Hebrews 1:1, God who at sundry times and in divers manner spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets.
Sundry, an adjective meaning several, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets.
By the prophets.
There's our clue, there's our clue, and we know that the book of Hebrews isn't speaking of you and I, it isn't speaking of us for we're not spoken of in prophecy.
At that time we were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, outside all of the covenants, go study for yourself.
In time past, God was dispensing prophecy information throughout your Bible in the books that lead up to the ministry of your Apostle, the Apostle Paul.
But then something changed, and he began to dispense mystery information, mystery simply meaning secret information that had not been revealed prior to Paul.
Today, we're discussing the advantages of being a dispensationalist, more specifically, a mid-Acts or Acts 9 dispensationalist.
Approaching your Bible, understanding the scriptures dispensationally will eliminate much of the chaotic seed that has been sown by religion, the confusion that is found in nearly 50,000 Christian denominations.
Matthew 18:18 Jesus said, Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
How's that going for you today?
Not well, no, I understand.
You see, the reason that you don't have binding and loosening power is because this information wasn't for you.
It's pretty simple.
This was for another dispensation.
The next verse, look at the next verse, it doesn't work either.
Verse 19, ...if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall (not might) it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.
This doesn't work, doesn't work because it's not your mail.
It's the wrong dispensation.
Things like this make it hard to understand how anyone could go against dispensationalism, to go against approaching scripture with dispensational lenses.
And truth be told, listen, when we come right down to it, at times, everyone is a dispensationalist.
If you're not separating from your wife during her menstrual cycle, Leviticus 15:19, you're a dispensationalist.
If you're not Deuteronomy 21:18, stoning your rebellious children
to death, guess what?
You're a dispensationalist.
If you're not a vegetarian, Genesis 1:29, and you're okay with eating meat, 1 Timothy 4 verses 3 to 5, welcome to the dispensationalist club because you are one.
Hey, you'd think that everyone would have sense enough to recognize that not all things written in scripture applies to them.
If you think the church started back there in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you're a dispensationalist.
If you think the church began in Acts chapter 2, like the famous dispensationalist, Charles Ryrie he thought, then you're a dispensationalist.
Wrong dispensation, but a dispensationalist nonetheless.
And we should note that most are fine with Acts 2 dispensationalists.
Tell someone you're an Acts 2 dispensationalist, and they'll barely bat an eye.
They're fine with that.
Even though, now listen closely, they're fine with you being an Acts 2 dispensationalist.
Even though not one, not one Acts 2 dispensationalists do what Acts 2 says to do.
None are able to Acts 2:4 speak multiple languages without being taught to.
And not one is living a communal lifestyle by verse 45, having sold all their possessions and goods and parted them to all men.
Talk about hypocrisy.
Welcome to hippocratesville, population in the millions.
You cannot execute your hands-on doctrine if you don't first figure out where it is.
Can we learn from Acts 2?
Yes, things written afore time are for our learning, Romans 15:4, but my hands-on doctrine?
No, listen, not found in Acts chapter 2.
God didn't supernaturally give me the ability to speak in multiple languages.
I'm not living the communal lifestyle.
I haven't sold all my possessions.
So, the wise thing to do is to get real and realize that the church, which is his body, didn't begin until Acts 9 with the calling out and saving of the Apostle Paul, which makes me an Acts 9 dispensationalist.
That's right.
Everyone is a dispensationalist in some respect.
But if you get your dispensational starting point correct, you'll be able to do what your doctrine says to do.
The advantages of being a dispensationalist is knowing what is and what is not written directly to us.
When dealing with those dispensational opposers, notice how they will, they credit a man with coming up with it instead of God himself.
Somebody get them a Bible because in Ephesians 1:10, the word of God, if that means anything to you, the word of God speaks of the dispensation of the fullness of times.
This is future, when he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth.
And Paul mentions the dispensation we currently live in and he said, If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God, which was given me to youward.
That's Ephesians 3:2.
In Colossians 1:25, God inspired Paul to write this, Whereof I am made a minister, according to the... here it is, ...the dispensation of God, which is given to me for you to fulfill the word of God.
Oh, what do we have here?
Listen, without God making Paul a minister and without God giving him his own personal dispensation, the dispensational naysayers wouldn't even have a Bible.
And as a result, listen, as a result of their ignorance, people, they like to say there's only one gospel in the Bible.
No, there's only one gospel today at present, but there is more than one gospel in your Bible.
They say that even though in 1 Corinthians 9:17, Paul said, A dispensation of the gospel,... let me say that again, ...a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me.
So, for us Bible believers, we're, we're starting to see here, dispensations are not an invention of any man, they belong to God himself.
And he put them right here in his perfectly preserved word some 1800 years before a man named Darby.
