SCRIPTURE LESSON.

THE THREE DISPENSATIONS.

Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him. Acts 10-34, 35 For the Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Rom. 14, 17.

Ye believe in God, believe also in me. John 14, 1.

Receive ye the Holy Ghost. John 20, 22.

The twelve gates of pearl are each swung open on two hinges, the immutable word, and the eternal oath of Jehovah. And through these gates we see that the very throne of God is security to the Son that His kingdom on earth shall obtain.

“The Kingdom of God” on earth is that divine system of Grace and Truth which with various degrees of light and certainty points out to all sinners on the face of the earth the way of eternal salvation. This kingdom has its great periods, or cycles, for timeliness marks all the ways and all the works of the Infinite God.

It is a pleasing task to study the manifestation of Truth as it comes in single file at the command of Jehovah to bless the world. Its forms are not separate and independent entities, and activities, but different manifestations of the same divine and eternal unity, each truth harmonizing with each preceding truth and all in perfect sympathy with both God and man, and all designed to lead man back and up into union and fellowship with the Infinite God.

The kingdom of God is overshadowing everyone of us at the present moment like a divine incubation with wings baptized with celestial fire, ready and able to lift us up into higher and richer fields of grace and glory as soon as we are able. We think we are ever ready for we are always slow to believe that on account of our own carnality and earthliness many of the heavenly things would do us harm, just as air would be death to a fish if the fish was lifted out of the water, but for forty centuries the truth could only reach this world by pictures, shadows, signs and symbols, and even while hovering over us today the Holy Spirit often whispers: “I have many things to tell you, but ye cannot bear them now.”

God has divided this great kingdom into three dispensations.

I. The dispensation of the Father.

II. The dispensation of the Son.

III. The dispensation of the Holy Spirit.

The fundamental idea of the kingdom is God manifest in the flesh. In the first, man was created. The second, the God man was created. In the third, God comes to dwell in man. These divisions are not made by caprice, or for convenience, but are according to Supreme Wisdom, for the implantation, progression and development of the divine nature in our humanity.

These dispensations are not marked out by definite coast lines, or separated by intervening spaces, but are contiguous like the colors of the rose in which there is some space where no one can tell which color obtains.

In the Old Testament times the first was prevalent. During the ministry of John and of Christ the second was prevalent. And at Pentecost the third obtained; yet there were a few choice souls even in the first who looked through the second and saw the glory that should follow and experienced to some degree the third. Just as ripe fruit will sometimes be found amid the blossoms when spring and summer meet together in the same tree.

These dispensations which come in succession are now coexistent and are characterized by specific saving truths and experiences and in each of them there are living today multitudes of sincere and noble souls.

FIRST DISPENSATION.

1. Standing in the defective light of the first dispensation, conscious of our immortality, for that is an essential element of manhood, the Truth first dawns upon us that there is but one God — maker of earth and heaven, judge of all men — and this truth produces within us a serious Godly fear, and that is the initial element in the kingdom of God. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. The highest idea of God was an Almighty Being to be feared and obeyed. The highest idea of piety was one who '‘feared God with all his house.” The word "fear"’ is repeated about 600 times in the Old Testament, while the word "faith” occurs but twice. Yet for more than a century of earth's history there was only one family that feared God. The flood, the overthrow of Babel, the plagues of Egypt, were meant to teach the people to fear God and to convince them that all other gods were vanities and lies.

The nearest approach to God the soul could make was to fear Him and keep His commandments and under the first dispensation this was the whole duty of man.

2. Another feature of this dispensation is the practice of righteousness. Peter says, "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him.” Paul says that the living God does good to all men, giving them rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons that he may not be left without a witness, and whosoever will believe the witnesses receive the knowledge which sunshine and rain give, and which the night showeth; hear the speech which the day uttereth and behold the glory which the heavens declare and who do the right as God gives them to see the right stand in favor with God, in the first dispensation and God will take him at last into His arms and say, as He did to Cyrus, (Is. 45-4) “I have called thee by thy name, I have surnamed thee though thou hast never known me” In the presence of these righteous men, many modern Christians would be imperceptible.

3. Another thing that marks the genius of this dispensation is the Spirit of Caste, or in its milder form, sectarianism.

The spirit of permeation is entirely absent and the spirit of separation pervades the whole period.

One nation was set apart from other nations and that nation was subdivided and one tribe separated from other tribes.

Certain days were separated from other days and certain meats were separated from other meats. Certain clothing was separated from other clothing, and certain works were holy and others unholy. No prayers were offered, no sermons were preached, no money given for the spread of the truth among heathen nations.

