Times and Seasons

Introduction

When people argue about when Jesus was born, or observance of holidays, they're arguing over traditions, not scripture. Even so, traditions are what people think they are today, not what they started out as, or what past cultures thought. For example, not one Christian thinks the evergreen as a Christmas tree is anything but a symbol of eternal life. Some will gleefully quote Jer. 10:1-5 but ignore the context, which is idolatry. Nobody pays homage or respect to the tree; it just reminds them of the hope of eternity with God in a perfect realm decorated with precious metals and gems. Yet the wish to purge any and all Christian symbolism, however superficial it may be, is born of ignorance and bad logic on the part of Christians, as well as hatred of anything remotely Christian on the part of society.

The same for Thanksgiving, which many have declared is a pagan celebration of genocide. The truth is that it's simply an expression of gratitude toward God (see this article for more). But the native tribes of the land are now painted as innocent, noble, and righteous, which is a gross oversimplification, depending on whose version of history you want to believe. People oppress other people, and in time the oppression goes the opposite way. This is human history; the one-sided view through rose-colored glasses is not.

Appointed times in scripture

We know that Jesus was not born in December. Yet the holiday season leads into the topic of appointments, the times and seasons of scripture. Take a look at these references: Gen. 1:14, Lev. 23:4, Num. 10:10, Ps. 104:19, Dan. 2:21, Mat. 16:1-3, Luke 12:56, 21:24, Acts 17:26, Gal. 4:4, 9-11, 1 Thes. 5:1, 1 Tim. 4:1, 2 Tim. 3:1, Heb. 1:1-2, Jude 1:18, Rev. 1:3, 22:7.

So it isn't just the annual cycle of Jewish festivals that are the appointed times and seasons; it's also prophecy, the long step-by-step plan of God from paradise to corruption to judgment and then to restoration. All the festivals had prophetic meaning, with the spring ones pointing to the first advent of Jesus as the sacrificial lamb and firstfruits, and the fall ones pointing to the second advent when Jesus establishes his kingdom on earth for the Millennium. A lot happens between the two.

Those who reject dispensationalism (details in the section at the end), which is the understanding that God's house rules change from time to time, need to explain why God puts so much emphasis on times and seasons if they make no difference. Why did the time of Jesus' first advent matter so much? Why does scripture speak of the times of the Gentiles and their fulfillment? Why is there a time limit on the Millennium?

Surely no one can deny that something drastic changed in God's rules for our lives when Adam and Eve sinned, when Noah's flood came, when Israel became a nation, when Jesus came, and when Jesus will return. Do we still speak face to face with God as did Adam and Eve? Why not? Remember what God said to Noah in Gen. 9 after the flood, about how it used to be just this but now it's also that? How about the laws of Moses, did people's daily lives change at all from when they lived in Egypt? Why is it that people think nothing at all changed in our lives as a result of Jesus rising from the dead? God is the one who decided to lay out a plan on a schedule; he didn't dump it all out at once.

That being the case, then, we should not be among those Jesus would reprimand for not knowing the time of his coming. Why else would Jesus say that there's a blessing for those who study the Revelation given to John? Prophecy is one of the primary ways in which the Bible is set apart from all contenders, taking up nearly one third of all the scriptures. In fact, if you believe some prophecy remains to be fulfilled, you are a Dispensationalist by definition.

The real objection to dispensationalism, if its critics understand it at all, is the issue of salvation through the ages. Certainly no one could ever be saved without the sacrificial Lamb of God, and by faith in God. But the key is whether the Holy Spirit permanently indwelt people in all ages, since scripture says that the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance in Eph. 1:13-14, 2 Cor. 1:22, and 2 Cor. 5:5. No permanently indwelling Holy Spirit, no guarantee.

There is zero evidence from before Jesus came that every righteous person was saved by faith in his death and resurrection. They knew a Savior would come, but they also seemed to presume that if they turned from God in their lifetime, salvation would not be given to them personally. They knew that God could take his Spirit from them at any time, if they had it at all; see 1 Sam. 16:14 and Psalm 51:11.

Never before Pentecost do you see anyone given the Holy Spirit as a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance; ergo no such guarantee existed before then. The laws of Moses, in fact the entire Old Testament, only speak of physical blessings. Yet since that's the case, how can anyone say the Old Testament promises eternal spiritual life to the righteous? How can anyone say that physical blessings are no different than the spiritual eternal life promised to us in Christ via the indwelling Holy Spirit?