So, don't fall for the lies.
A stewardship over different instructions for different people during different times, hey, that's God's idea, not man's.
Remember Hebrews 1:1, God who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets.
He did it in time past, and he did it again with the Apostle Paul.
That's why Paul said, Whereby when you read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men as it is now, as it is now revealed into his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.
As it is now, not before.
There were obviously things not known in other ages that were made known in the first century to the Apostle Paul.
This isn't hard to understand, just hard for some to believe, because it shakes the foundation of what they've been taught.
Want to get men riled up?
Go against their tradition.
Bringing awareness to there being distinct dispensations in the Bible goes directly against tradition.
The dispensation Jesus gave Paul concerned a different gospel with a different destination and is why no one prior to Paul had ever even heard about dying and going to heaven to spend eternity.
The dispensation of the gospel given to Paul was Roman 16:25 kept secret since the world began.
This revelation of the mystery deals with how that God was in Christ, reconciling the world into himself, and it's there where he stopped charging sins to us.
The mystery was how he did this without a covenant or the law.
This was mystery, not prophecy, mystery, meaning hid in God and kept secret.
Something I find incredibly noteworthy is out of the 13 epistles of the Apostle Paul, he used the word "dispensation" four times, not once, not twice, not even three times, but God had Paul to put it in the Holy Scriptures four times, which is more than the phrase, "born again."
Yet, we don't have people today trying to discredit the phrase, "born again," by suggesting that a man came up with it in the 1800s, now do we?
A dispensation needs a steward and the Apostle Paul is the steward for this current dispensation we live in.
It deals with the management of God's revealed purpose, how things are ordered and managed within a certain setting.
His writings contain the daily affairs for the body of Christ.
That's where we find our marching orders.
To have a steward of a household, someone in charge, someone who, who managed the daily affairs so that the house ran smoothly.
A steward's responsibility would also deal with dispensing, how things are distributed.
So, when we, when we speak of there being different dispensations, this speaks to how God has different ways of sorting out one thing from another in different time fragments.
A dispensation is not a period of time as some teach, but it does happen within a specific time.
When we allow his word, when we allow it by itself to reign as our final authority, we cannot help but to see that God governs differently with each administration and each economy.
With each, man is given different responsibilities.
God does not change.
He's the same yesterday and today and forever, but his expectations of mankind have varied from one dispensation to the other.
Your salvation doesn't depend on you building an ark, but Noah's did.
I don't know how a student of the word could deny that there's different dispensations in this Bible.
You got to really go out of your way not to see this, not to see how that God related to his people differently throughout scripture.
In time past, the law governed Israel, but in time present, grace governs us.
Go read Titus chapter 2, read verses 11 and 12.
In Matthew through John, God governed them by their keeping of the law. Matthew 23 verses 2 and 3, Jesus speaking said, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat, whatsoever they bid you observe and do.
That's the law.
That's performance.
And in chapter 19 verses 16 and 17, a man asked Jesus, What good things shall I do that I can have eternal life?
His answer?
Keep the commandments, the law.
Most reject dispensationalism, which results in missing God's dual purpose and divine plan for mankind.
You can't get out of the first book of the Bible without recognizing this duality.
Genesis 1:1, In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
He created both for a specific reason, one for an earthly kingdom and the other for a heavenly kingdom.
Matthew 6:10 goes right along with it, Jesus said, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.
God's will will indeed be done in both.
Then watch what Jesus tells Paul to tell us, Ephesians 2:6, ...and have raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
So are we waiting on thy kingdom come?
No, we are not.
This is God's dual plan for humanity right here for all to see and understand his dual plan.
One found in prophecy, books before and after Paul, the other found in mystery, Paul's books, Romans through Philemon.
Religious institutions continue to cause confusion by overlooking Bible dispensations four times we see the word, but the concept is actually in several places.
In fact, a dispensation can be traced all the way back to Adam in the garden.
It's vital that we, we recognize the dispensations of God and the stewards that managed each one.
Adam, Adam was a steward.
He was a manager.
Adam was the steward of the garden.
Abraham was a steward of the promise.
Moses was a steward of the law.
And Paul was a steward of grace.
Now grace can be found all throughout the Bible in each dispensation, but not a full-on dispensation of grace.
When we talk about that, that's nowhere outside of the Apostle Paul's writings, Romans through Philemon.
Do your homework.
Come to your own conclusion.
Jesus gave us some insight of the, the word, "steward," in Luke chapter 12 verse 42, And the Lord said, Who then is that faithful and wise steward whom his Lord shall make rule over his household to give them their portion of meat in due season?
God has different stewards with different rules for different households.
