The idea of 7 dispensations is mentally fun and exciting, but not Biblical. There is no such thing as a “human government” age. There is no such thing as a “church age” that precedes another and different kingdom age. There are no hundreds of years worth of church history outlined in Revelation. There’s no need for endlessly complicated charts and diagrams to be shoved into creative boxes of vengeful and power-hungry hopes and dreams of “I told you so” feelings that wouldn’t be possible to experience in perfected forms anyway. It’s not that complicated.
The Jews knew the promise of a Messiah and a coming kingdom. It’s what they always understood and always expected. The only thing they missed is that God was offering a spiritual fix for their sin, not a physical fix for their desire to rule to world in the flesh. Much of the Bible addresses their misunderstanding of such. Are we to make the same mistake? We shouldn’t. We are blessed with the totality of God’s word and His Spirit. Shame on us if we make the same mistake many of the Jews made, and continue to make to this day. To do so is to miss the subject of the entire Bible: Jesus and His redemptive work through His perfect justice and perfect love. There is the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. There is the old sacrificial system, and there is the ultimate sacrifice. There is the keeping of the law and the keeping of the Holy Spirit. And are they to be concurrent at some point in the future? No. Christ’s mission was a success. Anything that preaches future physical sacrifice demanded by God should be a giant red flag.
With that out of the way, the first thing Darby got wrong is innocence vs conscience. Adam and Eve, while innocent, had a conscience. They knew obedience from disobedience. They knew right from wrong. Eve explained right from wrong to the serpent:
“We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”
She and Adam sinned by violating their conscience. The apostle Paul tells us how that works. And what happened immediately after their sin? Blood sacrifice. And what did Cain and Able after her do? Sacrifice. Remember? Abel got it right, but Cain got it wrong. No blood, no bueno. And what did Noah do? Sacrifice. This is no doubt one of the reasons they brought seven of the clean onto the Ark, while only two of the unclean. Sacrifice didn’t start with Abraham. It continued. (Bonus note: you can see here that clean/unclean animals preceded the Jews by at least 500 years as well. God and Noah talked about them.)
The second thing Darby got wrong was the idea that human conscience ended. You may say these are “dispensations,” so they don’t have to end. Well, innocence ended. So if conscience doesn’t end, at best these dispensations aren’t intellectually parallel.
The third thing Darby got wrong is the idea that there was no human government from the fall to the flood. We are supposed to believe that nobody organized any leadership or hierarchy over anyone else for 2,000 years? That’s just not natural, never mind that the family is the first form of government. A lack of a mountain of evidence is not proof of non-existence. After all, we do believe a worldwide flood wiped out everything. Not to mention, despite the flood, we still have some ancient Egyptian and Sumerian history evidencing very early human organization. So now in addition to a false end of a dispensation, we have the false beginning of another. Or at best, a period built on a “hunch.” Furthermore, human government didn’t end at the time of Abraham but continues today. So we have both a beginning problem and an end problem in more than one dispensation.
The next problem is a BIG problem. Darby claims that the rejection and death of Jesus was a victory for Satan. Wow! Jesus wasn’t rejected by everyone – he was indeed accepted by many. Additionally, He wasn’t remotely surprised by the rejection of those who rejected Him. The cross was NOT the defeat of Jesus and the cancellation of His plan to reign as an earthly king. First, reigning as earthly king was NOT His plan, and second, coming to die for our sins WAS His plan. The cross was the Victory of Jesus. It was an earthly mission accomplished. It wasn’t a failure!
Yet another Darby delusion is that Christ’s reign and kingdom are somehow postponed and that He is “exiled” in heaven. That is simply in opposition to scripture after scripture after scripture. It’s against the very words of Jesus himself. Luke tells us about the end of the Mosaic Age and the beginning of the kingdom with the New Covenant: “The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it.”
There isn’t a 1,000-year physical reign of Christ either. Why would God limit such a thing? He didn’t. His reign is forever, as the scripture says. Revelation mentions the reign of the martyred saints, WITH Christ. There is no limit put on the reign of Christ Himself, ever. The Bible clearly states the opposite. Furthermore, common sense and basic Bible wisdom can be used to conclude that there won’t be some half-good, half-evil society inhabited by half-mortal, half-immortal people, with the coexistence of both the Mosaic Covenant and the New Covenant, with the wolf laying down with the lamb, then us sacrificially slaughtering that same lamb even though the wolf didn’t eat it, and even though Christ the ultimate sacrifice is standing beside us! The drunken doctrinal dance this requires to force into reality contradicts the very nature of God, who does, and expects us to do, “everything decently and in order.”
In summary, Christ did what He set out to do. He freed us from sin, He conquered death. He reigns at the right hand of the Father. We are clothed with the imperishable because of it. And when we leave this earth, we will immediately go to be with Him. All Praise to the Lamb that was slain. Thank you, Jesus!