Don't take your Holy Spirit from me is pretty hard to write off as Don't let me physically die prematurely. And if salvation had always been the same, why were Adam and Eve driven out of Eden, instead of God saying, No problem, Jesus will die for you eventually, you can stay here in my presence? Why did God give laws to Moses for Israel at all, since all they needed for eternal spiritual life was faith that Jesus would rise from the dead, which is the Gospel as explicitly stated in 1 Cor. 15:2-4? Abraham's righteousness was for believing God— but for what exactly? That Jesus would rise, or that God would make a great nation from him? Scour the Old Testament for any hint that Abraham's declaration of righteousness went beyond God's promise of a nation.

I see a clear sequence of ages or dispensations/administrations in the Bible, in which spiritual eternal security is never guaranteed until Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit began to indwell people in a way and for a duration never seen before. Jesus brought radical changes to how his followers are saved, primarily that we are heirs according to promise rather than sevants whose good standing with the Master depends upon faithful obedience. Take a moment to read Gal. 4:21-28.

For those still opposed to Dispensationalism, please understand that I don't reach my conclusions lightly, or dismiss counter-arguments without listening to them and testing them, or bend the Bible to fit my personal sensitivities, or throw logic and evidence to the wind. So it isn't too much for me to ask my critics to give me the same respect I give them and their beliefs. People disagree because we're imperfect, not necessarily because some are more flawed or less faithful than others.

The times and seasons of scripture aren't complicated or cryptic or merely symbolic; they are the plan of God through the ages. If we can't agree on this point, we can't agree on anything else in scripture. Fellow believers we may be, but even Paul and Barnabas parted ways over a sharp dispute (Acts 15:39), yet they didn't call each other names or condescend to each other. If only Christians today could follow that example; see Gal. 5:19-26,, Eph. 4:31-32,, 2 Peter 1:5-9,, and Mat. 25:24-25 (so much for the complaint about fruit inspectors!). Know the time you live in, be prepared for what God has ordained, and live like Jesus and his teachings matter.

Dispensationalism

Dispensations literally means house rules. The Greek word (see Eph. 3:2) is where we get our word economy and is sometimes rendered stewardship or administration. The Scofield reference is from this online article. Other articles on dispensationalism can be found at Bible.org (NET Bible) and BibleStudyManuals.

Although authors differ on the exact number and duration of the dispensations, I will use the C. I. Scofield model, which contains seven ages from the creation of Adam to the end of the Millennium. These ages are marked by a change with respect to sin and people’s responsibility, and can be seen as a series of tests by God. The seven dispensations are as follows:

The Seven Dispensations

Character of dispensation (Scofield)	Consequence of dispensation (mine)
Innocence Conscience Authority Promise Law Grace Christ’s Rule	Death Deluge Dispersion Desertion Delay Devastation Defeat

Innocence

This dispensation begins with the creation of Adam and Eve as innocents. They had not yet disobeyed God and everything God created was very good. But as sentient beings, they had the capacity to either obey God or defy him. Some will say that God put the one restriction against eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to tempt them, but the scriptures clearly say that God tempts no one. Their potential for sin came from their sentience, their free will. So in theory they could have sinned by disobeying any of God’s commands, which included managing the earth and multiplying. But they failed to obey God in everything, and at the moment of that first sin innocence was lost. People could no longer enjoy direct communion with God, and physical death would be the fate of the first humans and all their offspring. Result of first test: failure.

Conscience

People had now acquired a conscience, an inner moral code showing the difference between good and evil. There was as yet no formal government, so each individual did whatever they chose. But as time progressed, humanity regressed— to the point that the Bible says But the Lord saw that the wickedness of mankind had become great on the earth. Every inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only evil all the time. (Genesis 6:5) This brought on the Flood, which destroyed all but eight people, the only ones in the world who found favor with God. Result of second test: failure.

Authority

After the Flood, God created the institution of Government. Its purpose was to slow down the spread of evil and punish it. God gave the State the right of capital punishment, a right which he did not give to the individual. Yet even then people found a way to corrupt this institution and use its corporate power to defy God again. The Tower of Babel was to be their triumph over God’s authority, so he scrambled their language into many pieces in judgment. Result of third test: failure.

