From the Reformation to the present time many different “truths” have been recovered in the Lord’s recovery. Actually their recoveries were not recoveries of truth, but of doctrine. The presbytery is not a truth but a doctrine. Baptism by immersion is not a truth but a doctrine. In the seventeenth century in northern Europe certain ones began to see that all Christians are brothers. Eventually in the eighteenth century the Moravian brothers under the leadership of Zinzendorf began to practice the church life as brothers. Even the brotherhood, though, is not a truth but a doctrine. Even the teaching concerning holiness and sanctification is not a truth but a doctrine. This doctrine talks about outward things. To be sanctified is to be sinless and not to be worldly. As I have mentioned already, all of these doctrines became different teachings, different ministries, which issued in sects.
From the Reformation to the present time different theologies have been taught. Today there is the Catholic theology, and with the Protestants is reformed theology. Another theology may be termed dispensational theology. According to reformed theology, the Old Testament and the New Testament are the same with no difference. This is like making a person’s face flat with no distinctions for the eyes, nose, mouth, or ears. The teaching of reformed theology is wrong. Another kind of theology is what I call secular theology which is taught in the secular universities as a department for the learning of human culture. In human culture there is a section of religion, including a section of Christian religion. People study this kind of theology in a secular way. At some of these secular universities, the students learn theology just like people learn art in the school of art. We should not follow either the reformed theology or the secular theology.
The word dispensation, biblically speaking, was rightly understood by the school of dispensational theology. They say that God has different ways of dealing with man from Adam to the end of the millennium. Scofield took the lead to say that in God’s dealing with the human race He has seven arrangements. He said this because this word dispensation is a translation of the Greek word oikonomiawhich means a kind of household management, arrangement or administration. The dispensational theologians understood this word rightly in saying that in God’s dealing with the human race there are seven arrangements from Adam to the end of the millennium. These dispensations are the dispensations of innocence, conscience, human government, promise, law, grace, and the kingdom. Some of the stricter Brethren teachers, though, say that according to Romans 5:14 there should be just four main dispensations. This verse has in it the phrase “from Adam until Moses.” The dispensation before law is, as Romans 5:14 says, from Adam to Moses. The dispensation of law is from Moses to Christ’s first coming. Then the dispensation of grace is from His first coming to His second coming. Finally, the fourth dispensation is the dispensation of the kingdom. This is more scriptural. The word dispensation was rightly understood by these Brethren teachers, but their understanding of the significance of God’s dispensation was very short. They only saw that the dispensations were God’s arrangements for Him to carry out His purpose. They did not see that God’s dispensation, God’s arrangement, or the arrangement of His divine administration, has a purpose. His purpose is to dispense Himself into His chosen and redeemed people. This purpose has been nearly fully missed by the dispensational theologians, and they are the good theologians.
The shortcoming of the dispensational teachings has never been pointed out as it is today. We have the boldness and the light to say this because through the past forty years the Lord has shown us the New Testament economy plus the New Testament ministry. Based upon this, we have the light, the boldness, and the assurance to say that the dispensational teachings are right but missing the goal. God did have four main dispensations, but these dispensations are for one unique purpose—to dispense Himself into His chosen people as everything. This is why I had the burden in May of 1983 in Stuttgart to minister on this one thing—to show that the dispensations have a purpose, a goal, and a central view to dispense God Himself into His chosen people. These messages have been published with a title “The Central View of the Divine Dispensation.” I hope that you would spend some time to read these messages again by picking up the crucial points. If you read them again in the way that I presented to you in the previous two chapters you will see something crucial. You will see that God’s dispensations are for His dispensing. Dispensation means household arrangement, but dispensing means to pass out, to distribute, the processed Triune God as life and as life supply to be our spiritual, heavenly, and divine supply.
In the Old Testament, Joseph distributed the rich food of Pharaoh to the hungry, famished ones. As a New Testament Joseph, Paul took the lead to do this and we are his followers to pass out the Triune God, processed, as the very divine food to feed all the hungry people of the earth. This is the governing principle. I was strongly taught by the Brethren that to interpret the entire Bible you need to take care of the dispensations. Merely to take care of the dispensations, however, is not adequate. You must take care of the dispensing of the dispensations. This must be and is the basic, great principle to govern our interpretation of the Bible. When you young brothers, standing on our shoulders, go on to develop the truth, you must be ruled by this principle—the principle of the divine dispensing in God’s dispensations.