WHOLE BIBLE TIMELINE (CHARTED)

Part II: Explaining The Transitions In The Bible Timeline

 

I.                 Introduction

A.    Interactions with class members have revealed the need to provide a whole Bible timeline together with the dispensations and an explanation of dispensationalism, and why we hold to dispensational beliefs.

B.     We are thus teaching two lessons on the whole Bible timeline, the first one having been on dispensationalism itself, with this second lesson being on the transitions in the timeline that occur besides the dispensations:

II.              Explaining The Transitions In The Bible Timeline.

A.    The first five dispensations of Innocence, Conscience, Government, Promise and Law follow each other in immediate succession, but a minor transition occurs with the book of Acts as believers in the dispensation of the Church adjust from the Law to the Church, a greater transition occurs between the dispensations of the Church and the Millennium and the greatest transition occurs between the Millennium and Eternity Future.

B.     These transitions that occur in the whole Bible timeline are explained in view of God’s eternal plan:

1.      The succession of the dispensations reveals man’s escalating sin that is met by God’s escalating grace:

                             a.  Though God created man in innocence and told him not to eat of the forbidden tree, man disobeyed God’s order, resulting in man’s Fall into sin, death and eviction from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 1:1-3:6).

                            b.  God thus led man to heed his conscience to avoid sinning, directing Cain to bring the right sacrifice to be accepted by the Lord versus letting sin defeat him.  However, Cain disobeyed God and slew his brother Abel (Genesis 4:1-8).  In time, the human race turned violently murderous, so God had to judge this failure by destroying the human race in the Genesis Flood, saving only godly Noah and his family, Gen. 6:1-8:19.

                             c.  To check the murderous tendency in fallen man, after the Flood, God assigned human government the responsibility of practicing capital punishment for murder, Genesis 9:6.  However, human government went apostate, turning the world’s peoples from God to paganism at the Tower of Babel, Genesis 11:1-9.

                            d.  God then graciously called Abraham to leave Ur of the Chaldees and to sojourn in Canaan, and from Abraham’s “seed,” being Israel in general and Jesus Christ in particular (Genesis 12:1-3; Galatians 3:13-14), God promised to bless all the families of the earth.  However, Abraham’s descendants sinned in rejecting God’s servant Joseph who was Jacob’s son (cf. Genesis 37:1-36), so God by grace intervened to use Joseph to preserve Jacob’s family and its unity by use of a great famine (Genesis 39:1-50:26).

                             e.  Again, God graciously rescued Abraham’s descendants from Egypt in the Exodus and gave them the Law, forming them into the nation Israel to prepare them to conquer the Promised Land to fulfill God’s promise to Abraham (Ex. 1:1-20:17; Gen. 15:13-21).  However, Israel failed to keep the Law, and the nation later crucified Jesus Christ, the promised “seed” of Abraham (2 Chron. 36:14-21; Dan. 9:26a; Matt. 27:22-26).

2.      However, escalating levels of man’s sin met by God’s escalating grace required escalating transitions:

                             a.  After Christ was crucified, in great grace, God chose to save individual Hebrews and Gentiles and put them into one body, the Church, Rom. 11:1-36.  For Hebrew and Gentile believers to merge in unity took a big adjustment, requiring a minor transition from the Law to the Church as noted in the book of Acts.

                            b.  Yet, most of the world will reject the Church’s witness of Christ (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12), and since God very graciously plans to set up the righteous Millennial Kingdom for believers after the world’s rejection of Christ, massive changes must occur in the world for that Kingdom to arrive.  Thus, God must send a greater transition of the Tribulation Period to lead every human on earth either to trust in Christ or in the Antichrist, and to punish the unsaved for rejecting Christ (2 Thessalonians 2:8-12).

                             c.  Nevertheless, even with the righteous Millennium and Christ on the earth ruling the world in blessing for a thousand years, man’s heart is still so evil that when Satan is freed to deceive unbelieving offspring of believers with sin natures, it will result in a worldwide rebellion against Christ, Rev. 20:7-8.  Thus, in vast grace, God will abolish the effects of sin in man’s environment and fully address sin in every human being throughout eternity in His greatest transition: God will destroy the worldwide rebellion, cast Satan into the lake of fire, destroy the old universe that is stained by sin and its effects, conduct the Great White Throne judgment of all unbelievers and create a new universe without sin in believers (Rev. 20:9-22:5).

 

Lesson: The dispensations reveal an escalating growth in man’s sin that is met by God’s escalating grace, so escalating transitions in the timeline are needed to handle the rising contrast between man’s sin and God’s grace.

 

Application: May we today rejoice in God’s great grace to us and rely on Him for total victory over sin in our lives!