What is dispensationalism and is it biblical?

The word before us, oikonomia — which also occurs in verse 2 of the chapter, translated "dispensation" there — is a compound of two words meaning "house" and "law." So an exact English equivalent would be "house-law," and its obvious, primary meaning would be the law, rules, regulations or administration of a household. The word itself is quite familiar to our English ears and tongues in an anglicised form — "economy."

A revelation from God: at the beginning of a dispensation God gives a new revelation. This does not mean that He has changed, but that He either reveals an additional aspect of Himself or establishes one or more new ground rules... Responsibility or administration of man arising from this... Early failure: in general, man fails very early, in fact at the beginning of the newly-introduced dispensation. Conclusion in judgment: man's failure leads to God eventually having to exercise judgment.

The dispensations are the way God lays out time. First, there was the dispensation of innocence; then of conscience, but without government; then of government, after the flood; then law; and now, if we may speak of this present time as a dispensation, it is that of grace... Unless we see these several varieties of God's dealings, we do not rightly divide the word of truth. For instance, there has recently been some talk of eliminating the imprecatory Psalms. People feel that it is not Christian language, but they do not see that after the church is gone it will be as right for the saints then on the earth to use them as it was for Stephen to pray for his enemies.

The essence of dispensationalism, then, is the distinction between Israel and the church. This grows out of the dispensationalist's consistent use of normal or plain or historical-grammatical interpretation, and it reflects an understanding of the basic purpose of God in all His dealings with mankind as that of glorifying Himself through salvation and other purposes as well.

It seeks to prove that since dispensationalism in its present form is apparently recent it cannot be true; for surely someone would have taught it in the first eighteen centuries of the history of the church if it were true. Some who use this device to discredit dispensationalism are honest enough to admit that history is never the test of truth — the Bible and only the Bible is. But they persist in using the approach and leave the impression that history is a partially valid test, if not the final test.

It also magnifies God's patience with mankind, and proves that the way of salvation has always been by grace on God's part and through faith on the part of individuals. Godly men in Old Testament times knew this... Their faith may have been different from ours in that they could only trust in what God had revealed about Himself prior to or in their dispensation. However, in every dispensation the just live by faith.

The fact that there are slightly different divisions does not in any way alter the fact that there are dispensations. Nor does it affect the key conclusions of dispensational truth, namely that one distinguishes the time of the law from that of grace, one does not confuse Israel with the church, and one holds on to the immediate expectation of the rapture.