay?

This starts with Noah and so that's why I would, you know, when you have Noah getting off the flood he has new revelation given, okay?

The noadic covenant includes four features, alright? A fear of man was placed on animals,

Genesis 9, 21. We don't see, before this time we don't see man or animals even eating other animals.

Now this throws people off I know because they see dinosaurs and they say well look these dinosaurs have sharp teeth, well koala bears have sharp teeth and they don't eat meat.

I mean so you have animals today, you have bears that have very sharp teeth that don't eat meat, vegetarians, just so you don't have to have sharp teeth only for eating meat but it does seem that after Genesis 9, 21 that a new change came even with animals that they would have a fear of man.

A second in Genesis 9, 3 which is the reason animals would have a fear of man maybe is the permission to eat meat.

Now see this is the change, when I talk about a change these dispensations you see that before Noah animals and people ate plants, after Noah there's the eating of meat.

That is a change of the way God deals with his people.

He's given new revelation, new responsibility, in this case new freedom maybe to do different things, alright?

Now can a man still be a vegetarian? Sure if he wants to be but he doesn't have to be any longer, okay?

That would be the change. Capital punishment for murder in Genesis 9, 6.

See when Cain killed Abel there wasn't capital punishment.

In fact God gave Cain a sign and warned everybody not to kill

Cain. He was protected even though he was a murderer. So capital punishment wasn't employed until Genesis 9.

So again you see new responsibility, you see a change of God with his people.

It's really that simple. And even those who say they hold to covenant theology, they hold to these principles as well, okay?

And that's the reason why I think so much of this fighting we do is just silly, just saying.

And most of it's based on bad definitions of each side, okay? A fourth thing is that God's promise never to destroy the earth again by a flood.

Genesis 9, 8 -17. That's why God gave us the rainbow.

That's not a sign for gay pride. Those of you who want to use the rainbow as a sign for gay pride, it's a sign that God won't judge the earth by a flood but He will by fire.

That's what it is. The rainbow reminds us that there was a judgment for wickedness and there will again be someday a judgment for wickedness.

Okay? And with this you have again, you have more time.

Actually, throw the second slide up. Okay, so what I want to show you with this second slide is just what

I tried to do here is show some time gaps here. I should have put the years in here but you know,

Adam to Noah, right? You see it's one period. Then you have longer and longer periods and then toward the end it slows up again, becomes smaller again.

So between the flood, okay, from Noah to Abraham, you have a longer period of time.

Now what was the failure? Well, in this you see failure that came upon. You see drunkenness of Noah in Genesis 9 -2.

By the way, I've seen Muslims who have a real hard time with this because they believe that a prophet can almost never sin.

You know, some Jewish people have the same struggle. And so I debated a

Muslim who argued that it was because of that verse, Genesis 9 -2, that he became

Muslim. Because how could Noah, a prophet of God, be drunk?

And therefore it can't be true. And that was what convinced him the Bible was wrong. Well, what

Genesis 9 -2 shows is that Noah was a, what's the word, a human.

Yeah, that's it. He's a human being with a sin nature, okay? Yes, he failed.

He sinned, okay? So, and then also the rebellion against God's desire for mankind to spread throughout the earth.

What do I mean by that? Well, Genesis 11, the first nine verses, the Tower of Babel. So, you have this time with the

Tower of Babel where all the people gather together and they want to build a tower to reach to God, to reach to the heavens.

And because they all had the same language, they lived at this point a long period of time,

God gave a judgment, and that judgment was a dividing of the languages, and some would say races.

Now, I want to deal with something. I know this is a side topic, but it is a thing that I've heard argued, and I want to correct it just in case some of you have it since we're dealing with these things.

The dividing of languages separated people. I mean, think, if you're working with someone, alongside someone, all of a sudden you guys don't understand one another, you group together with those who you understand, and you kind of stay together.

And as people would start spreading out, God spread them out. Now, I don't know how that worked.

Was it supernatural? Not sure. But what I do think happened is that God moved people to areas, and then over time, because of the fact that you had inbreeding, certain traits became more dominant in certain areas.

Chinese have certain features that would be different than Africans, that would be different than people in Europe area, and so you have differences.

I think what happens, for example, if I was to, if someone like me was to live in Africa at that time being outside, most of the time where I don't have a house with air conditioning, things like that, and I'm working outside,

I'm very pale skinned. I would die like my mother did of melanoma at a young age.

