Revising the Dispensationalist Ages by S Jones

Revising the Dispensationalist Ages

Dec 07, 2018 by Dr. Stephen Jones

https://gods-kingdom-ministries.net/daily-weblogs/2018/12-2018/revising-the-dispensationalist-ages/

The Dispensationalists in the 1800’s divided time into the following ages:

Innocence - Adam

Conscience - After man sinned, up to Noah’s flood
Government - After the flood, Noah to Abraham
Promise - Abraham to Moses and the giving of the Law
Law - Moses to the cross
Grace - The cross to the Millennial Kingdom
Millennial Kingdom - A 1000 year reign of Christ on earth centered in the earthly     Jerusalem, a rebuilt physical temple, and renewal of animal sacrifices

Innocence

The first, which is the time prior to Adam’s sin, is listed as “Innocence.” I have no quarrel with that designation, except that in my view that was not really an age but the original condition of man prior to sin. If we are to think in terms of ages, then it could be argued that we ought to begin even prior to Adam. If so, it would be the age of Creation, showing the acts of God, rather than the short condition of man in the time of creation.

Conscience

Dispensationalism lists “Conscience” as the age from Adam’s sin to Noah’s flood. They were conveying the idea that men had no revelation of the law at that time, and therefore, they had to rely upon the conscience alone. Scripture is unclear on this point, but surely Adam in his original condition was in full conformity to the laws of God. After all, the law has always been the expression of God’s nature and character.

Surely Adam knew God’s character inherently, whether or not he was created in a state of Innocence. No doubt Adam and Eve lacked experience and were therefore naïve, and for this reason the serpent, who was “subtle,” was able to take advantage of her. Even so, we read in 1 Timothy 2:14 that “it was not Adam who was deceived but the woman.” This may indicate that Eve was deceived and that Adam deliberately chose to join in her sin so that they would not be separated.

This suggests that Adam’s conscience knew the difference between right and wrong. Can we then assign “Conscience” to the time after the first sin but not beforehand?

In my view, the law of God as a whole was known from the beginning but men forgot it over time. Society degenerated into lawlessness until the flood destroyed it. The flood was like a reset button, starting over with Noah’s family.

More important, I believe, is to see that from Adam to the flood was 1,656 years, according to the chronology provided to us in Genesis 5. The time began with the curse upon the ground (Genesis 3:17) and ended with the reversal of the curse. When Noah was born, it was said in Genesis 5:29,

²⁹ Now he called his name Noah, saying, “This one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed.”

The ground was on Cursed Time for a period of 4 x 414 years. That, of course, was a grace period, giving humanity time to repent and to find grace, as Noah did (Genesis 6:8 KJV). Most of the people remained under the authority of the cursed ground, and so they died when the curse of the law was executed by the flood itself.

We ourselves are not to be under the dominion of “the flesh,” as Paul would call it. By transferring our conscious self to the New Creation Man, we transfer our citizenship to heaven (Philippians 3:20), thus avoiding the divine judgment upon the flesh that is under the curse. Noah did this, but the people as a whole did not; hence, they died in the flood.

This curse upon the ground seems to characterize that age better than any other factor. So it seems more appropriate to me to label this not as an age of “Conscience” but as an age of Grace. Though the sentence of the law (i.e., the “curse”) was issued after Adam sinned, God gave him and his descendants a grace period before that judgment was executed.

Noah found grace, but all of the other people were given grace as a feature of God’s mercy. Noah’s grace was, in a sense, permanent, because it was internalized and was part of his nature. The rest of the people had temporary grace, which may be thought of as a probationary period.

This probationary time period of 4 x 414 years gives us the foundational revelation of Cursed Time itself. It is how Lalo Cadona’s father discovered the principle of Cursed Time in 1946. This is remarkable, because this was the only example that he had of Cursed Time. When I put together my own chronological study in 1991, I came to see at least six major examples of Cursed Time in Scripture, and at the same time I discovered that I myself had been on Cursed Time twice in the past (414-day cycles). This confirmed the principle to me.