Paul is our Apostle, Romans 11:13, and was given the responsibility of being a steward of the mysteries of God for this grace dispensation.
As we see in 1 Corinthians chapter 4 verses 1 and 2, Let a man so account of us as the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God, 1 Corinthians chapter 4.
Listen, studying scripture through dispensational lenses, you know what it's going to do?
It's going to open up your understanding like never ever before.
My job here today as an ambassador for Christ, my job is not to convince you of anything.
Anything I can talk you into someone else can come along and talk you out of.
I want you in this book discovering these truths for yourself.
If you don't come to the same conclusion we here at Truth Time have, that's fine, but we want, we got to get you in this book.
During the, the, the Cambodian genocide, I think it was 1970,
it was in the 70s, but there was a man, a man who led this, who led a regime called the Khmer Rouge.
His name was, his name was something like Pol, Polpot, or Polpot.
I may be pronouncing it wrong, but Pot told his men to target those who wore eyeglasses.
Those who wore eyeglasses he considered a threat because they were more likely to be intellectuals, and the educated, it was the educated that were seen as their biggest threat.
So, acquiring knowledge was a reason to be stopped and interrogated, which often led to a death sentence for wearing eyeglasses.
And if you remember, God told Israel that they were destroyed for lack of knowledge, but here we see people being destroyed for having knowledge.
We should be very thankful, very thankful indeed that we currently have no such regime.
We're free to 2 Timothy 2:15 study, educate ourselves so we can rightly divide the gospel of our salvation from the gospel not of our salvation, dividing the dispensations found in scripture.
Paul said to consider what he said and the Lord will give you understanding in all things, 2 Timothy 2:7.
Those today claiming to be covenant in their theology, we've had to deal with them for quite some time now, many times over the years, over the years of our ministry.
And well, at times they too have to become dispensationalist to a degree.
They have to because at times, they have a moment of clarity and realize just how idiotic and contradicting their teachings sound.
So, they have to tweak it back, shave off a little, and change what they're saying.
But you don't because, because you don't have to.
As an Acts 9 dispensationalist, we simply don't have to do that.
But most, they tend to take a little from one dispensation, a little from another dispensation, they cherry pick is what they do, they get some parts here and parts there and then make a combo meal.
Their failure to recognize the distinct stewardship given to the Apostle Paul results in them being unstable.
People will run from cover to cover one end of the Bible to the other, trying to make everything about them.
Stealing Israel's mail.
But dispensational understanding will help you with that.
It clears the cobwebs and lets you know where you stand.
I don't forgive others to be forgiven, Matthew 6:14.
I forgive others because I'm already forgiven, Ephesians 4:32.
I don't get baptized to receive the Holy Spirit, Acts 2:38, because the Holy Spirit baptized me into the body of Christ,
1 Corinthians 12:13.
The reason I haven't Matthew 19:29 forsaken my home, my family, and land as a condition to inherit everlasting life, is because I'm a dispensationalist.
And so are you if you're honest.
See, one dispensation teaches one thing, another dispensation teaches something else.
Over time, God has used more than one body of principles to govern man.
In scripture, God's divine purpose doesn't change, but the means did.
He dealt with different people in different times using different manners.
Understanding what dispensation we're currently in will ultimately help us answer two very important questions.
What is God doing, and what is to be expected of me today?
In time past, God gave Moses a dispensation of law for Israel, but he gave Paul a dispensation of grace for us.
Under the law, they were expected to keep it in order to inherit
everlasting life, but our salvation is according to mercy, Titus 3:5, and not by works of righteousness which we have done.
The idea of our Bible having different dispensational truths is really not a hard concept to grab hold to, but to do so, you've got to get rid of some nonsensical notions that have been put forth by those who teach covenant theology.
Their idea of rightly dividing is to make a distinction between the old covenant and new covenant, to which a Bible believer, they know that both the old covenant and the new covenant are meant for the same people.
The House of Israel and the House of Judah.
Truth confirmed by Jeremiah 31 verses 31 to 34, and Hebrews chapter 8 verses 8 through 13.
Go read it, then believe it.
You're not there.
We're not old covenant, we're not new covenant, we're not old covenant Israel, we're not new covenant Israel, we're not either or we're neither nor.
You and I are members of the church which is his body, Ephesians 2:22.
Covenant theology and their failure to rightly divide, they have to pretend that all the books of the Bible contain one message to every one of all time, which leaves them scratching their head while having to make up stories to explain certain verses instead of simply believing them as they are written, as they were written and to whom they were written.
If you sit down at a poker table, the, the dealer, he'll dispense cards.
Your cards will change from one hand to the next.
You go to a soda fountain, place your cup underneath the dispenser that says, Sprite, it shouldn't be a surprise when you get a Sprite.