Probably wouldn't have many offspring, and I wouldn't survive there. And therefore, I wouldn't be reproducing a dominant gene of really fair skin.

But if you're up in an area where it's really cold, and you're staying inside most of the time trying to stay warm, you're not getting enough vitamin

D, and if you have lots of melanin in your skin, you're probably going to not survive very long and die off.

And that will mean that the more dominant gene will be those with less melanin in their skin.

So, I'm saying that to say God did not create racism. Some make a really bad argument to say that when

God spread people because of where he moved the three children of Noah, some make the argument that the names of Noah's sons mean dark, white, and mild, or yellow, and argues that the white were the ones that went to Europe.

Remember Canaan? The curse of Ham that's given from Noah?

And they say, well, that's on the black people that went down in Africa. That is really, really, really bad theology.

I'm just saying. But I do think that genetically we can understand why certain dominant genes became more dominant in certain areas.

But I do think that that division added to the division of people.

I'm saying that because there are some people that try to argue that God created, at the same time he gave supernaturally new languages, that he changed the color of their skin, and that because of that people didn't associate with one another because of the way one another looked.

I just don't think that's... I don't believe that, is what I'm saying. So, let's move on, if we could, to the next one, the dispensation of promise.

And that's your blank there. The dispensation of promise, your blank.

With this, the time from here is... it's not really sure.

I'm going to say it's from the call of Abraham to the giving of the law. And there's differing differences with some of these things, but that's where I'm going to say it.

So, from Abraham, we have the new revelation, the new responsibility, is the new revelation was the

Abrahamic covenant. That's your blank there. You see these covenants that we recognize.

As dispensationalists, we recognize covenants. They are the new revelation, new responsibility given.

So, what does the Abrahamic covenant include? Well, three features of that. One was a seed.

Abraham was to be the father of a great nation. That was the first. The second was a land promise.

A promise with careful, specified borders. Genesis 15 -18.

This becomes important in dispensationalism because, remember, as a dispensationalist, we would take the

Bible more literally. When God gives this promise of land to Israel, the nation of Israel, and He's very specific of where this land is.

He didn't say the whole earth. He gave a specific region. Israel, in its history, has never fully owned or fully occupied that land that God said.

Now, a covenant theologian would take that land promise, say it's a spiritual promise, fulfilled in the church because the church fulfilled not only that land area, but the whole world.

Where I would see that the promise of the land is to the nation of Israel. Now you say, well, wait a minute.

How do you then solve the problem that Israel never occupied it? Some would say, well,

God's not dealing with Israel anymore. This is where dispensationalists would say, well, God will bring Israel back into the picture at some future time.

And fulfill them literally. The reality is, in my mind, if God doesn't fulfill

His promises to Israel literally, how do you know He fulfills His promises to the church? How do you know that Jesus is sitting in heaven having a mansion for you?

Because if He made it that way, how do you know that doesn't spiritually mean something else that you didn't expect?

See, the Jews always took that as a literal land promise. They always accepted it as that.

And so, I think that it is a literal promise. The third element is a blessing.

The promise to all the earth through Abraham. This is in Genesis 12, 1 -3.

There is a promise to the entire earth through Abraham. That we would end up seeing that the whole earth would come to know

God through Abraham. Through Abraham's seed, specifically.

That seed being Jesus. But there was a failure. Abraham's seed, meaning

Israel, they remained in Egypt when they were supposed to move out. They were supposed to go back into the land.

But they got comfortable in Egypt after they went there with Joseph. And there was a judgment on them, which was a bondage in Egypt.

Exodus 1, 8 -14. That was a judgment, that bondage. But then came another dispensation.

And this is the dispensation of the law, or I'm going to be really specific in your blank there.

The Mosaic Law. The Mosaic Law. I'm calling this a dispensation of the

Mosaic Law, and not the law because what has happened in arguments against dispensationalism, and some of it fairly, is that Schofield, in the

Schofield Reference Study Bible, argued that there was a dispensation of the law, and it seemed that in his original notes, he seemed to argue that people were saved through works, through obedience to the law.

And so some have taken the dispensation of the law to mean obedience to the law in salvation.

Now, very quickly, the Schofield notes were revised and updated, and that was corrected.

