What is dispensationalism and is it biblical?

This is literally 'administration of a house,' an 'economy,' and hence an ordered dealing with men by God in the varied administration of his ways at different times.

He enlightened all with regard, not precisely, to the mystery, but to the administration of the mystery; that is to say, not only the counsel of God, but the accomplishment in time of that counsel by bringing the assembly together under Christ its head. He who had created all things, as the sphere of the development of His glory, had kept this secret in His own possession, in order that the administration of the mystery, now revealed by the establishment of the assembly on earth, should be in its time the means of making known to the most exalted of created beings the manifold and various wisdom of God.

The Dispensation of the Law followed, strictly the first publicly ordered system of God's dealing with men, and administered by angels. The oracles of God were given to a nation, the only nation in all the earth that God had known in this way. It was the dispensation of 'Do this, and live and be blessed; disobey, and be cursed.'

The Dispensation of Grace and Truth commenced, after the preaching of John, by the advent of Christ. During this economy the gospel is preached to every creature under heaven, and the calling out of the Church takes place, extending as a parenthesis, from the day of Pentecost to the rapture of the saints.

The Dispensation of the Reign of Christ over the earth during the millennium. It is also called 'the dispensation of the fulness of times.' Eph. 1:10; Rev. 20:1-6.

A knowledge of "dispensational truth," as it is often termed, is indispensable for the intelligent reading of the Bible. Yet many Christians seem to have hardly given it a thought.

God has been pleased to deal with men at different times in various ways. Fresh revelations of Himself and of His will have ushered in new modes of dealing with men, new dispensations.

"Dispensational truth" teaches us to rightly distinguish these changes, and to discern their nature, so that the salient features of each may not be obscured. The importance of this for us Christians is that we thereby learn the true character of the calling wherewith we are called from on high, and of the age in which our lot is cast.

The time during which the Church of God is being formed is just while Christ, the risen and glorified Head, is hidden in the heavens, and while the earth ceases to be the scene of God's manifested operations. Neither the earth nor any particular land is publicly owned of God now; it was once, before the Church period commenced, and it will be again after that period has ceased. But now, God is gathering out of the earth the heavenly family to be the body of Christ, His Bride — to be conformed to Him in everything, to be as separated from the world as He is, to have nothing on earth, either in the way of standing, hope, or calling.

If the formation of the Church must be confined to the precise period above named (and is it not?) then those who lived a thousand years, more or less, before that period commenced, cannot be regarded as part of it. They belonged to some of the families referred to in Ephesians 3:15 ... but they do not belong to the Church, properly so called.

All saints, from the beginning, have the same eternal life, they are the children of the same God and Father, and the same heaven will be their home for ever; but the Old Testament saints belong to another dispensation, or to the different dispensations which ran their course before Christ came. Each dispensation has its own rise, progress, decline, and fall, in scripture, and will have its own reflection in heaven. Neither persons nor dispensations will be undistinguished there.

The law said, "Lay hold on him" — the Gospel said, "Embrace him;" the law said, "Stone him" — the Gospel said, "Kiss him;" and yet, be it remembered, we meet the same God in both.

Dispensations may change, but God, blessed be His name, can never cease to be "the holy, holy, holy Lord God of Israel;" nor can He ever cease in His effort to make His people like what He is Himself.

The characteristic feature of the old dispensation was law, that of the new is grace. The giving of the law at Sinai ushered in the former. God formulated His demands upon men. He was to receive, and they were to give, that which was His due. ... In Christ a power mightier than the law was present. ... Now God gives and man receives. The new dispensation is marked by grace reigning through righteousness, to eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 5:21).

There is nothing national about the church. Peter declared, corroborated by James, that the divine programme for this dispensation is the visiting of the nations by God, "to take out of them a people for His name" (Acts 15:13-14). God is now making an election from all nations, and those thus gathered out for His name compose "the church."

Here was a kind of wisdom altogether new; a thing outside the world, hitherto shut up in the mind of God, hid in Himself so that there was no promise or prophecy of it, but the special object of His eternal purpose; connected in a peculiar way with the One who is the centre and the fulness of the mystery of godliness.

The calling of a body which knows neither Jew nor Gentile within itself, but of both makes one new man, was a mystery as yet hid in God, not disclosed in the prophecies though they might confirm it when it was disclosed.