you may have heard references to terms such as the dispensation of Grace or the church age these terms are part of a teaching known as dispensationalism Dr David K Bernard explains dispensationalism and how it relates to Bible prophecy it's all coming up on Apostolic life in the 21st century welcome to Apostolic life in the 21st century a podcast dedicated to helping modern-day belever live out the teachings of the first century church this podcast is part of the Teaching Ministry of Dr David K Bernard Dr Bernard has dedicated his life to studying the Bible and helping
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checkout our audience members may have heard references to terms such as dispensation of Grace and church Age and and similar terms these terms of course as you well know they arrive from arise from a teaching known as dispensationalism so I want to ask you today can you provide a brief explanation of what that term dispensationalism means and more importantly do you feel like that the Bible offers support for this idea and is it compatible with Oneness pent costal theology well first of all the term dispensation is used in the King James version of the Bible
to mean Administration or stewardship an example would be in Ephesians CH 3:2 where Paul said he was given a dispensation of the grace of God uh now from that that's a non-technical term but in the early 20th century uh this term became popular for a particular way of interpreting the Bible it was popularized by the scoffield reference Bible which was a resource used by conservative Christians including early Pentecostals I remember that very well that was my dad's go-to Bible Study Bible so Pentecostals didn't have study Bibles but they used these conservative Protestant fundamentalist resources one
of which was the scoffield reference Bible now the technical uh doctrine of dispensationalism as expressed in that Bible talked about Seven Ages so really they use the term dispensation I mean an age of God's working and so the full system there there are several types of dispensationalism but the most typical and the most common there were seven ages age of innocence and then the age of conscience the age of human government the age of Promise the age of the law the age of Grace or the church church and then the millennial Kingdom to come and
so the idea was God worked in different ways in different ages to try to lead people and to train and and bring them into the fullness of his Plan of Salvation but each time God would give a a plan commands to obey and people would need to have faith in God and if they did have faith they were to follow the specific command or patterned for that age uh but inevitably each age ended in Failure as people disobeyed God and and judgment came so I think the concept of different ages is scriptural uh whether you
can justify those exact seven or not is somewhat controversial but at least I would say this if you just study the scripture we can certainly identify an Age of Innocence be when God created Adam and Eve before they sinned they had a relationship with God in the Garden of Eden we don't know how long that was but once they sinned that changed everything and they began to offer animal sacrifices evidently God even before there was the law of Moses God gave them some instructions he expelled them from the Garden of Eden he gave them instructions
to offer sacrifices to God that was before the law so we can certainly say there was at least a time period after sin but before the law then God chose One Nation the nation of Israel uh to be his people he gave them the law of Moses on Mount siia and they were in a covenant so there was definitely this period of the law the New Testament is quite clear about that age but then with the coming of Jesus Christ there was a change with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost
the New Covenant was instituted which we call the church age or or the age sometimes is called the age of Grace and even John chapter 1 talks about the fullness of Grace that doesn't imply that people before that time were not recipients of God's grace uh in fact every age the only way anybody can be saved is by grace through faith but this age the church age is so supremely a manifestation of God's grace because Jesus Christ has died and risen again we have the the um plan fulfilled where God has purchased our salvation and
now we're recipients in a greater measure than any previous age so I think it is fine to speak of this the church age the age of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit the Supreme age of the grace of God then when you study the Book of Revelation you do see the Lord is coming back to Earth to judge um the sinful world uh to um call away his church but then he's going to establish a kingdom of a thousand years on the earth to restore Earth to its original purpose and plan the way God created
it so certainly as I've outlined it we can at least say there have got to be five ages of God's dealing with humans that we can clearly identify uh the Age of Innocence uh the the time of after Adam and Eve sin but before the law of Moses the law of Moses uh the church age and the millennial Kingdom but what I would want to stress more than the discontinuity is the continuity in every age salvation has been by God's grace in every age salvation's been purchased by the death burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ
that's stated in Romans 3:25 by the way is that even in the Old Testament uh people didn't fully understand what God's plan would be but God saved people in the Old Testament based on the cross so Old Testament Saints look forward to God's plan we New Testament Saints look backward to God's plan but Salvation in every age has been on the basis of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ through his death burial Resurrection or we might say the blood of Jesus Christ in every age salvation been by the grace of God nobody has ever been
saved by works so some extreme dispensationalists would say well under the law they were saved by works now we're saved by grace well that's a false contrast if anybody could ever be saved by works then Christ death wasn't necessary and if people could be saved by works works in the Old Testament why couldn't they still be saved by works uh but it's always been by grace and the only way you can receive Grace is through faith through trusting in God and trusting in God means trusting his word trusting his word means obeying his word so
while the content of God's commands may have changed this concept of salvation by grace through faith and Faith being expressed by your obedient response to God's word that's always been the case so God told Noah to build an ark if Noah had refused to build an ark he would have drowned but because he built the ark Hebrews chapter 11 says he was saved by faith not by his works but by his obedient response to God which did involve building the ark we don't have to build an ark to be saved but we but first Peter
explains baptism is the corresponding thing that when we're baptized in water that's like Noah when he got into the ark and went through the flood uh so I would emphasize the continuity of God's Plan of Salvation and I would say in our age the church age we see the restoration uh the culmination of God's plan for our individual salvation so we're restored to relation with God much like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and I would say even exceeding that because we're filled with God's spirit so everything God planned to do with Adam