Sprite is not Coke, Coke is Coke.
Sprite's not Coke, no more than law is grace.
Sprite's not Coke, law is not grace, and Israel is God's first born, you are not.
You're the church, which is his body.
The Bible is structured like, like a library.
It's not a single, linear novel.
The Bible is made up of various books written to various people throughout different times describing various events.
In it, we see certain markers that distinguish dispensations.
And hopefully something I've said here today will help you see the simplistic nature of how your Bible is actually laid out.
God's word wasn't written to fool anyone.
There's no trickery here.
It is man who's responsible for that.
Now, I'm, I'm in no way saying that there aren't some things in scripture that are hard to understand, there certainly are.
But let me tell you this, you don't stand a chance of understanding this book until you first figure out the layout.
If you're on the interstate driving from one state to another, you'll notice that each state dispenses speed laws, and some differ from the next.
You're cruising along at 75 miles per hour and, and you look at your heads up display and notice the speed sign turned red. That's your warning.
A warning that a new dispensation, a new speed limit is in effect.
As dispensationalists, we have our own heads up system.
When we look to God's word, we notice the changes.
We see how he dealt with Adam and Eve before sin, and we see how he changed his dealings with them after sin.
We recognize how things changed after the flood from before the flood.
We see the clear differences found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John from the letters of Paul.
They're different, different instructions, something different's going on.
And a lot of people see this.
That's why they call Paul a heretic.
And on the flip side, Martin Luther thought James was the heretic.
Wanted his books removed from the Bible.
Because much of his teachings are opposite to Paul's.
He got that right.
But as Acts 9, mid-Acts dispensationalists, we have the answer to the supposed conundrum.
We don't want James' book removed from the Bible.
It's perfect right where it is.
Your dispensational thinking won't line up with traditional thought, so don't be surprised when you're labeled a heretic also.
What do you think those law-dog Judaisers thought about Paul when he came bullhorning the gospel of grace in their cities?
They tried to kill him, that's what they did.
Wanted him dead, preaching salvation by grace through faith alone, hey, it comes with a price.
If your belief system's been put together like one of those crazy quilts, I think they're called, some column album quilts.
You know, the ones that women used to sew, maybe still do, putting a piece of history in a here and then placing a picture of somebody here, it's a beautiful thing, but that's not how our Bible operates.
We have to rightly divide the dispensations and keep them in their proper place.
It helps the believer to discover their true identity in Christ, no longer having to, to cherry pick from various dispensations, trying to piece them all together and figure out who you are and where you stand, it'll never work.
You'll be unstable in all your ways.
But listen, you don't have to rightly divide to get saved.
We want to make that clear.
All you have to do for salvation is hear and believe Paul's gospel.
But the problem is, many never hear and believe the correct gospel because they never heard it taught dispensationally.
But you hearing and believing the gospel is the main thing and we want to motivate you.
Truth Time Radio is here to do just that, to get your nose in God's book.
His book is the only authority.
If we presented something that got you in this book studying for yourself, we did our job.
We did what we set out to do because we believe that for many, that's all that's lacking, putting God's word before their tradition, putting his word before mama said, daddy said, preacher said.
So, being dispensational means we recognize that God has had different methods of speaking.
As dispensationalists, we see and respect the timelines, the plans, and the purposes.
We know that his purpose for Israel was to make of himself a peculiar nation of kings and priests to inherit heaven on earth.
Matthew 5:5, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
That's not you.
But thankfully we're not left out.
He has a plan and purpose for us, too.
To set our affection on things above, not on things on the earth, Colossians 3:2.
Those two verses do not say the same thing.
They oppose one another and they're supposed to.
Nothing wrong with your Bible, it's your approach.
And if you are not looking at your Bible dispensationally, things will get confused really quick.
Like it or not, agree with it or not, your Bible is not saying the same thing everywhere to all people.
There are two groups of people with two separate destinations, and you're a part of the new creature heading for heavenly places, not a nation of people looking for their new city to come down on earth.
There's a reason the term, "the church which is his body," is found in Paul's writings.
There's more than one church in your Bible, but the body of Christ church was a unique entity that remained hid in God before being revealed to the Apostle Paul.
An honest look at scripture will bear out everything I'm telling you here.
Just go put your nose in the book, study this book.
God has more than one people, one purpose, and one destiny.
But this truth, it'll remain hidden until you put on your dispensational lenses and take a fresh look.
Christ died for your sins, he was buried, three days later he rose to justify all that would rest their faith in him, solely in him alone.
The world's sins stop being imputed at the cross.
Our victory is found in him and in him alone.
There's only one way to heaven and it is through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
When a man who is honestly mistaken, when he hears the truth, he'll either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest.
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