Government

Dispensationalists justify this designation by the fact that Noah was given a few laws immediately after the flood (Genesis 9:1-7). Presumably, having a few laws justified the formation of “Government.” But one can hardly form a government, even in an infantile state, based upon a few food laws (Genesis 9:3, 4), a prohibition of murder (Genesis 9:6), and a mandate to be fruitful (Genesis 9:7). Was theft still lawful? What about adultery?

Government implies organization and structure as well, but we see no attempt to reveal such basic aspects of government. The only true governmental mandate given is in Genesis 9:2,

² And the fear of you and the terror of you shall be on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given.

This re-establishes the original authority that God gave man in Genesis 1:26…

²⁶ … let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

Government implies authority, but this was given even prior to the creation of man, for it is said to be the purpose of God from the beginning. How then can we say that from the flood to the promise to Abraham God set up a “dispensation” of “Government”? The Dominion Mandate of Genesis 1:26 was the origin of all authority and government, just as the Fruitfulness Mandate of Genesis 1:28 established the divine purpose to bring forth many sons (“fruit of the womb”).

These two Mandates form the Birthright itself, which was established at the beginning. Because government was inherent in the Birthright, I think the Dispensationalists established the wrong mindset in the church by calling this age “Government.”

In fact, during this time, it appears that Nimrod was the one who invented the idea of unrighteous government. As a hunter, he hunted the souls of men and enslaved them to himself. Nimrod governed not as a steward under God but as a usurper king. He set the pattern for nearly all future governments of the world.

That age of degeneration and usurpation may best be described by the biblical word lawlessness, both personal and governmental. It was founded by a hunter who sought to devour the souls of men through governmental authority, and this destroyed the original purpose of God to establish authority through biblical Unity (Genesis 2:24). Just as marriage was not supposed to give a man the right to devour the soul of his wife, so also government was not supposed to devour its people. Unity was rooted in agreement and love. Nimrod’s government brought slavery and self-interest.

This descent into lawlessness, led by Nimrod, set the backdrop and contrast to the righteousness of Abraham, who was Nimrod’s contemporary.

Promise

The Dispensationalist age of “Promise,” beginning with Abraham, inadequately describes that age, because people are left with the impression that there was no real promise until the time of Abraham. But the first promise came as early as Genesis 3:15, where the “seed” of the woman was to crush the serpent’s head. Yet the main promise came to Noah immediately after the flood, when God made the first “covenant” with the entire earth (Genesis 9:9, 10).

This promise was the first to define the scope of the New Covenant, for it was not conditional upon the earth making a vow in return. It was simply the promise of God to the earth, telling us God’s intention, and based upon God’s own ability to keep his promise.

The same can be said of the Abrahamic covenant, where God made similar promises but added the feature that He would fulfill His promise through the seed of Abraham. That seed was not ultimately a biological seed, Paul explains in Galatians 3:7, 29. The seed (children) of Abraham are those who follow His example of faith, those who have faith that God is able to keep His promise (Romans 4:21).

The New Covenant promises of God, then, can be traced back to the time of Adam and Eve, and these did not end when Moses gave the law at Mount Horeb. Therefore, to label this era by the term “Promise” can be misleading, especially if people are led to believe that God made no promises prior to Abraham.

The time, in fact, is characterized by the conflict between two forms of government that were arising in the earth. There was the world government of Nimrod that usurped power; and there was the Kingdom government of Abraham and his seed who were truly called to exercise the Dominion Mandate properly in the earth. In fact, Abraham knew the laws of God, for Genesis 26:5 says,

⁵ because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.

Knowledge of the law was necessary for Abraham and his seed to establish righteous government. If we think of the promise to Abraham as a betrothal, followed by the actual marriage at Mount Horeb, we may see the progression of the Kingdom. Since the marriage principle (Unity) is also the basic principle of Kingdom government, it is a proper way of viewing this portion of history. The problem is that Mount Horeb proved to be an Old Covenant marriage, where God married a “bondwoman,” to use Paul’s terminology in Galatians 4:24, 25, 31.

