The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 70-13, titled "Bible Questions and Answers."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. Copyright 1992 by John MacArthur Jr., All Rights Reserved.

Question

Could you define biblical dispensationalism and contrast that with (if there’s any contrast to be made)…with popular dispensationalism?

Answer

Yes, biblical dispensationalism as compared to popular dispensationalism. Popular dispensationalism isn’t very popular…any more. But the old popular dispensationalism--and some of you know that the word “dispensation” simply refers to stewardships--and the idea was that God functioned, through the history of redemption, in different ways.

For example, the old dispensations were innocence. In other words, there was a time before the fall when man was innocent. And God mediated His rule on earth to man in an innocent condition and treated him as innocent. Then came sin, and then you had conscience. The dispensation of conscience meant that God was working with man, who now had a conscience that could tell right from wrong. That’s why he made clothes, covered himself, hid in the garden--he had a guilty conscience.

Then, in order to control man, God brought in the next dispensation, which I think was human government. And God ordained certain systems of government to control this sinful being--to wrap him up, tie him down…and part of that human government had to do with capital punishment, which was really the first criminal law that God instituted: if people take life, you better take their life as well, and that will preserve the dignity of man and respect for the image of God in created men. So, then you have human government. Human government was then followed by the dispensation of law, which is followed by the dispensation of grace, which is followed by the dispensation of the kingdom, which is followed by the dispensation of the eternal state--the new heavens and the new earth. All in all, there were seven dispensations that somebody figured out and laid them all out that way.

That’s fine. I mean, I can look at that, you can look at that, right, and you can say, “Well, that’s fine, I can see God working with Adam before the fall, working with Adam after the fall…God working with Moses before the cross, during the time of the law, God working after the cross, through the new covenant in Christ. I can see God working uniquely in the kingdom and then finally in the eternal state.” We all can see that.

It’s what you do with those categories that becomes problematic. Some of the old-fashioned dispensationalists made those categories too hard and fast. And they also assumed that maybe God saved people different ways in different times. There were people who believed that there was no grace in the Old Testament and there’s no law in the New Testament. And they drew these hard and fast lines. That kind of dispensationalism has really been refined and there are only vestiges of it hanging on today--it’s being very often redefined. It’s not that it’s wrong to see those ways in which God operated; it’s just wrong to put too much into them: to come up with different means of salvation and all kinds of different covenants by which God saves…it gets too complex and you can’t support it scripturally.

That’s what made, for example, people say, “The book of Matthew has nothing to do with the church. The book of Matthew is irrelevant to us. It has the sermon on the mount, for example: it’s all about the kingdom age, it’s all about the millennium--it tells people how to live in the millennium…don’t pay any attention to it now, it’s not for us.” That’s a form of dispensationalism.

In fact, when I wrote the book, The Gospel According to Jesus, some people, one very prominent Bible teacher came to me and said, “What do we care what the gospel according to Jesus was? We’re not in that dispensation. That was the dispensation of the New Testament. We’re in the dispensation of the church that started at Pentecost” (they’ve got that dispensation; I should have added that one) “We’re in the dispensation of the church. Jesus lived in the prior dispensation; what He taught is only relevant to His dispensation and the kingdom to come when He’ll return, and it isn’t relevant to us, so your arguments about the gospel according to Jesus don’t matter to us. The sermon on the mount tells us how to live in the kingdom age or the future, or how to live in the past when Jesus is on earth; it says nothing about the church.”

That’s the danger in dispensationalism: it begins to hack the Bible up and cut it into pieces. And then there’s all kinds of forms of that known as hyper-dispensationalism, Bullingerism, the Campbellites, and all those people who just got carried away. They eliminated baptism, they eliminated the Lord’s table because they said that stuff is in the past dispensation, not the present dispensation…you start chewing the Bible up and splitting it into little pieces.

Now, what is a proper dispensational viewpoint? I’ll put it to you very simply. The whole of my dispensationalism can be stated in one sentence: it is a distinction between the Church and Israel. Period. That is it. That’s really all you need. And in the new book called Faith Works, “the Gospel According to the Apostles” is a chapter on dispensationalism, which will answer your question. And, I think all we need to do is keep the church and Israel distinct. And, secondly, if you just wanted a little corollary, see more continuity between the old covenant and the new covenant. There is more continuity there than the old dispensationalists who said there is discontinuity. At the end of the old covenant, whack! You have the end of law, you start the new--it’s all grace. I see there’s much more of a flow. There’s grace in the old, there’s law in the new. In the old, they were saved by grace; Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, did he not? And that’s how he was redeemed. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. Salvation was always by grace through faith, even in the dispensation of law, the age of law. And today, we’re under grace. We’re not under law as a means of salvation, but we’re obligated to keep the law out of obedience to God.

The overlap if very clear. So, I see more continuity there (and I don’t want to get too technical here) than the old dispensationalists, but maintaining the clear distinction between Israel and the church, which is a hermeneutical issue. If the Bible says that God is going to give a kingdom to Israel, I believe He means Israel and not the church. So, we have to maintain that hermeneutical distinction. And, beyond that, you really don’t need to go. If you just distinguish between the church and Israel, you’re going to be safe. That’ll carry you all the way from the past clear through eschatology and you won’t lose your moorings.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
Box 119
Columbus, New Jersey, USA, 08022
Websites: www.biblebb.com and www.gospelgems.com
Email: tony@biblebb.com
Online since 1986