Prayer: Lord, how we thank You that You are the speaking God. You have spoken through all the generations. We worship You that You are still speaking today. How we thank You for all the divine provisions for Your speaking! Thank You that You have an oracle of all Your saints on this earth. You have given us the blood, the Spirit, and the Word. Lord, how much we trust in You. We trust in Your cleansing blood and Your anointing Spirit and Your enlightening Word. How good that we are all sitting around Your Word, even around Yourself! Lord, do visit us, and anoint every attendant. Anoint the hearts, the minds, and the spirits. Anoint the speaking and the listening. Lord, be with us throughout the meeting. Lord, meet every need. Lord, even meet Your need through the speaking. Reveal Yourself to us, and take away all the veils. Remove all the coverings that we may have a clear sky above us. Thank You, Lord Jesus. Amen.
We need a central view of God’s divine dispensation. Some Bible teachers in the past have pointed out that there are seven dispensations revealed in the Bible. The first is the dispensation of innocence, which was before Adam’s fall. The second is the dispensation of conscience, which is after the fall and to the time of Noah. The third dispensation is that of human government, which was from Noah to Abraham. The fourth is the dispensation of promise, which was from Abraham to Moses. These four dispensations are covered by one book, Genesis. The fifth dispensation is that of law, which covers the rest of the Old Testament from Exodus through Malachi. The sixth dispensation is that of grace, which covers almost the entire New Testament from John the Baptist to the second coming of Christ. The last dispensation, the seventh, is the dispensation of the kingdom, the one-thousand-year reign of Christ.
Although this teaching is right, they didn’t point out clearly what is the ultimate goal of all these dispensations of God. These dispensations are steps of God’s divine system and arrangement and administration. Of course, some might say that through all these dispensations God was working out His salvation. But we would ask, What is God’s salvation? Is it just to forgive us our sins and just to bring us into heaven? Or is it something further? What is the goal of all these dispensations? What is God’s goal in His full salvation?
The entire Bible consummates in the New Jerusalem. In the first two chapters of the Bible God clearly shows us that His intention is to have a Bride bearing His image, possessing His life, and being transformed and built up as a Bride to match Him, to satisfy Him, and to express Him. God’s eternal intention is not just to save a group of sinners and bring them into heaven, but to have a glorious Bride to be His counterpart to match Him. How He is, this Bride should also be. This Bride will be a match to the Triune God for His expression. This is much, much greater than forgiveness of sin or going to heaven. This is to make all of us a part of God just like a wife is a part of her husband. God is going to reach His goal through all the dispensations and complete His work of making us His counterpart. He began to work in Genesis 3, and He works through the entire Old Testament and the New Testament to reach His goal, the New Jerusalem. God’s goal is a city which will be His Bride. The entire city of the New Jerusalem will be a Bride. It will be a corporate Bride bearing His glorious image to express Him, built up with God the Father’s nature, through God the Son’s death and resurrection, and by God the Spirit’s transformation. This city will be nourished and supplied and fed all the time with the divine life signified by the river of water of life and the tree of life. Then in the entire universe there will be such an organism to match God, to be His Bride, His counterpart, to satisfy Him and express Him. This is God’s goal in His dispensations, and today the proper church life is just a miniature of this Bride. Hallelujah for such a goal!
In this message we want to look at the book of Genesis from a bird’s eye view. If you have such a view of Genesis you will realize that it is composed of eight great persons with an annex. There are Adam, Abel, Enosh, Enoch, and Noah. There are also Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with Joseph as an annex to Jacob. In our life-study on Genesis we pointed out that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob depict one complete person with Joseph as an annex. So there are two groups and a total of nine great men as landmarks of the human race.