Polemics - Discernment - Dispensationalism & Ultradispensationalism

One of the things that we want to look at here is this question of dispensationalism. We have in our church doctrinal statement dispensational interpretation, and it's interesting. It's basically interpreting the Bible literally, and somehow that's got to be very controversial. When we say literal, does that mean that we don't interpret figures of speech as figures of speech? No. We interpret the Bible literally, and yet there are some pretty intense statements about the way we go about it. Chuck Swindoll, Charles Swindoll, who was a preacher for many years and then became president of Dallas Theological Seminary.

When he came on board in that position, he was asked about traditional dispensationalism. This is a term that was used. So he replied, I think that dispensations is a scare word. I'm not sure we're going to make dispensationalism a part of our marquee as we talk about our school. When asked whether the term dispensationalism would disappear, Swindoll replied, it may and perhaps it should.

Wow. John Gerstner wrote a book wrongly dividing the word of truth and that's actually the name of a book by Ironside, Harry Ironside. And in that he says, dispensationalism, and this is dot dot dot, is a constant deviation from essential historical Christianity. Wow.

Ben Witherington wrote, the problem in part with dispensationalism was not only that it did not recognize that a good deal of biblical prophecy either actually has been fulfilled, though sometimes in a less than absolutely literal manner, but also that a good deal of biblical prophecy was conditional in nature to begin with.

Now, I'll not continue on with the end of it. Michael Salmon, who is a pastor in a Christian church, has an online article called The Heresy of Dispensationalism. Now, with words like that, what are your thoughts? Have we got a heresy going here? What's going on with this? Somebody doesn't like it. Yeah, somebody doesn't like it. And then we have our statement, we call it Dispensational Interpretation, in our doctrinal statement.

It says, we believe the scripture is to be interpreted according to its grammatical and historical context. including that God, who does not change, deals in a different manner with the Gentile nations, the people of Israel, and the God-created body of heavenly saints called the Church. We believe that all who are saved of all time are saved entirely by faith in Christ, either looking forward or back to the cross. And then we give a number of references there. We've got several points here.

One is there's been both misunderstanding and misrepresentation of dispensationalism on the part of the critics. For example, Ben Witherington, quoted above, has also written two PowerPoint slide sets that he uses to teach at Asbury Theological Seminary. So I downloaded these, entitled Dispensing with Dispensationalism. Much of what is said in those slides is simply not true.

I pass it along to Brad Mastin and his comment after looking at them is, well, if half of it was true, I guess I'd agree with him. And so part of what happens is things get misrepresented entirely. I look at certain things and I think, well, I don't even believe that. Yeah, Randy? Well, that's partially why earlier in this session, or in this series, we talked about logic and fallacies, and it's really easy for people to present a strawman view of any of these theological positions, and shoot, like a strawman on fire, and say, ta-da, we defeated the enemy.

Yeah, and I looked through it and I said, well that isn't true. That's not true. That's not true. I don't believe that. And going through the two old PowerPoint slide sets, which are used for like two different classes, most of it just isn't true. Just false statements. Here is a for instance, right following this quote that I have from Dan Witherington. By the way, he has written some good stuff.

He then says in 1 Chronicles 7.14, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, which is in the context of having built the first temple, the Solomon. He says that dispensationalists interpret that as a prophecy and they don't consider the if. And I go, what? If my people. So it's conditioned on if. So he says dispensationalists don't do that. Don't consider the if.

So it's like, what? So anyway, there's a lot of misrepresentation, misunderstanding that gets presented. And Randy's right. It's easy to build up a straw man argument. OK, let's take a look on page two. The second point. Critics of dispensationalism often assume that their particular theological viewpoint or approach to scripture is the standard in which any other viewpoint or approach to scripture is to be measured. Example. I quote John Gerstner, towards the top of the first page.

He's a Calvinist, and so he thinks anything that's not Calvinist is heretical. Now, Ben Witherington is an Arminian. So do the two of them agree? No, they do not. But both of them think dispensationalism is terrible, right? So there's a tendency for people to look at things from their theological system and say, well that's not right because it doesn't agree with my theological system.