Hence, that marriage was destined to end in divorce (Jeremiah 3:8; Hosea 2:2), so that the next age might establish a New Covenant marriage.

For this reason, I prefer to call the age from Abraham to Moses “Betrothal,” rather than “Promise.” God’s promises came much earlier than with Abraham, but the betrothal was specific to Abraham. God promised them blessings, honor, protection, and many children—all features of a betrothal. The feast days (Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles) then give us the main outline of Kingdom history, which is based upon the principle of marriage. Since marriage is of two kinds, Old Covenant and New Covenant marriage, the marriage itself took some twists and turns before the final outcome of Unity could become a reality.

So up to this point, we can revise the Dispensationalist divisions of time as follows:

1. Innocence
2. Grace
3. Lawlessness
4. Betrothal
5. Passover
6. Pentecost
7. Tabernacles

God's Governmental Ages by S Jones

GOD'S GOVERNMENTAL AGES

Dec 06, 2018 by Dr. Stephen Jones

https://gods-kingdom-ministries.net/daily-weblogs/2018/12-2018/gods-governmental-ages/

When Darby developed his idea of Dispensationalism in the 1850’s, he seemed to know little or nothing about the feast of Tabernacles. For this reason, his idea of the “rapture” was based on his partial knowledge of Scripture. He understood that Christ was returning, but he missed Christ’s real purpose in returning as well as the manner of His return.

Further, Darby had an understanding of Passover and Pentecost insofar as their personal applications were concerned, but he did not see the feasts as representing specific ages in the history of the kingdom. What he called the Age of Law (from Moses to Christ) is actually a Passover Age, beginning with that first Passover that set Israel free from Egypt, and ending with the Passover where Christ died on the cross.

Darby contrasted the age of “Law” with the age of “Grace,” as if men ought to cease obeying the law after the cross. That was a serious misperception that has justified sin in the church, because “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). The truth is that the cross ended the Passover Age, wherein God had established the Kingdom under the partial anointing of Passover.

After a short interim of seven weeks, that age was replaced by a Pentecostal Age, wherein believers were given greater power and authority to establish the Kingdom with a greater anointing. There is no question that the disciples received something on the day of Pentecost that they had not enjoyed earlier. Neither was it just a matter of performing miracles, for the disciples themselves performed many miracles even prior to the day of Pentecost.

The Passover Kingdom

The Passover Kingdom was established in the days of Moses at Mount Horeb, when God organized the first Kingdom government and set forth a fuller revelation of the laws of the Kingdom. We know from Old Testament history that this first Kingdom was flawed, not because the law was imperfect but because the law was imposed upon them from the outside. The people (that is, their carnal minds) were rebellious, and even though Israel saw many revivals in their history, the people always fell away in the next generation.

In the end, the Passover Kingdom ended in failure when Israel was destroyed and sent into captivity in the Assyrian territory known as Gamir (Ghomri, or Gomer). Judah was likewise taken to Babylon for 70 years. However, Judah had to return in order for Jesus to be born in Bethlehem 600 years later. Judah, then, was the remnant of that Passover Kingdom, not truly independent as a nation, but yet not fully destroyed until 70 A.D.

Judah’s final sin of rejecting the Messiah (John 1:11) ended the Passover Kingdom and set the stage for the next phase, the Pentecostal Kingdom.

The Pentecost Kingdom

King Saul had been crowned king on the day of “wheat harvest” (1 Samuel 12:17) and that this was the day the priest offered the first fruits of wheat as a signal that the people now harvest their wheat. In later years the day was known by the Greek name, Pentecost, “fiftieth day,” because this feast day in Israel occurred on the fiftieth day from the wave sheaf offering (Leviticus 23:16). By understanding that Saul was crowned on Pentecost tells us that the Age of Pentecost was characterized governmentally by the reign of “Saul” on a prophetic level.

