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sermonette: Dispensationalism

Salvation by Grace Through Faith - Always
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 04-Nov-06; Sermon #799s; 17 minutes

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Well, most members of God's Church, at least in this time, have been called out of American Protestantism. And American Protestantism, pretty much from the earliest times, has been dominated by a view of history and prophecy called pre-millennialism, pre-millennialism. Now, if you do not know what premillennialism is, I do not blame you. It's not something that we necessarily talk about a great deal, but this is a belief that the saints will be resurrected to glory before the millennium. That is, you know, that Christ will return and people will be changed, and then the millennium will begin. There are post millennialists who believe that these things happen after the millennium is made, created somehow, born out on this earth, and then there'll be the resurrection from the dead, which is kind of strange, and we do not think that way. There are also a millennialists who believe that there is no such thing as a literal kingdom of God on the earth, a time of 1000 years of Christ's rule. They have their own way of looking at prophecy. Now, the churches of God tend to be in the pre-millennialist camp, obviously, especially if we use just this strict definition of the saints being resurrected before the millennium. Of course, we disagree heartily with other aspects of modern Protestant pre-millennialism. I try to say that three times fast. Things like the rapture is one area that we do not agree with them on. The position of Israel is another one of those things that we would not agree on, you know, who are the Jews and who are the Israelites, etc. But I do not really want to talk about pre-millennialism today. I want to talk about something else that comes along with pre-millennialism, and that is dispensationalism. Another long word, dispensationalism. Many of us may have lingering beliefs regarding dispensationalism, and we might not know it, that these things are still there. So I want to explain briefly what dispensationalism is and where it goes astray from the truth. Now, if you do any reading in, you know, Protestant commentaries or whatnot, you're going to come across this concept, whether you come across the actual word or not. So I just want you to be aware, if you do. And the reason why I want to give this is because it's a rather nefarious doctrine, in the end, because it obscures God's plan of salvation through Jesus Christ alone. OK, here it goes. In normal English usage, the word dispensation means either distribution, like a pharmacist would dispense his drugs to those who need them, or it means the act of an authority, like a leader or a ruler, making an exception to laws, standards, or customs. This is how the Catholic Church uses dispensation, meaning they give you dispensation for a certain act that you do. Let's say the Pope would give dispensation to a ruler of a nation to have a crusade or something like that, and the death that he would cause would be dispensed with through the authority of the Pope, or something along that line. Now, that's totally different from the Protestant understanding of dispensationalism. In Protestant religion, the meaning is a divinely appointed arrangement or a system of rules, a divinely appointed arrangement or system of rules. Now, this idea comes from the biblical Greek word oikonomia, O-I-K-O-N-O-M-I-A. Now, this word is translated dispensation, and it literally means, if you take it apart, oiko nomia, it means "home law." And thus it means stewardship or the management of a household or a system of order. OK, so this is how the Protestants take it: a divinely appointed arrangement, especially a divinely appointed system of rules. OK, let me give you a much fuller definition from the McClintock and Strong encyclopedia. By the divine dispensations are generally meant those methods or schemes which are devised and pursued by the wisdom and goodness of God in order to manifest His perfections and will to mankind for the purpose of their instruction, discipline, reformation, and advancement in rectitude of temper and conduct, for the promotion of their happiness. These have varied in different ages of the world and have been adapted by the wisdom and goodness of God to the circumstances of His intelligent and accountable creatures. All these were adapted to the circumstances of the family of man at these different periods. All, in regular succession, were mutually connected and rendered preparatory to one another. All were subservient to the design of saving the world and promoting the perfection and happiness of its rational and moral inhabitants. Now, I know that was a mouthful. If I can put it in short, a dispensation is an era of time during which man is tested in respect to obedience to some definite revelation of God's will. A dispensation is an era of time during which man is tested in respect to obedience to some definite revelation of God's will. Protestant theologians then generally divide history into at least three dispensations: the patriarchal dispensation, the Mosaic dispensation, and the Christian dispensation. Other say seven of them. They have taken history and divided it into seven times, seven eras: the era of innocence, from creation to man's expulsion from the Garden of Eden; the era of conscience, which ended with the judgment in the flood; human government is another era, the covenant of Noah, that's what they call that, and that extends to the time of Abraham; the era of promise, which is the time of the patriarchs up to the day of Moses; the era of law, from the giving