Rather than, what does the Bible say? The other thing that goes along with that is allegorized interpretation. I looked at, for example, Ben Witherington who's been one of those who's been very vocal in criticism of the dispensational approach. I looked at his revelation commentary and he's got lots and lots of allegorizing.

You know, the 144,000 of Israel and the 12 tribes named by tribe, well that's Jews and Gentiles mixed and, you know, so the Torst allegory, you know, and then that gets to be the standard So if we take it literally, then we're certainly off base. The third point, dispensational approach to scripture seeks to draw out the meaning of the text by understanding all the elements of the original language, history, and culture in its context. This means we understand scripture literally unless the context indicates it should be understood otherwise, as a figure of speech, allegory, illustration, etc. Critics of dispensationalism often include a theological system in the interpretive process in which the theological system is imposed on the text. What do we mean when we say a theological system is imposed on the text? Well, like Catholicism, or Armenianism, or Calvinism. Right, all the isms. So, let's take it for instance.

Here's the Calvinist interpretation of John 3.16. for God so loved the world of the elect that he sent his only begotten son. So he sent his only begotten son for who? Only for the elect. That whosoever believes which is only going to be of the elect shall have everlasting life.

So the system is imposed on top of the passage itself. What we do in our approach is simply, what does the text say? And interpret it literally. We're not imposing a theological system on top of the text. We want to draw the meaning that was originally intended by the authors. Number four is reading the whole of scripture in its grammatical and historical context.

There are a great many points of both comparison and contrast between Gentiles, Israel, and us in the church. This is something that tends to happen is you will get people who don't like looking at the distinction between, for example, Israel and the church. And so they tend to try to smooth it out. So the church replaces Israel, or the church is spiritual Israel, and so smooth out the differences. And then you will get some people going the other way, saying, oh, that's for Israel, it's not for us, just forget about it. What we seek to do is to say, okay, what is the same or similar, and what's different? Comparison? and contrast, but try to look at things and what's really being said.

So, if you try to smooth those things out between Israel and the church, one of the things that commonly happens is you end up with people who are concluding that we in the church are under some part of the Law of Moses, right? In order to smooth things out and make things come across properly.

So are we under some part of the Law of Moses? So as we look at scripture, we say, wait a minute, the New Testament says, you know, we're not under law, we're under grace, right? That's a repeated and clear message in the New Testament. But the law gets read back into those letters, even though, you know, we're not under law, we're under grace, except for this law, right?

And so then point five, dispensationalists have not always presented their approach to scripture and the biblical basis for dispensationalism well or clearly. And so I think that's another part of the problem, is an unclear or incorrect presentation. We've created some of our own problems. And there have been different schools of thought among dispensationalists. Even variations in the definition of the word dispensation have brought confusion. And so we're going to address that now. So if we say dispensation, what do we mean by that?

Period of time. That's one of the definitions that Schofield came up with. A period of time during which man is tested. Time is one aspect of the arrangement, but it's actually not the primary focus of a dispensation. So the tendency has been to get real specific about the period of time, when in fact that's not really what the word is focusing on.

So Charles Ryrie wrote, a concise definition of a dispensation is this, a dispensation is a distinguishable economy in the outworking of God's purpose. Does that help? No. No, and why doesn't it help? Talking about mutual funds. Yeah, part of the problem with dispensations is people don't automatically have a clear understanding of what does that mean. If I use the word economy, what do most of us think of? Money. Most of us think of money, so it's kind of a stretch.

We haven't really clarified anything. Now, having said that, Ryrie's, I mean, wrote a whole book on, you know, dispensationalism, and then a revised book, and this is out of the revised book. So let's take a look at page three. He quotes Clarence Mason, home of the Lord now, says the word dispensation means literally a stewardship or administration. Then the word economy comes up again.

Therefore, in its biblical usage, a dispensation is a divinely established stewardship of a particular revelation of God's mind and will, which brings added responsibility to the whole race of men, or that portion of the race to whom the revelation is particularly given by God. So let's think about this. God created Adam and put him in the garden. What did he tell Adam? Don't eat of the tree. Don't eat of the garden. One is you can eat of all these things, you don't eat the plants. You can eat of this tree, but you can't eat of... Just one tree. Just one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So, was Adam a steward? Adam was a steward.