This strongly implied that there was yet to be an age that was greater, one that would characterize the reign of David. It would also tell us that even though Pentecost was more powerful than Passover, it was not yet perfect. Likewise, since Saul was of Benjamin, he was not even of the ruling tribe, for Judah had been given the scepter in Genesis 49:10. Hence, Saul was doomed to fail in the end, even though theoretically he might have ruled perpetually, if he had not become rebellious (1 Samuel 15:23).

The Roman Church, of course, has never understood this, and their ignorance of Scripture has caused them to teach that its reign will never end. The fact is that the Church in the Pentecostal Age was most certainly going to fulfill the entire pattern of King Saul, starting out good but falling into rebellion, and ending in witchcraft (witch of Endor). The corruption in the Roman Church and in other denominations as well are easily explained and understood by comparing church history with the reign of Saul.

Applying the feast days beyond the personal applications allows us to see how God is working in the world at large to establish His Kingdom. His Kingdom certainly begins in the hearts of men and progresses as we grow to spiritual maturity; but the Kingdom is also a nation having a form of government in the earth. The object of such Kingdom government is to restore Christ’s rule as the One called as King of Creation.

The Tabernacles Kingdom

The third manifestation of the Kingdom is characterized by the feast of Tabernacles. Tabernacles is often called “the lost feast,” because so few Christians knew of it during the Pentecostal Age. It was not really until the time of the Latter Rain Movement (1948-1952) that it was given as a revelation to the church, and even then, most denominations closed their ears to that truth.

In October 1995 God gave me revelation of the three churches. I was shown that the feast days represented three successive ages, three successive phases of the Kingdom, and that these could also be seen as three churches. Acts 7:38 KJV speaks of “the church in the wilderness” (under Moses), and so Scripture describes the Passover Kingdom as a “church.” From the New Testament we understand the nature of the church under the anointing of Pentecost. But these two churches imply a third church in the Tabernacles Age.

Each church is called out of something for the purpose of gathering as an assembly. The first church was called out of Egypt to assemble at Mount Horeb (or Sinai). The second church was called out of Judah to assemble at Mount Sion (Hebrews 12:22 KJV). We read in Deuteronomy 4:48 tells us that Mount Hermon was called Sion.

Sion is not Zion. Zion was where David set up His government. Sion (Mount Hermon) was where Jesus was transfigured, manifesting His glory as the Son of God. Sion represents the government of the heavenly Jerusalem. It is the capital of the Tabernacles Kingdom, which will be ruled by the sons of God when they experience the same sort of transfiguration that changes them, perfects them, and gives them full immortality (1 Corinthians 15:51, 53).

The Fulfillment of the Feast Days

Most Christians are aware that Jesus died on the cross to fulfill the feast of Passover and that He was raised from the dead to fulfill the wave-sheaf offering. Not many know that Pentecost was a feast day established under Moses to commemorate the giving of the law at Mount Horeb. Neither do they understand that in later years Saul was crowned on Pentecost as a prophetic type of the Pentecostal Church.

Jesus fulfilled the first set of feasts (Passover to Pentecost) in His first coming. The second set of feasts, Trumpets, Day of Atonement, and Tabernacles, prophesy of Christ’s second coming. Yet hardly anyone seems to understand this. Certainly, Darby and Scofield did not know this, and their ignorance of the feast days caused them to misunderstand many things about the second coming of Christ. Their “rapture” theory was based on a very partial understanding of the Word.

Darby’s idea of Dispensationalism was that Christ was to return at the start of a seven-year period called The Great Tribulation. The dead were to be raised and church was to be “raptured” to heaven so that the true believers could escape this Tribulation, while the Antichrist ruled the earth. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit would be removed from the earth, essentially making it impossible for anyone on earth to become a believer. During those seven years, the Jews would remain on the earth, and 144,000 of them would preach (unsuccessfully) to those in tribulation.

At the end of this Tribulation, Christ is said to return to rule the earth with His saints.