of the law to the death of Jesus Christ; then there is the period of grace, which is the Christian era from the resurrection of Christ to His second coming; and finally there is the kingdom era, which is the millennial rule of Christ. Now, we can agree with this up to this point. If you would go to Hebrews, the first chapter, verse one and verse two, where the author writes, "God, who at various times and in different ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds." So we can see just from these two verses that God has indeed spoken to man in different ways, in different times. That is, He has not revealed Himself in the same way all the time. So just in this little bit we can agree with this. But Protestant theologians go further than this. I got this sentence from Christiananswers.net: "Dispensations of Providence are providential events which affect men either in the way of mercy or of judgment." Now, if I'm going to interpret this for you, what this means is that those in the various dispensations are saved or condemned under different criteria. Let's go to Acts 4:12. You understand what I'm getting at here? We know from Acts 4:12, "Nor is there salvation in any other," meaning Christ, "for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." The apostles taught that there was only one way to be saved, and that was through the name of Jesus Christ. That one would believe in what the sacrifice of Jesus Christ accomplished, and God would give us grace. But dispensationalism says something different. It says that each dispensation, or people under each dispensation, are saved in a different way. So Moses and the prophets then came to salvation through obedience to law, while Noah and Shem were saved through their faithfulness to the Noahtian covenant, and the patriarchs were saved because they were faithful to the promises that God made to them. This makes God very inconsistent and unjust. He allows some to be saved through law, some to be saved through grace, some to be saved through innocence, some to be saved through promises, some to be saved through this, some to be saved through that. And that's unjust, because one might be easier than another, or one might be much more difficult than another. So this is how they explain the salvation of the heroes of faith. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Sarah, Joseph, they were all saved one way. Moses and Rahab and Joshua and others were saved another way. And of course, we are all saved in even a different way, through grace. Now, what they try to do here, obviously, is that they are also trying to get around the fact that the Bible says very clearly that not very many are called to salvation. They're trying to figure out ways in which the people of these former times will be saved. OK, let's go to Galatians 3:10. I just want to show this to you to see that this is not true. This doctrine is full of contradictions. It would help if I was in Galatians 3. And it's especially strange that this particular doctrine contradicts one of their main principles, that is, that one cannot be justified by keeping the law. Yet they say in the dispensation, the Mosaic dispensation or the law dispensation, that they are saved by their adherence to the law. But Galatians 3:11 says, "But no one is justified by the law in the sight of God." "But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for the just shall live by faith." What Paul is saying is there is only faith, a salvation by grace through faith. And so the people in the time of Moses and beyond could not have been saved through the law. Let's go back to Romans 3, verse 20. "Therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe." And we can go on through chapter 4, where Paul takes pains to show us that Abraham was justified by faith, and not through any keeping of the law or through any works. So we can see just in these few verses that this idea of dispensationalism is cut off right at the knees. The people who were before were not saved any other way than by grace through faith. It just depended on how much God had revealed to those people at that time. That is the only difference between their salvation and ours. They may have had less of the truth to understand and to follow, but that doesn't mean that their salvation is any less than ours. They still had to believe God. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. That's how they were saved. So Paul is very clear that Abraham and all those under the law must be justified through faith, not through the promises, not through works, not through some other covenant, but by belief in the blood that Christ shed for us. Now, there is a great deal more to this, obviously. I've just barely touched the surface of what dispensationalism is, and how it can be disproved from the scripture. But what I've given you is a thumbnail sketch that I think can get you started if you ever wanted to study it anymore. But as a final nail into this dispensationalism coffin, I want you to turn to I Peter 1, just to show you another scripture where Peter contradicts this idea very easily. Verses I Peter 1:10, 11, and 12. He says, "Of this salvation, the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ, which was in them, was indicating when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us, they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things which angels desire to look into." Peter is saying two main things here. First, that God revealed salvation by grace through faith, faith in Christ's sacrifice, to the prophets before Him. And secondly, that the prophets themselves, having the Holy Spirit in them, were saved by grace. Dispensationalism, then, is revealed as a false doctrine, to be thrown into the dustbin of bad theology.