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Dispensationalists see the "Church Age" as a parenthesis in God’s plan, during which many Gentiles will be saved. Then, the Kingdom will be established when geographic Israel receives its promised glory. According to this view, the time between Pentecost and the rapture is a temporary hiccup in God’s plan for Israel. The Old Testament and parts of the New Testament are meant for the Jews, and not applicable to Christians.
Dispensationalism teaches that God interrupts Daniel’s prophetic timeline to insert the “Church Age” between the 69th and 70th week. This completely contradicts Malachi 3:6 and Hebrews 13:8, which say that the Lord does not change.
Scofield writes, “the church is not once mentioned in Old Testament prophecy.”i But if the Church is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, then prophecies such as Jeremiah 31:31-34 do apply to the Church. The Church is the New Israel (See Romans 9:21-26; Galatians 3:26-29, 6:15-16).
The term “dispensation” is used in the KJV Bible only four times—1 Corinthians 9:17, Ephesians 1:10, Ephesians 3:2, and Colossians 1:25. In all four places, the Greek word is pronounced in English oy-kon-om-ee’-ah. It means an administration of a household or estate, essentially bookkeeping. It is often translated elsewhere in the KJV as “stewardship” (See Luke 16:2-4,8 and Titus 1:7).
J. N. Darby, the founder of dispensationalism, translated the word as “administration.” He thought it meant that God had different time periods when He dealt differently with different people groups. It could just as easily refer to the overall stewardship of God’s eternal plan for all the ages—one eternal plan, not many different “ages” and “times” where different plans were in effect. There is only one plan “from the foundation of the world."
Ahead to The Dispensations
i. Cyrus Ingerson Scofield, “Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth.” Read this article online.
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Inspiration for these articles comes from Gideon and Hilda Hagstoz' Heroes of the Reformation