He had a stewardship. And that stewardship then, he had some responsibilities. He was to manage it. And then God had also created this woman. Did he have a stewardship regarding this woman? Yes he did. So he had a stewardship regarding the garden. He had a stewardship regarding this woman.

Anything else? He had to name all the animals. So he had, as a part of the stewardship, he was to name all these animals. That was prior to creating Eve. So God had a stewardship in place in which Adam was responsible for the naming the animals and what he was to eat and not to eat. And he had a stewardship over this woman as well who was given to him by God. So here's the stewardship.

How'd that go? Okay, until the woman arrived. Pardon? Okay, until the woman arrived. Okay, until the woman arrived. Underneath the stewardship, you have authority. What we've done here is I've had these bullet points in the middle of page three that shows... What's that? That's definitely a gender problem. Yes. In the middle of page three, I've got all these aspects of a stewardship. We use this word entrusting. The one entrusting.

Who was the one entrusting Adam? God. And the one entrusted, the steward, was Adam. Did Adam have a title? Yes. What was that? He was a caretaker. He was supposed to take care of the garden. It wasn't necessarily a title, per se, but he did have a particular assignment, didn't he? Yes. The character of the one entrusted? Sometimes that's described, sometimes it's not.

What happens, we saw he was entrusted with the garden and the woman and the naming of the animals and those kind of things. How did he do? He was doing fine until the serpent came along and he blew it. The work of the one entrusted, we just described what he's done.

So we go down here, the arrangement or assignment of entrusting, the principles, the objective of the one entrusted, the domain, what was Adam's domain? It was the garden. and the call of those in the domain, and then finally the principles of succession. While he never got in the garden, he never got to the place of having any offspring so that there would be any succession. As a matter of fact, if he hadn't sinned, there wasn't any need to hand off to the next.

We can go through scripture and find lots and lots of different kinds of stewardship. And so the reality is, people say, well how many dispensations are there? If we put in the word stewardships, there's lots and lots of them. Let's take another for instance. Here is Moses, right? What's Moses' stewardship? What is he assigned to do? To be an intermediary between God and man.

Okay. With everybody? With Israel. Specifically what was called the sons of Israel left Egypt when God said, okay, they can now be improved. And then the idea was that they would establish themselves in the land. Okay. That didn't quite go as planned. Alright, so first it was to get them out of Egypt, right? Get them through the desert. And was it necessary? that they take 40 years? No. That was something that was based on a subsequent refusal on the part of the Israelites that 40 years was not a necessary item. Let's ask one other thing.

Did Moses whose life was ended before he could actually go into the promised land, was that something God originally intended and designated? That you're only going so far? And what happened there? So because of what the Israelites did, and because of what Moses did separately, the Israelites had to spend 40 years out there wandering, and Moses with them, and Moses could not go into the land.

So, but Moses ruled the people and gave them the law, right? So that was his stewardship. But he had to hand it off. Who did he hand off the stewardship to? Joshua. So Joshua was the next one, so that's the succession. So you start looking at this, the one entrusting is God, the one entrusted, first was Moses, and as we see the last item, the principles of succession. then who's the next one? So we go through that.

The whole Bible, when you start looking at it, has lots and lots and lots of stewardship. So rather than just going around trying to count how many dispensations do we have, we observe throughout the Bible there's stewardship from beginning to end. There's stewardship from beginning to end. And some of them are of higher magnitude And some of them are of lesser magnitude, but lots and lots of stewardships. And the reality is, rather than just kind of cutting things up into periods of time, we can identify these stewardships and because people don't live forever, a great many of these are the kinds of things where they last for a time and then they're handed off.

Yes. So would the apostles be Christ's successors? Yeah, let's talk about that. That's a very good question. Okay, here's Christ, and what is Christ's stewardship? To come and present things to Israel, right? Just to Israel, not to the Gentiles. He's to come and present things to Israel, the gospel of the kingdom, And he kept telling them about the gospel of substitution, but they didn't understand that until after he died and resurrected.