Promise

People who can’t communicate can’t work or live together, so they were forced to carry out God’s command to spread out over all the earth. This resulted in the further speciation of ethnic groups worldwide. God then chose one man, Abram (later to be called Abraham), to establish a unique people group that would eventually produce the Messiah, the Savior. God made prophetic promises to Abram, some conditional and some not. But Abraham’s descendents, the people of Israel, showed a propensity for seeing God’s power and rejecting him anyway. Result of fourth test: failure.

Law

God allowed Israel to be enslaved in Egypt for hundreds of years before giving them a written Law to obey. No more were people left to be on their honor to obey God, no more would there be any excuses. They would now have specific written regulations to abide by. Predictably, though, Israel repeatedly strayed from God and suffered repeated judgments, until finally God had to drive them out of their land. Only after several centuries were they allowed to return, and then only in very small numbers, a mere remnant. It was to this remnant that Jesus came, only to be conspired against and crucified. Result of fifth test: failure.

Grace

People have demonstrated their complete failure to obey God no matter what the circumstances. So Jesus came to do for us what we were unable to do for ourselves: be cleansed once and for all from sin, from separation from God. The Bible holds Law and Grace in opposition, meaning Grace is the absence of Law. Jesus took away the written code, which was against us, and nailed it to the cross (Colossians 2:14). This was the way out of our hopeless condition: to trust in Jesus’ ability to keep the Law, not our own ability. But even with this incredible demonstration of love and mercy from God, people still refuse to bow to him, to the point where now we can see the signs of impending worldwide judgment once again.

Although some authors treat the seven-year Tribulation as a separate dispensation, it is really the culmination of the Age of Grace. After rejecting God’s own Son, there is no more sacrifice for sins (Hebrews 10:26). But the unique thing about the Age of Grace is that individual believers are personally and permanently indwelt by God’s Holy Spirit. Therefore, in order for God to judge the unbelieving world, he must first remove Jesus’ Body, meaning the removal of his people. At that point the prophetic timetable given to Daniel and John will finish its course, the last seven years of life without the direct rule of God on earth. Result of sixth test: failure.

Christ’s Rule

The last dispensation is known as The Millennium, meaning a thousand years. Mortals will be once again in direct communication with God, who rules the nations with a rod of iron, meaning there is no tolerance for rebellion. People will again live many centuries with only sinners dying at younger than 100 years of age. The judgment-mangled earth will be restored and repopulated, and there will at last be real peace. But at the end of it people are tested a final time, and again they fail. Rebellion in the midst of Eden brings us full circle through human history, and God must again destroy the wicked. Result of seventh test: failure.

Implications of Dispensationalism

Knowing all this, the Bible student can then avoid the misapplication of scripture. For example, the issue of Eternal Security hinges upon a proper understanding of the Age of Grace in which we now live. It is only the believer indwelt by the Holy Spirit who is guaranteed eternal life, due to the promise of God and the fact that we are new creations who belong to God and not to ourselves. Any commands to endure, if they are clearly on the issue of salvation and not service, are for those believers of other ages.

The Age of Grace, also called the Church Age, is referred to by Paul as a secret that has only now been revealed (Ephesians 3:2). It is an interruption of the prophetic timetable given to Daniel, so if you treat this age as a kind of parenthesis in prophecy you will see a clear and continuous sequence. This effectively clears up a lot of other theories, such as Preterism, rejection of the pre-tribulation Rapture, or legalism for church-age believers.

if indeed you have heard of the stewardship [dispensation] of God’s grace that was given to me for you, that by revelation the divine secret was made known to me, as I wrote before briefly. When reading this, you will be able to understand my insight into this secret of Christ. Now this secret was not disclosed to people in former generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit, namely, that through the gospel the Gentiles are fellow heirs, fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus. I became a servant of this gospel according to the gift of God’s grace that was given to me by the exercise of his power. To me, less than the least of all the saints this grace was given, to proclaim to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ and to enlighten everyone about God’s secret plan— a secret that has been hidden for ages in God who has created all things. The purpose of this enlightenment is that through the church the multifaceted wisdom of God should now be disclosed to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly realms. (Eph 3:2-10 NET Bible).

In light of this, we should not try to mix teachings about this current age by going to the circumcision writings (the writings of the others, who were not given this revelation). Always remember where you are as you read the scriptures.