Others disputed with Darby and Scofield, modifying their views to suit their own understanding. Some thought that this “rapture” would occur in the middle of the seven-year tribulation, while others believed in a single return of Christ at the end of the Tribulation. Hence, Bible colleges debated these theories without questioning the foundations of the “rapture” theory itself.

I do not question the fact of Christ’s return, of course, but I believe we ought to conform to the revelation of the feast days in our understanding of eschatology. The feast of Trumpets marks the day of resurrection “at the last trumpet” (1 Corinthians 15:52). I believe the resurrection will occur in some (unknown) year at the feast of Trumpets, even as Christ died on Passover and the Holy Spirit was given on Pentecost.

Trumpets was established in Numbers 10:2, 3, 4 shortly before the Davy of Atonement, when the 12 spies gave their report (Numbers 13, 14). If the people had agreed to enter the Kingdom at that time, and if they had believed the report of Caleb and Joshua, they would have fulfilled the feast of Tabernacles. I believe they would have conquered Canaan in a single week. But such a conquest would have required more faith than they had at the time. In fact, because they had already rejected the Pentecostal word at Mount Horeb (Exodus 20:19), it was a foregone conclusion that they would lack sufficient faith to enter the Tabernacles Kingdom.

The point is that Trumpets is the day of resurrection and is the first event on the prophetic calendar to be fulfilled. “The dead in Christ will rise first,” Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:16. The second event on the calendar is the Day of Atonement, where those who have sufficient faith will blow the trumpet (shofar, not silver trumpet) for the Jubilee, reversing the evil report that caused the Israelites to refuse to enter the Kingdom in Numbers 14:4.

The Israelites had turned that Jubilee into the Day of Atonement, a day of mourning and fasting for refusing to enter the Kingdom. The overcoming sons of God at the second coming of Christ will reverse that decision and turn the Day of Atonement back into the Jubilee.

Trumpets comes on the first day of the seventh month. The Day of Atonement (or Jubilee) is held on the tenth day of the same month. Tabernacles begins five days later on the fifteenth day of the month, and this is the day where “we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together” (1 Thessalonians 4:17). Darby used this verse to describe the “rapture,” that is, the catching away (to heaven).

I maintain that this is a Tabernacles experience, where the overcoming sons of God are to be transfigured, or “changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51) into the image of Christ. Once changed, they can then come into full unity with those who were raised from the dead two weeks earlier at the feast of Trumpets, so that together they may become one perfected body.

Then all that is lacking is a Head to perfect the body and make that body of saints eligible to be presented to God in heaven on the eighth day of Tabernacles. John 7:14 suggests that Christ will come in the middle of the feast of Tabernacles.

The law demands that the sons of God be presented only on an eighth day (Exodus 22:29, 30). Those “sons” are born on the first day of Tabernacles and by law must be presented to God on the eighth day.

By not taking into account the feast days, Darby did not understand the timing of each event in regard to the second coming of Christ. Instead, he threw them all together as if all of these events were to take place in a single moment of time. The dead would be raised first, and as they shot skyward, the living saints were to be right behind them, tickling their feet (as I was told) on the way up to heaven.

The feast days, however, set the timing of each event in its proper sequence. The feast days are the appointed times. The resurrection occurs on the first day of the seventh month; the Day of Atonement comes nine days later as the Decision Day; the transfiguration of the living saints comes on the fifteenth day of the month, which is the first day of Tabernacles.

Then Christ must return between the first and the eighth day of Tabernacles, so that the Head is joined to the body, making the body complete, and making the body eligible to be presented to God. The presentation must occur on the eighth day of Tabernacles. Then this collective “Son” will return the same day to be manifested to the people on earth.

I have discussed these events more fully elsewhere with biblical proofs. This is only a short summary, and if this is new material to any reader, I suggest that he or she should pursue this study to learn the details.

My point is to show that Darby’s Dispensationalism, which is now mainstream evangelical eschatology, needs to be revised considerably to take into account the revelation of the feast days revealed in Scripture. Studying those feasts give us a clearer view of prophecy and establish the order of timing, both the Ages and the actual events that fulfill those appointed times.