So he came and did that. How well did Jesus do? 100%. How well did Jesus do? He fulfilled his mission. He fulfilled his mission. But the Jews, in great part, did what? They rejected. So he came and did what he was supposed to. The Jews rejected him. Therefore, the church was begun. Right? Church was begun.

And Christ then handed off the stewardship to who? to these disciples, right, that he had gone about in ministry, he handed off the stewardship to these apostles, alright? And did the apostles do what they were supposed to? Yeah, yeah, they did. Alright, so then the apostles appointed other apostles, right? Is that the way it works? No. What did they go about doing?

Notice the churches were left with what kind of leadership? Elders and deacons was what was established, right? Not apostolic succession in the sense of somebody who's continuing to fulfill the apostolic role, but rather, rather elders and deacons as the highest, lowest level there is, right? And by the way, shepherd was a servant, a humble title, and so was deacon, right? a humble title, both of them.

So, now you've got that, so you've got the succession, do we have, who's the one entrusting things to Christ? The Father. He kept saying the Father, you know, did this and this and this, the Father's given this to me, so the Father entrusted things to the Son, right? Then, so the one entrusted was Christ, And what title did Christ have?

Or titles? Son of man. Son of man? Son of? Son of God. Son of man, son of God. Any others? Great High Priest. Great High Priest. Good. Any others? King of Kings. King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Alright. Messiah. Pardon? Messiah. Messiah. Okay, good. Any others? Immanuel. What's that? Immanuel. Immanuel. Okay, good. Any else? Anything else? What's that?

Yeah, he's the chief shepherd. The truth is, yeah, the lamb. The truth is we could go, and that's one where, whereas with Adam we have a hard time saying, well, what's the title? But with Christ, all kinds of titles. So we can go down this list and with every one of the stewardships, and say, well, what do we know? In some cases, we've got nothing in particular. Other cases, like with Christ, lots of titles, right?

Yes? I was just thinking Adam could be called the first Adam and Christ could be called the second Adam. Yes, and that would be one way to look at it. We have the first Adam and second Adam. Good. Now, when you look at it, there is the arrangement of entrusting. There are also the principles of entrusting.

What do we mean by principles? How it works. A principle is either a fundamental truth or how it works, or both. And so were the apostles just told, go out there and do this, figure it out? Or were they given principles? They were given principles, right? And so one of the things we'd say, for example, if you're going to appoint elders, here's the qualifications. And elders are to do this and not do that. So you give them some guidelines on how they're to carry out their work. How about the domain entrusted? What was Christ's domain when he carried out his ministry on earth?

Israel, right? Other than a trip down to Egypt as an infant, and a few times going over into areas that were actually supposed to be Israel's, but not. Other than those, he stuck with Israel, and he sent the disciples, remember Matthew chapter 10, only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Matthew 15, Christ said, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

So that was his domain. But when he appointed the apostles, what did he tell them about their domain? Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. So you see, Christ had one domain. The apostles were given a larger domain. So it's very interesting. But at the time of his death, it was for the whole world. So was that then his domain? And you look at it in terms of Christ's earthly ministry, it was only to Israel, wasn't it? When he got on the cross, was it only to Israel?

No. And so what you see is the cross work was a specific Stewardship, if you will. A specific stewardship that was an exception to what had been the character of the ministry before. But as you start to see it, lots and lots of stewardships. And you can identify a lot of the aspects of these great many stewardships all throughout the Bible.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit. Is that a synonym? Well, let's put it this way. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are only in the body of Christ, correct? Right. And so that's one thing. When you look at the gifts of the Holy Spirit, what's the domain of those gifts? The domain is within the body of Christ. I would say, except for evangelism particularly, where the domain is out there, outside the body of Christ. But let's put it this way.

If you've been given a spiritual gift, is that a stewardship? Yes, it is. And the reality is, there's lots and lots and lots of stewardships in the Bible, and then we step outside of this word that has kind of a foggy definition, and that is dispensations. If we look at it as, this is a stewardship, which fits within the definitions we've seen above there on page 3.

If this is a stewardship, there are stewardships all throughout the Bible. And some of them are of great magnitude, like atoms, and some of them are of minor things. Here, take this letter to that place. You take the letter there, you come back, you're done. So that was a stewardship.

