To understand where time is taking us prophetically, it is important to understand where we have been in time. God has dealt with man under different covenants in time, revealing more of Himself with each covenant. Each covenant had a time element, a test, grace, and always ended in a judgment or consequence.
These time periods are referred to as dispensations. There will be seven of them when time is no more. The Psalmist said, “From everlasting to everlasting You are God.” Time is God’s creation wedged between eternity past and eternity future or everlasting to everlasting. God’s week of dispensations finds us in the church age near the beginning of the final dispensation. Below is a summary of God’s timeline.
God’s Timeline
7 Biblical Dispensations
“…that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ…” Ephesians 1:10
1. Innocence
Beginning covenant: Edenic
Time: Adam to expulsion
Test: Would man obey God in a perfect environment?
Outcome: Individual failure
Grace: God provides a covering
Crises: Expulsion
2. Conscience
Beginning covenant: Adamic
Time: expulsion to flood (1656 years)
Test: Would men follow a godly conscience?
Outcome: Man fails collectively
Grace: The ark of salvation
Crises: the flood
3. Human Gov’t
Beginning covenant: Noahic
Time: flood to tower of Babel (429 years)
Test: Would man rule righteously?
Outcome: Failure as races and nations
Grace: Separation from each other.
Crises: Tower of Babel
4. Promise
Beginning covenant: Abrahamic
Time: Call of Abraham to Mt. Sinai
Test: Will man live righteously under the promises of God?
Outcome: Chosen people failed – out of land, slavery, wilderness.
Grace: God preserves them and raises up Moses to lead them.
Crises: Slavery
5. Law
Beginning covenant: Mosaic
Time: Mt. Sinai to cross
Test: Will people live righteously under God’s written law?
Outcome: Jewish nation fails again.
Grace: God protects and preserves His people.
Crises: the cross
6. Grace
Beginning covenant: Davidic
Time: Cross to crown
Test: Will men live righteously under pure grace?
Outcome: Fails to accept grace, church becomes lukewarm.
Grace: Whosoever will
Crises: Second coming, Armageddon
7. Kingdom age
Beginning covenant: New Covenant
Time: Second coming to destruction of Satan
Test: Will men live righteously with Christ on the throne and Satan bound?
Outcome: Fails to accept perfect rule in righteousness.
Grace: Living in millennium
Crises: Renovation of earth
