When Christians approach spiritual problems – when they see conflict or paradoxes between truth and facts – they have the following choices:
- Go to their prayer closet and converse and learn from God
- Find someone who functions in the spiritual realm in which they\’re having a problem and
- learn from them, or let them solve their problem
- Create a doctrine that explains why something doesn\’t work
In modern Christianity, we\’ve excelled at #3, creating doctrine.
Dispensationalism is one of those doctrines. It\’s used to create and explain the ages of Law and Grace (the Old Testament vs. the New Testament); the cessation of some of the spiritual gifts; to create a thing called the Apostolic age, and to generally confuse people by teaching them the traditions of men rather than the truth of God.
As with many things of God, the truth is so much simpler. Before we learn something in the spirit, we must first understand its sibling in the natural. At least that\’s the pattern God had used.
The Law of the Sowing and Reaping
Consider the law of sowing and reaping. In the natural we understand that if we sow corn, we will reap corn and we will reap more than we sow – it\’s why we have farmers. But also consider that God provided it as a fundamental spiritual axiom. He explicitly stated that if you follow my law, good things will happen to you, but if you disobey my law, bad things will happen:
See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you listen to the commandments of the Lord your God, which I am commanding you today; and the curse, if you do not listen to the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way which I am commanding you today, by following other gods which you have not known.
In other words, that which they sowed, the also reaped: obedience in the natural resulted in blessing in natural and vise-versa.
The Law of Blessing
In the law of sowing and reaping, we receive based upon what we have done. In the law of blessing, we receive based upon what God has done.
The law of sowing and reaping is the beginning, primary or natural law that points us to the better or higher law, the law of blessing. In the Old Testament we experience the law of sowing and reaping, but in the New Testament, we experience the law of blessing.
In other words, in the OT, it\’s about what we do. In the NT, it\’s about what God has done.
In the OT, where the primary lesson is the power of sin, we find that if you touch a leaper you become unclean. But in the NT, where the primary lesson is the power of God\’s love, if you touch a leaper, they become clean.
So then, we find that the economy of God dealing with Man has nothing to do with various dispensations, but with precept upon precept, line upon line (Isa. 28:10), teaching us in the natural the principles of the spiritual, as the author of Hebrews explained when suggesting that his audience leave the elementary doctrine of the Christ.
My suggestion is that we leave Dispensationalism where it belongs: in the annals of the doctrines and traditions of men; where such things are created to explain away the truths of God that stand in conflict of the facts observed by those who placed their faith in reason rather than the Truth, the revealed Logos of God.
