THE SEVEN DISPENSATIONS 3C

Whatever deceives you has already defeated you and that is one of the reasons why you must not neglect your responsibility of studying the Bible, you must take personal study of the Bible very seriously. If you don’t want to be deceived, you must have a one-on-one encounter with the word of God on a daily basis. If you can eat two or three times in a day, why do you allow 24 hours to elapse without looking at the word of God which is supposed to be your number one spiritual food? When you fail to study the word of God, something happens! You will suffer from spiritual malnutrition, spiritual kwashiorkor sets in.

One of the evidences of derailment in the life of a believer is when your appetite for the things of God starts waning. Just as loss of appetite physically signals sickness, it is also a symptom of spiritual sickness if you are losing appetite for the things of God, when the things of God no longer excite you. The only way to be insulated from the deception that is out there in the world today is to be vaccinated with the word of God, be spiritually inoculated. Error is a virus; only truth can checkmate.

As mentioned in our earlier posts, a dispensation is a moral period in human history that ends with judgment. God has ordained seven dispensations for man. The first dispensation is the dispensation of innocence, the second is the dispensation of conscience while the third is the dispensation of human government. In the dispensation of human government, man was given the responsibility to take charge of the earth; to govern it and to be fruitful and multiply. The major actor was Noah. It is interesting to note that only eight people were saved during this dispensation – Noah and his family.

4. The dispensation of promise.
It runs from Genesis 12 to Exodus 18. The key scripture is Gen. 12:1-3. “Now the LORD has said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curseth thee: and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” God’s sovereign will is to call out a group of people that will serve him according to his terms. God was already thinking about the Church when he called Abraham. He was already thinking about faith when he called Abraham. God, in his sovereignty, must have found something in Abraham. Of course, Abraham did not fail God.

Today, we sing, ‘Abraham’s blessings are mine, Abraham’s blessings are mine, I am blessed in the morning, afternoon and evening, Abraham’s blessings are mine’. Abraham was the father of faith. Verse 3 of this scripture is very important. Any country that positions herself against Israel is on the negative side of this prophecy. This is the technical side of the word of God which a lot of people neglect. The promise of God to Abraham covered him and his descendants up till this point. Even in this dispensation of promise – the promise of the Messiah, the promise of the kingdom – man’s obedience was still incomplete. So, what happened?  Man ended in slavery in the land of Egypt. The trip to ‘Egypt’ is always very easy, but the return journey may take over 400 years.

PRAY-

• Father, grant that I will never go down to ‘Egypt’ in Jesus name. Amen.

TO BE CONTINUED……