But there are lots and lots and lots of stewardships all throughout the Bible. like a kernel element to them, and it's all making sure people know God. And whatever capacity it is, that's the one line through all of these is that people would know God. If we look at all the stewardships in the Bible, and if we particularly look at stewardships that are especially spiritual in nature, Then we get the pattern of scripture and we see that there are stewardships at all kinds of levels. And it's not a matter of counting stewardships or saying when they start and end, because the reality is you'll have great initiators, like here's Adam, here's Noah, Here's Moses, here's David.

So you have great initiators in these, but all of them end up handing it off. So the succession and the principles of succession ends up being a significant So then, that would also relate to God's different hierarchical structures, right? Like in Ephesians, where it talks about the father, and the children, and the mother, and the man, and the umbrella, the household, and all this other stuff, right?

Yeah, and that's the thing. You can go through all of scripture and look at the stewardships. You know, look at it. Here's another principle. As I started off, I got married to Nancy 42 years ago, and so I have a stewardship with Nancy and our stewardship over our marriage. So there's a stewardship. And then we had kids, and those kids are a stewardship that ultimately gets passed along in great part And what is, our kids growing up and starting their own families, they're starting their own stewardships. And then the Bible talks about what a husband should be like, and a father, and a mother, and all those things. They're stewardships. So rather than going through and trying to argue over how many stewardships are there, It's a matter of recognizing there's lots and lots and lots of stewardships. A great many of them. Some of them are more high profile and we can recognize the initiator. But there's just lots and lots of stewardship and it applies from Genesis all the way to Revelation. Here's John, yeah.

So basically any area of of authority or any area of responsibility is basically a stewardship. Yes, yes, a stewardship. And so if you look at it, that principle then, it's just a matter of instead of arguing over this obscure word dispensationalism or something of that sort, and even arguing over what length of time or when it ended, we can look at what's the stewardship And there's small ones, there's large ones, there's some that we don't have names for. Here's a for instance. We know that elders were appointed in the churches, but we don't know the name for sure of any elders in any of the New Testament churches except for James, Jesus' half-brother in Jerusalem. But is that a significant stewardship?

Yes, it is. Then why is this concept of dispensationalism such an upheaval in the church if it's simply stewardship? It's because, excuse me, it's because the emphasis has not been put on stewardship and observing stewardship. What has it been placed on? Everything else?

Well, for example, one of the definitions we saw, Schofield, the Schofield Bible was first published in 1909. And he defined it as a period of time. Well, it turns out that a period of time is a secondary element and not a primary aspect of the definition. I see. Yes?

Well, to that, I think anything, Calvinism, dispensationalism, any of theisms, I think, not to be offensive, at the base is just really poor scholarship. at the outset and what the focus began as. You come on a very good point. One of the things we're going to cover in our How to Study the Bible material, which we're going to take a year to do, is observation. There's observation, interpretation, application, and appropriation.

That first one, there is generally a failure to observe. And that's the thing, as I look at this issue, I looked at it and I said, it's a failure to observe that stewardships are the key to understanding dispensations. And realizing it's not a matter of, let's argue over whether there's three or seven, because dispensationalists will argue over that. But recognizing, I say, how many stewardships are there in the Bible? When I start to look at it, there's thousands of them. Anytime someone was told to write, that's a stewardship. And then we have people who are written about who had a stewardship. Plus there's different terms. Dispensationalists have tended to try to use the Greek word oikonomia, which only occurs about eight times, as the basis. When the reality is there's all kinds of different synonyms for stewardship.

Yes? Does Satan have a stewardship? Ah, okay. Good question. Does Satan have a stewardship? Seems like he does. He had one and he fell from it. Okay, he had one and he fell from it. Okay? And so is what he is doing assigned by God? He has a boundary, let's put it that way. I think the thing is, it's difficult to call it a stewardship in the sense that here's God's assignment to them. He does have certain aspects of it in that he has boundaries. He's got a certain time frame when he's limited. There's going to be a time when he's bound. So there are parameters, but it's difficult to call it stewardship in the full sense. And yet, one of the things about a man who is in sin, he was given to Satan to be disciplined. I find that interesting, that God uses Satan to discipline.

