DISPENSATIONS
We believe that the dispensations are stewardships by which God administers His purpose on the earth through man under varying responsibilities. We believe that the changes in the dispensational dealings of God with man depend upon changed conditions or situations in which man is successively found with relation to God, and that these changes are the result of the failures of man and the judgments of God. We believe that different administrative responsibilities of this character are manifest in the biblical record, that they span the entire history of mankind, and that each ends in the failure of man under the respective test and in an ensuing judgment from God. We believe that three of these dispensations or rules of life are the subject of extended revelation in the Scripture: the dispensation of the Mosaic Law, the present dispensation of Grace, and the future dispensation of the Millennial Kingdom. We believe that these are distinct and are not to be intermingled or confused, as they are chronologically successive.
We believe that the dispensations are not ways of salvation, nor different methods of administering the so-called Covenant of Grace. They are not in themselves dependent on covenant relationships but are rules of life with responsibility to God which test the submission of man to His revealed will during a particular time. We believe that, if man does trust in his own efforts to gain the favor of God or salvation under any dispensational test, because of his inherent sin, his failure to satisfy fully the just requirements of God is inevitable and his condemnation is sure.
We believe that according to the "eternal purpose" of God (Eph. 3:11) salvation in every dispensation is always "by grace, through faith," alone and rests upon the basis of the shed blood of Christ. We believe that God has always been gracious, regardless of the ruling dispensation, but that a believer has not at all times been under an administration, rule of life, or stewardship of grace as is true in the present dispensation (Romans 6:14; 1 Corinthians 9:17; Ephesians 3:2, 3:9; Colossians 1:25; 1 Timothy 1:4).
We believe that it has always been true that "without faith it is impossible to please" God (Heb. 11:6), and that the principle of faith was prevalent in the lives of all the Old Testament saints. However, we believe that it was historically improbable that they should have had as the conscious object of their faith the incarnate, crucified Son, the Lamb of God (John 1:29), and that it is evident that they did not comprehend as we do that the sacrifices depicted the person and work of Christ. We believe also that they did not understand fully the redemptive significance of the prophecies or types concerning the sufferings of Christ (1 Peter 1:10-12). However, we believe that their faith toward God was manifested in other ways as is shown by the long record in Hebrews 11:1-40.
We believe further that their faith was counted unto them for righteousness (cf. Rom. 4:3 with Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:5-8; Heb. 11:7).
We believe in a consistent, normal, grammatical, historical, method of contextual interpretation for rightly-dividing the Word of God. As a result, we reject Covenant Theology, along with Hyper-dispensationalism and Progressive Dispensationalism, as erroneous theological conclusions. However, we do believe that the past biblical covenants are to be consistently interpreted with this proper method of interpretation, many which were made to the ethnic descendents of Israel, and are yet to be fulfilled as God has promised when Christ returns to the earth, involving a land, seed, and blessings. (Genesis 12:1-2, 13:14-17, 15:1-5, 17-21; Deuteronomy 29:1-30:20; 2 Samuel 7:12-16; Jeremiah 31:31-34) Thus, the Church is not “spiritual Israel.”