But the stigma has stayed. Because those who want to argue against dispensationalism, that becomes easy fodder.

But it's incorrect. Bad argument. This is the Mosaic Law. So this is a time from the giving of the law in Mount Sinai to Pentecost.

In Acts 2. That's a really long time period. So there was new revelation and responsibility.

And that revelation and responsibility was the Mosaic Law. The Mosaic Law was the new revelation of God and the responsibility to mankind.

The Mosaic Law included, well, we usually say three elements.

And many people see this, and I'm going to give some arguments here, how I'm going to differentiate these.

But because this is the way they're generally accepted, we're going to use these. First, you're blank. The civil element.

The civil element. The civil element is the social and legal relationship of Israel. The social and legal relationship of Israel.

So that's civil. Those are laws on the books of how Israel is going to conduct their legal system. Ceremonial element.

The ceremonial element. That's your next blank. The ceremonial element is the rituals, the dress, the demands of the

Levitical religious system. This is the religious system now. And then the third is the moral element.

The moral element. That's your third blank. This is the legislation of the moral will of God.

You can think of it as the Ten Commandments, but it's much more. Breaking a civil law or breaking a ceremonial law was moral.

I've seen people that try to figure out which of the laws in the Bible, in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and these books, which laws were civil, which were ceremonial, which were moral.

And people have a hard time with that. I think this distinction has caused some confusion.

And this is one of the reasons I've started to transition to just referring to two elements. A moral or universal component for all mankind and a national component just for Israel.

Now, when we do it that way, it becomes very easy to understand in the next dispensation that we're going to get to at the church, well, which one is which.

We don't carry on those elements that are for Israel. We carry on those universal elements that are for all mankind.

And those that are repeated, as the New Covenant theologians would say, the law of Christ.

We'll get to that. I'm getting ahead of myself. So, what's the failure? Israel failed in keeping the law, clearly, as all people do.

But Israel rejected the one who came to fulfill the law in Romans 10, 1 -3.

And there is their failure. And the judgment, and this is where we disagree with our

Covenant theologian friends, I would say is a temporary rejection of Israel. Matthew 21 -43.

Temporary because I think God's going to bring Israel back into play in the future. Another judgment on them was the destruction of the temple in 70

AD. Luke 21 -24 seems to say that that's going to be a judgment on them.

This leads to the next dispensation. And this is the dispensation of the church. Now again, you'll see some people refer to this as the dispensation of grace.

But you're blank there, the dispensation of the church. I'm using that again because I want to clarify this distinction that happened with Schofield between law and grace.

As if you were saved by law in the Old Testament, grace in the New. That's not accurate.

So with that said, the dispensation of the church was from the time of Pentecost, I would say until the

Second Coming of Christ. The revelation and responsibilities that we have, we see this in the

New Testament as we're given the New Testament. And that is the New Covenant, the Holy Spirit indwelling us and teaching us from His Word.

The revelation and responsibility is to receive by faith the offering of Jesus Christ, thus being indwelt by the

Holy Spirit. Second, to unite with the local church of Bible believers, 1

Timothy 3, 14 -16. And then third, to fulfill the Great Commission, Matthew 28, 19 -20, which is to make disciples.

Now the failure of this will be the rejection of the truth of Scripture, 1 Timothy 4, 1 -3.

People will reject the truth to have their ears tickled, resulting in a great apostasy in what we would call the

Tribulation Period. This is some future times 2 Thessalonians 2, 1 -12 would talk about.

Now there's going to be a judgment in that time. Now this is not as clear now. Now I'm getting into fuzzy things because we're talking future.

And this isn't as clear. We're going to eventually do in the next book of theology, we'll get to the

Doctrine of the Church and Doctrine of End Times and get into more of this in detail. And it's not going to be solid, as solid as we can deal with the old because we don't know what the covenants are going to be called in the future, right?

But there's going to be a judgment of eternal damnation for rejecting Christ. And there will be a

Tribulation Period is what dispensationalists would hold to. So during this period, and some would see that, again, some would see that there's extra, they'd see a possible dispensation of that 7 year covenant.

Between, you know, that's going to have the 7 year Tribulation Period. That might be another dispensation.

There's a judgment time. So there's a lot of differences, but I'm giving some generalities. I think it's basically to Second Coming of Christ.