I don't know how to say that, right? It's probably not sounding right. Well, no, it's correct. Yeah, Crystal? Well, I think stewardship comes with the idea of somber responsibility. There were people where, I think, evil one, he doesn't really have somber responsibility.

I think he's just going mad, and God uses that advantageously because he is God. Not that he will, I don't, God did not outline it in creation that way. God is God, and he will use whatever he wants to because he is God. Let's turn to page 7 and this is where we can go through the passage.

We're going to run out of time here to go through it with a thoroughness, but I picked this one. It says, For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles, if indeed you have heard of the stewardship, oikonomia, of God's grace which was given to me for you, So, does Paul have a stewardship? Yep, he was given. Now, if you go through this passage, I've put in a table here those things that are identifiable from those bullet points that we pointed out.

The one giving the responsibility is God through Christ. God through Christ. The one receiving the responsibility, the steward, is Paul, the Apostles and Prophets. The title of the one receiving responsibility is a minister and a prisoner of Christ. The character of the one receiving responsibility, boldness and confidence through faith. The work of the one receiving responsibility is a minister and a steward. You see that?

The arrangement of assignment of responsibility is a steward of God's grace to the Gentiles. The principles of responsibility is the principle of grace and God's eternal purpose. The objective of the one receiving responsibility, the one entrusted, conveying the grace truths and that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and members. The domain is the Gentiles. at least in Gentile lands, and the call of those in the domain to understand Paul's insight.

So you can go through passage after passage after passage after passage and identify these aspects of a stewardship and see them again and again and again. And sometimes the steward has a name and sometimes it will be like, okay, you fathers, you know, Here's the principles of stewardship for fathers.

Mothers, here's the principles of stewardship for mothers. And by the way, do children have a stewardship? Yes, they do. And so there's direction for their stewardship. Then he goes on to masters and slaves. In that context, we could put it as employer-employee. you know, and a stewardship there. So the reality is this stewardship principle is big. It's huge.

And rather than arguing over how many dispensations are there and what's the time frame and going through all that, it's simply a matter of opening up our eyes and recognizing how many places there are stewardships. Here in the book of Ephesians, lots of stewardships in six chapters. I was wondering how did dispensations get started?

Was it an attempt on the part of the church to try to explain God's dealing with man because God himself does not change? And so, if you have to explain it to others outside the faith, and to those of us in it, if you have time frames that he dealt with Israel one way and he's dealing with us another way and so on, does that then make it easy to explain that God himself has not changed? Yeah, God hasn't changed. Why does he have all these different stewardships? Why does God deal differently with different wants?

He has a plan. Alright, he's got a plan. And where is this headed? Where's the plan headed? Here's Ephesians 1, 9, and 10 and it uses the word oikonomia. God is managing everything to the end that everything will be summed up in Christ. So we have all these stewardships and different things and all this stuff is rolling to the end that everything will be summed up in Christ. And that sort of helps us understand the domain of Satan. Because even that is a testimony to all of the angels of feelings. As true he is. Grace. You know, he can't have anything other than grace associated with himself.

You will see that because human beings change and society changes and historical changes take place, lots of different stewardships and also just because you've got a sequence. For example, the stewardship of being a father during this time of the church. Have the principles of stewardship of being a father changed from the time Paul wrote Ephesians 6.

Until now. No. Won't change. So the principles haven't changed, even though you've got lots of different fathers and they've done it differently. The basic principles that are outlined in scripture have not changed during that time. I wonder, isn't that also true of Adam and Eve? I mean, those same principles were true for them too.

You bring up a point. We just don't have time to cover all the stuff, but let's ask. One thing was Adam under a principle of law or principle of grace? Law. Principle of law, right? Principle of law. Principle of law, not the law of Moses. Now, let's ask this. How about Abraham? Was he under principle of law or principle of grace? Law. Grace. Law. Okay, some say law, some say grace. How do you say law?

