What is the dispensation of Conscience?

By the fall, Adam and Eve acquired and transmitted to the race the knowledge of good and evil. This gave conscience a basis for right moral judgment, and hence the race came under this measure of responsibility-to do good and eschew evil. The result of the dispensation of conscience, from Eden to the flood (while there was no institution of government and of law), was that "all flesh had corrupted his way on the earth," that "the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually," and God closed the second testing of the natural man with judgment: the flood. See Gen. 3:7, 22; Gen. 6:5,11-12; Gen. 7:11-12, 23.)

“And there was evening and there was morning, one day” (NASB) This is said of all six days of God's work in bringing order out of desolation, indicating clearly that these were literal days. The things introduced each day were done immediately when God spoke, though they are typical of His dealings in souls personally, and also typical of succeeding dispensations of God through the ages. This first day typifies the first of the ages, the dispensation of conscience as well as the light of creation and of promise. This began with Adam's fall and ended with the flood in Noah's time. Having the knowledge of good and evil together with a conscience that warned him against doing evil, man has proven that his conscience will not preserve him from evil. He will, and has, defiantly ignored his conscience as well as ignoring God's testimony in creation and in His promise to men (Gen. 3:15).

"And there was evening and there was morning, one day" (NASB). this is said of all six days of God's work in bringing order out of desolation, indicating clearly that these were literal days. The things introduced each day were done immediately when God spoke, though they are typical of His dealings in souls personally, and also typical of succeeding dispensations of God through the ages. This first day typifies the first of the ages, the dispensation of conscience as well as the light of creation and of promise. This began with Adam's fall and ended with the flood in Noah's time. Having the knowledge of good and evil together with a conscience that warned him against doing evil, man has proven that his conscience will not preserve him from evil. He will, and has, defiantly ignored his conscience as well as ignoring God's testimony in creation and in His promise to men (Gen.3:15).Go upto Index

TimeDispensationReferenceFailureJudgment1Creation to the fallInnocenceGen. 2:15–17The fall (Gen. 3:6)Banished from Eden (Gen. 3:22–24)2Fall to the floodConscienceGen. 3:7, 22Murder by Cain (Gen. 4:8)Flood (Gen. 6:5, 11–14)3Flood to tower of BabelGovernmentGen. 9:1, 2, 6Noah’s sin (Gen. 9:20–25)Confusion of language (Gen. 11:1–8)4Call of Abraham to SinaiPromiseGen. 12:1–3Abraham’s lack of faith (Gen. 12:10–20)Slavery in Egypt (Ex. 1)5From Moses to ChristLawEx. 19:1–8; 20Initial: Ex. 32 Recurring: 2 Ki. 17:7. Final: Acts 2:23; 7:51, 52Captivity (2 Chron. 36); destruction of Jerusalem (Luke 21:6, 20–24)6Pentecost to the rapture Grace / church / SpiritActs 2:1Acts 5; 6; 20:30; 1 John 2:18, 19, 22 Christendom judged at the appearing (2 Thess. 2:7–12; Rev. 3:16; Rev. 17-18)71,000-year reign of Christ MillenniumIsa. 11; Rev. 20 Eph. 1:10Ps. 101; Rev. 20:7–9Judgment of the nations (Rev. 20:3; 20:7–10)

‘Innocence’ and ‘conscience’, the first two dispensations in Scofield’s scheme, are not regarded as dispensations by all dispensational teachers (e.g. J N Darby[1]) because innocence was not abolished, but lost. Conscience — that is, the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:22) — was also not abolished, but was preserved through the succeeding dispensations.

The trial of natural conscience simply, in the time before the flood.

Starting then from Eternity marked by Alpha on the Chart, human history begins with man placed in Eden in a state of Innocence; from which, alas, he quickly falls. The first period of time is then shown as from Adam fallen (in Gen. 3) to the Judgment of the Flood (in Gen. 6 — 9); and this is described as the Age of unrestrained self-will. Man when left thus for some sixteen hundred years without special manifestations of GOD, and guided only by Conscience, as a consequence quickly degenerated into a self-willed creature led captive by the Devil. (Rom. 5:12-19; Eph. 2:2.) There were marked exceptions as Abel, Enoch, Noah; but the general character of this period was such that only the "Flood" could cleanse the deeply corrupted earth of a race that had become completely reprobate. Noah and his family were saved by the obedience of faith from this otherwise universal destruction. The world that then was perished.

That they had as clear an understanding of these duties I do not affirm, but the duties were there, and rested on them, and the lack of their fulfilment was sin, and the sin was visited with its legitimate penalty — death, "from Adam unto Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression" — that is, transgressing a precept — for this reason, that there were no precepts to transgress; for, after Adam and Eve, coveting the knowledge of good and evil (conscience), acquired it at the cost of their fall, God left them to the experience of it; and until the law there was no other guide or rule of life save conscience, unless exceptional communications from God to individuals, as to Noah, Abraham, Job, &c.

All the world then, during that long period, was in the state of "the Gentiles which have not the law;" yet, even so, there were among them those who at times did "by nature the things contained in the law" when it arrived, They reverenced God, as Job, and obeyed their parents, as Isaac, and thus doing, they showed "the work of the law" (mark not "the law," but its work) "written on their hearts;" to wit, the operation of conscience (Rom. 2:14-15).

The expression used here, "before the age-times" has been obscured by the supposed equivalent expression, "before the world began;" and so it has been conceived to be a promise in the previous eternity, and thus something between the Father and the Son, the terms of that covenant between these of which theology, not Scripture, speaks so much. It remains for theology to produce the first text which speaks of such a covenant. "The promise of life" was, truly, "before the age-times;" the word used here being the adjective of a word even most commonly translated "age," and which is equivalent very much to what we call a dispensation. The dispensations, in fact, had not begun when God gave this promise. Innocence was ended, God was in His grace laying hold of the fallen creature, and that for a blessing which would more than meet all the consequences of the fall; but there was no dispensation in the way in which we speak, and even the first age of man's history, which terminated at the Deluge, had little of the character of a dispensation at all. We may, no doubt, truly call it such; but that which it did was simply to test the reliance of man upon the promise which had been given, the test of the faith of the fallen creature in the remedy which He had announced. There was not, as yet, even the institution of human government, much less was there any law. Every one was a law to himself, and thus there was, in one sense, the fullest trial of man that could be given. He was absolutely free, that he might show now what he would do with his freedom. Alas, the flood swept over that ancient world, leaving but eight persons to begin a new one.

We see that, after the fall, God purposed no new trial to man whatever. He revealed the coming of that Seed of the woman who should bruise the serpent's head. He instituted sacrifice, and thus not obscurely intimated the way of blessing and acceptance for man. He declared actually his acceptance of believing Abel, and to Cain the ground of his rejection and the remedy that still remained. But He gave no law He urged man to no fatal use of his own efforts to work out righteousness. Conscience was to be the teacher of that need which they had as those outside of Eden, whose closed gate was a perpetual witness, as were also the sorrow and death which sin had introduced into the world while repentance — the truthful acknowledgment of their condition — would be as ever the way out of it, by faith in that which on God's part met it all.