Now the last dispensation that we're going to deal with, the 7th one, is the dispensation of the

Kingdom of God. And that's your blank there. The dispensation of the Kingdom of God.

The time period for this is the Second Coming of Christ until the final rebellion of Satan, alright?

And with this, some people would then argue, you know, does this go to the End of Time? Or is there another dispensation of the

Eternal State? Again, generalities here, but I want you to just pick up the idea of how things are changing with the responsibility that God has with man.

The man has to God, and the revelation that God gives to man. So the revelation responsibility in this case, you have the

Millennial Kingdom, a thousand year period. That will be a physical reign of Christ on earth meeting out

His justice in connection with the social dimension of the Kingdom, Isaiah 2 .4.

The political dimension of the Kingdom, Isaiah 32 .1. The moral dimension of the

Kingdom, Isaiah 32 .5. The physical dimension of the Kingdom, Isaiah 35 .1

-7. The religious dimension of the Kingdom, Isaiah 40 -48, okay?

This is why you want to have the syllabus, by the way, just so you can have all those notes. So you're not going back on YouTube and having to look that up, you know, and watch it and slow it down and capture all those.

But the syllabus is handy. You can get that at Striving for Eternity, $25. Pick those up.

This is future. This is something where I think the Millennial Kingdom, when we look at these time periods, the

Millennial Kingdom, a thousand years, that's the longest period. We would see that as literal from Revelation 20, the first six verses.

Six times it mentions a thousand year period. I take that literal because of the way that I'm going to interpret the

Bible with a more literal hermeneutic. I don't think there's any reason that has to be figurative, okay?

There's different numbers. If it was to use a long period of time, you usually don't use a thousand, you use 10 ,000, okay?

That's the largest number they had at the time. That would mean huge numbers, long period.

So I would take it literal. By the way, so did Augustine in the fifth century, one of the greatest minds that we had in Christendom, right?

And he believed the literal thousand year kingdom. He thought they were in it. And so about a thousand

AD, they realized they got a problem. It didn't end. Life is still going on.

And that is when they took what Augustine said and started to create what's known really now today as amillennialism, that the thousand year kingdom is a spiritual one and that it moves on.

But when you read Augustine, you'll see that he actually thought it was literal. But some of his arguments for it also lend to what is now taught as amillennialism.

And you get to that when we study the end times. We're going to look at that. So what's the failure?

Satan is loosed and leads a rebellion against God and his

Christ with a innumerable multitude. This is Revelation 29 to 10.

So you see that Satan will be loosed and he's going to wreak some havoc. And again, this is where you have in that time period, some people see another dispensation, but the judgment is fire from heaven,

Revelation 29 to 10 also states that. This dispensation leads to the eternal state.

That's your next blank there. The eternal state. It must be noted that through all the dispensations and from the fall onward, the means of salvation transcends dispensational truth.

Note that the following truths about salvation in the plan of God.

So these are always true. The basis at all time has always been the death of Christ.

People were not saved through the offering of sacrifices. People were saved by the death of Christ.

Hebrews makes that clear. They looked forward to Christ in their sacrifices. When they gave us sacrifices, it was to look forward to what

Christ would ultimately do. The accomplishing of salvation all times is

God's grace. Old Testament, New Testament, ever since Adam, it has always been by grace.

Both dispensationalists and covenant theologians believe this. It is just the arguments that people make on the other side to attack one another that say that both sides try to argue the other one does not.

The object of that faith in every dispensation is God's word.

It is God's word that is the object. The content of faith differs from dispensation to dispensation.

Why? Because we are given more and more revelation. The more revelation we are given, the more we understand about the content of that faith.

Adam and Eve were told that there would be a Messiah who would bruise the head of Satan even though Satan would bruise his foot.

That is what they knew. But by the time of Noah, he knows more. Abraham knows more.

Moses knows way more. You see that that content is changing because God is giving more revelation.

Again, people look at the Davidic covenant. They add a dispensation there. With each one of these, what

I am trying to point out, this is going to wrap up this class on dispensationalism. However, what we may be doing,

I hope to do next Monday Night Live, will be, I'm hoping to set up a, not really a debate, more a discussion on covenant theology versus dispensational theology with a friend of mine,

Matt Slick from CARM. CARM .org, Christian Apologetics Research Ministry. He holds to a covenant theology.