Well, God took him to the land that he chose to give to him. And he obeyed. God told him to offer his son. He believed God to fulfill his promise and make him a denominative seed. So he obeyed thereto. But before then, Abraham did nothing. God came to him and said, Abraham, I'm going to do this. And Abraham said, OK, I believe you. I mean, just paraphrase. In other words, what was the ultimate requirement for Abraham?

To believe, right? So I think that's a real interesting thing. If you look at it for us, what's our ultimate responsibility? Believe. Yeah, to believe. Our window of law, our window of grace. Grace. Grace, yeah. And then Paul holds up Abraham specifically in Romans 4 as the primary example of, basically, believe as Abraham believed. I think it's important to identify that the law didn't save anybody.

And so whenever we talk about the law and law being in grace, even Israel in the promised land was under grace. So we talk about principle of law, principle of grace. It is always grace, so far as salvation is concerned. And it's always faith. So for Abraham, then, you could kind of say that he started off in law because of the obedience principle that he was living by, but it turned into grace. Ultimately, it's Abraham Genesis says, Abraham believed God and was accounted unto him as righteousness. Right, but like they said, he was also obeying. But he was not given a set of commandments, which is how we have defined the structure of law.

Yeah. But let's look ahead. The Millennial Kingdom, what will be principle of law or principle of grace? Both. The Millennial Kingdom, It will be ruled by law. However, how is God gracious in the Jews living by the law? He will enable them to keep it. New Covenant, right? He will enable them graciously to know and to live out the law.

But as we look through the whole Bible principle runs all the way through, and is, I think, the key, and it's all observational. It's not, you know, you look at it, is that stewardship? Yep, and here are the aspects, and here are the tidings. So, at any rate, we won't have time to get to it all. There's more instances where we've gone through this, but the stewardship principle just completely opens up the whole Bible, and It is hard to argue with because it is simply observational. involved with as far as dispensations?

Well, what I have in the handout is in great part what I've gone over with Roger and Mike. That was about 2007. And we kind of talked and worked our way through it. And I, you know, said that what's in our doctrinal statement is fine. We have on several different topics and whatnot developed additional kind of papers. And this is drawn from one of those papers.

But it really, since it's just observational, here's the stewardship. And it gets, if we look at it that way, then it gets Dispensationalists, if you will, away from arguing how long is this one and the wrong definition, focusing on time or something like that. Yes? because of the federal headship or the representation aspect. Like Adam represented all of mankind.

So what's the consequence of the fall? You're going to call the consequence of this fall a dispensation that is as long as this earth is in existence. So that's where people get all bound up and wrapped around. When you start examining, what people usually do is they clip up sections of time If you start examining a lot of these things, it's not like the dispensation really ends. It keeps going in one sense or another. So I think that's one thing as we look at the start of this and the end of this and the start of this and the end of this.

The dispensation of human government, well when did that end? Same thing with the jet tunnels and the Jews. What tends to happen, like the three people groups, you've got the Gentiles starting in the garden, you've got the Jews starting with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, you've got the church starting in Acts 2, but do any of them ever end? No. Those identifications continue on into the new heavens and the new earth.

So I think some kind of rethinking and being very observational and looking at, look we have stewardships, how are these stewardships carried on? I think it makes a real difference and it essentially ends the argument because you are just simply observing scripture and this principle of stewardships and you just look at it, just observe, you'll find lots and lots of them, not a matter of counting, And you say, OK, how does this get started, and does it have a succession? And you see those going on, and on and on and on, all the way into the book of Revelation, stewardship. And by the way, on into the New Heavens and New Earth, stewardship.

So in a sense, it shows the difference of the two trains of thought in the world today, like science, if you don't believe in God, you've got chaos as far as the working of the world in the direction that it's going, but if you believe in God has a plan, then you have order. So that's really ironic, because science is supposed to be so orderly, but in a sense, the basis of it is not order, it's chaos. Even in the book of Revelation, 119 is John's assignment to write the things which He must write imperative the things which were and are and will be.

There's your assignment. He's got a stewardship. Did he fulfill it? He did. So anyway, we're out of time. Let's pray. We just thank you for what you've provided for us and revealed to us because you love us and care for us so very much. And we thank you especially for the stewardship that you took on, on our behalf.