and Eve that was temporarily thwarted by sin God has progressively in these various ages taught us and led us back so now we're in the fullness of individual restoration then the millennial Kingdom will be the fullness of uh planetary uh restoration or or the uni Universal restoration so you see God's plan being worked out that humans actually receive God's ultimate plan in this age and then as a corporate body uh the whole earth and the universe will receive God's plan uh in the future and so that's how I see it working now now one other
thing that's significant about dispensationalism one of the reasons why this is emphasized so much is to make a distinction between Israel and the church because some groups have pretty much merged it so that um Israel has no future in God's plan the church has replaced Israel and all the promises given to isra are now strictly to the church and that has implications for the doct of the future eschatology uh because dispensationalist typically believe there will be a pre-tribulation Rapture but then there will still be a tribulation to try to bring the Jews back to recognize
their Messiah so God is treating the church and the Jewish people differently now I would say that the timing of the Rapture is an independent discussion some people believe it will take place before the tribulation in the middle of the tribulation or after the tribulation that can be argued and I would say established on Independent exegetical grounds so you don't have to have this whole dispensational interpretation to establish what you believe about the Rapture and I do believe the the Rapture is the next great event for the church and it will come before the tribulation
and then uh there will be the millennial Kingdom after that and you do have a podcast on that if listeners want to check that out yes yes uh uh but but if you go back to this concept of dispensationalism so so those that completely discard it will say um there's no difference in Israel and the church church is just replace Israel I don't think that's correct there still is a distinction because you'll find for example in Romans chap 11 God still has a plan for National Israel and God still has a plan using the Gentile
Church to bring Israel as a nation back to the realization of the Messiah so that they can be saved now right now the way Jews are saved is through the church the same way anybody else through the new birth experience but the point of Romans 11 is God has not abandoned Israel he still has a plan to bring them as a people which I think will happen in the future uh when Jesus Christ comes back to Earth they will recognize him as their Messiah uh on the other hand to say the two are kept totally
strict that's false as well because an extreme dispensation would say know all the promises given to Israel only for Israel well you have the promise of the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31 which was given to ancient Israel but in Hebrews 8 it's clearly fulfilled in the church now that doesn't mean it's taken away from Israel because I've already said Israel can still become part of the church so yes natural Israel still has that promise if they will accept Jesus as their Messiah they can still enter the new Covenant but what was originally given to one
nation has ex been extended to the whole world uh so we can't have this rigid dispensationalism without considering that God's plan is now uh much greater than what was originally envisioned by ancient Israel in the last days says God I will pour out my spirit upon All Flesh and we're seeing that happen uh I would also uh point out that when we talk about dispensational ISM some there are there are varieties of it the traditional dispensationalists said that the gifts of the Spirit the supernatural spiritual gifts uh Miracles healings tongues ceased uh about the end
of the first century uh with the death of the Apostles and so the strict dispensation say now we're live living in the age of no Miracles well of course Pentecostals can't believe that uh we can't go to that strict or hyper dispens ationalism because we know that uh the New Testament Church U is that we are the New Testament Church that all the promises and examples of the New Testament Church are for us today so my answer is we should not be locked into a historical system that is created by people who are not Pentecostal
doesn't mean it's all wrong that means we must approach the Bible AR fresh when we do we find yes there were various ages in which God dealt with humans in different ways to bring them into the fullness of Truth so that central point of dispensationalism is valid we do understand there's a distinction between Israel and the church although we believe that the promises God gave to Israel have been expanded to include the New Testament Church still there are are promises God has given to Natural Israel that will still be fulfilled in the millennial Kingdom uh
so we uh would would have somewhat of a modified approach and we would emphasize the unity of God's plan of salvation by grace through faith that Faith involving obedience and and I will just point out another thing the strict dispensationalist would like to say there's been a change of what was required for Faith so in the Old Testament Faith involved specific obedience but in the New Testament you don't have to obey anything well that's a strict dispensationalist thing uh idea which changes the definition of faith but we would say no you can't change the definition
of faith it's the same throughout the Bible now what God has commanded us to do in the Old Testament is different than what God has commanded us to do in the New Testament or what God commanded his people under the old Covenant is different from the New Covenant but the concept of obedient faith is is always true and we see that in Hebrews chapter 11 by faith Noah built an ark and he became the heir of the righteousness which is by Faith by faith Abraham obeyed the command and he likewise was justified by faith so
we too obey the command to repent of our sins to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ to open our heart to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and so we too are saved by grace through faith but we experience the blessings of the New Covenant which are greater than the blessings of the old Covenant so we definitely would say there's a difference in the old Covenant people were not baptized in Jesus name they they offered animal sacrifices which were only temporary in the Old Testament while God's spirit worked in their lives they
could not be baptized with the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in tongues and each individual having the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit that's a new covenant experience so we definitely see there's a different age or if you want to call it dispensation between uh the old Covenant and the New Covenant but we emphasize that God has been working throughout history on the same basis of Salvation through Jesus Christ thank you for listening to this episode of apostolic life in the 21st century if you enjoy this podcast please take a moment to give
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