Really, he holds to Reformed theology. That was the Reformation of the Catholic theology. Really, to be technical, we call it

Reformed theology. We're going to get into a discussion of the two different views.

I hope to do that Monday Night Live, so it will be at the same time as class. We'll do that.

Just stay tuned on Facebook for that. We're going to take a break from theology because we're trying to ramp up many of our different schools.

We're going to try to jump into a school of world religions. We're going to go into that in the next time we have class other than the debates.

We may actually have two because I do have Pastor Paul Kaiser who has agreed to discuss new covenant theology versus dispensationalism.

We may have that discussion after the one with Matt Slick, so we'll see. If you have any questions about this or anything else that we've said, you can email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

If you want to pick up the syllabus so you can follow along this or any other, you have the videos on YouTube you can watch.

The syllabus is $25, and you can pick that up at our store. If you would be so kind, if you shop on Amazon, you can support us by going to AmazonSmiles or smile .amazon

.com, and from there you'd be able to put in our code or just type in the charity you want to support which is

Striving for Eternity Ministries, and basically you spend what you typically spend, and Amazon donates half a percent to us.

If you're watching this live right now, we have an Apologetics Cruise scheduled for April of 2016.

It'll be immediately following Ohio Fire, so you should do like I'm going to do and go to Ohio Fire and immediately catch a plane to Florida and do the

Apologetics Cruise. Matt Slick from CARM who I just mentioned will be there speaking with myself along with guys from Mormon Research Ministry.

There will be an Apologetics Conference, many hours of Apologetics training. It will not just be on Mormonism even though that's, you know,

Mormonism Research Ministry is there. They talk on more than just Mormonism, but I encourage you to sign up right now like this week because before Father's Day, there's a discount, $500 for interstate rooms, $800 for the upper rooms or the ones outside rooms, and those are $800 -something for seven nights.

Everything's included, food and all that. That's a great deal, so I really want to encourage you.

After June 15th, I think it is, those prices go up dramatically, like double

I think or more, so do that. There we go.

All right, sorry about that little freeze there. I did say at the beginning we had technical problems. We made it through the entire class without having any major issues, so I'm really impressed.

Jersey Fire, I encourage you to register before Father's Day because basically you will get a free

T -shirt If you register before Father's Day, you will get a free

T -shirt when you arrive, so I really want to encourage you to register. It's a great event.

We have the conference. We're going to talk about discipleship. Then we're going to go on the streets and evangelize. If you are not comfortable evangelizing, this is the event for you because not only do we give training on how to evangelize, but we also will take people out with trained people, and when you're with a hundred other brothers and sisters, it is very encouraging to evangelize because you overcome those nerves that we often have.

All right? Lastly, not lastly, but I do want to encourage you to get my book, if you would,

What Do They Believe? This is some of the content we're going to look at in our next class. You can get that at our website, at our store, strivingforetourney .org.

Lastly, we want to give you a brother of encouragement. We try to do this so you will encourage others.

The brother of encouragement this week is Brother Dan Bowen. We've had him as a brother of encouragement in the past because he is the guy who helps out with the

NorCal Fire, but this time we want to encourage you to reach out to Dan.

Dan has been in two weeks away from his family, which is a struggle. He's never been this long away from his family.

I was blessed with his company in my home this past weekend. Love this guy. He is trying to move into going full -time with open -air campaigners.

I want to encourage you to get in touch with Dan. Find out what he's doing. Find out how he's learning to reach out into communities, what he's doing.

He was telling me some of the stuff he's doing with these kids. They just go into a neighborhood, and they go to the parks, they go to the kids and say,

Hey, kids, go get your parents. Ask them, we're going to do a Bible club. Get your parents' permission so you can come.

They set up one where they set up right in an unbeliever's driveway and had all the neighborhood kids come out with their parents to hear a gospel presentation.

Just really amazing to see that. He's looking to go full -time. Here's the thing. He's in this training this week.

Next week, as long as he passes everything, he's going to be looking to raise support.

You know what would be the greatest encouragement? is if you would get in touch with Dan so you can get on his mailing list so that you might be able to support him as he transitions into full -time evangelism ministry.

Would you encourage him that way? That would be a great encouragement, I know, to him. Just find out how his week's been.

Find out what he's been learning. Find out what's going on and how this transition is going in his life.

Until next class, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.