They have wealth and learning and a perfect system of worship, but they never once think of saving the Gentiles. Their sacrifices and priesthood, their splendid tabernacle and magnificent temple, drew the world in admiration, but the truth was not offered to a single nation. If a stranger tarried within their gates, he was tolerated, but not allowed to spread the Hebrew faith among his heathen brothers. Their policy was to preserve their nationality intact, and perfect their own ecclesiasticism till one should come in the flesh and reign forever on the throne of David.

The religion of this dispensation is never diffusive. The great effort is to save self.

4. Another feature of this dispensation is the universal desire for the coming CHRIST.

There was an intense crying to have their God come in the flesh and reign as king. They wanted to see Him with their eyes and hear Him with their ears and handle Him with their hands. Many of them prophesied of the coming God. One of them said, “My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.” In order to satisfy this intense longing of the flesh, God granted them a number of brief visible incarnations before the time of Bethlehem. They had announced His coming so many times that when Jesus was born this desire was almost universal. So that wise men from the East came saying, “Where is he which is born king of the Jews, for we have seen His star in the East and are come to worship him.,, The Greeks had the same undefined longing and a band of them came saying, “We would see Jesus.” No doubt there were multitudes of men in the olden times who were longing for a divine teacher. They were looking out through the windows and crying through the lattice, “Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the wheels of his chariot?”

In the first dispensation many men and women have become eminent in the world's history. The dim light of tradition, the knowledge they acquired through “the things that are made” enabled them to grasp many truths. There was Solon the Athenian Lawgiver, and Aristides the Just, Plato and the Queen of the Dark Land, with many others, whose traveling preachers were the sun, moon and stars; though they never had read the law of Moses, they never had a minister ordained by man, yet with unseared consciences they found among the silent stars, a Nathan to accuse them, an Elijah to threaten them, a Jacob to warn them, a Moses to teach them and a Joshua to lead them towards heaven's gate. All the soldiers, publicans and tax gatherers with Zaccheus, who received the words of John when he preached repentance and the gospel of righteousness, belonged to this dispensation. There are multitudes of men and women in this country, some of them in the churches, and many of them outside the churches, who are living in the dim light of this dispensation, who are shading their eyes, looking and longing to see God. John Wesley says that no man living is without some preventing grace. And every degree of grace is a degree of life. There is a measure of light that enlightens every man that cometh into the world. Every human being has a measure of grace (unless he cast it away), and those who use it will be accepted of God in the Judgment Day, whether Jew or Greek, or Christian, or Heathen.

The atonement of Christ covers the deficiency of ability in the case of infants, and also covers the deficiency of opportunity in the case of the heathen. Brainerd found American Indians believing in God, and when they could not dissuade their companions from drinking and carousing would run away into the woods, crying unto the Good Spirit, though they had never heard the voice of a missionary. Bishop Taylor found a great many heathen in Africa who believed in the God of the Universe, and worshipped Him, just as Paul found them in Corinth.

One poor woman in the depths of Africa, broke out in the most plaintive cry when he preached Jesus unto her. “Oh, that is He who has come to me so often in my prayers, but I couldn’t find out who He was.” Beneath thousands and thousands of repulsive exteriors there are golden wings, delicately folded, by which, when life’s rough day is over their souls shall wing their way from a pillow of straw to the bosom of the Lamb of God and He will say to them, “Though ye have lain among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver and her feathers with yellow gold.”

We pass from this dispensation with the following soliloquy.

1. The theology that declares that all who have not heard of the birth at Bethlehem, or the death on Calvary, can have no benefit from the Atonement of Christ, is certainly contrary to the word of God, and is irresistibly and universally denied by the common judgment and conscience of man, for if some vagrant ship should carry you to a far off heathen island where no single ear had ever heard the first word about Christ, underneath the thick crust of savage life you will find the same old reaching after God that you left behind you in the streets and pews of home.

2. The theology that points to all the vast majority of the human race, to the entire population of countries for generations and centuries, suspending their eternal salvation upon the conduct of men on the other side of the globe is the natural Mother of two sons, “Infidelity,” and that Bastard Fatherless Child, called “Second Probation.”

3. The theology that makes the all knowing God eternally condemn the Mohammedan and Pagan worlds, while he saves the American church— full of wealth and luxury, listening with bated breath to the retaliation measures, and shameful, outrageous, congressional bills to keep the condemned heathen away — takes the disgrace from all the damned, and puts it as a bloody chaplet on the brow of an all loving God, and makes him a Devil.

II. We now stand in the second dispensation and observe how the truth and grace of God are further revealed to man.

The dispensation of the Son is a brief one. It was prophesied that He would make a short work upon the earth. The Truth manifested in the second dispensation is the birth of Christ, His words and His works — His vicarious death— His resurrection and ascension. The grace revealed is the grace of pardon for the penitents, the grace of peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ to the believer, the grace of freedom from the condemnation of sin. Then by the operation of the Spirit of God upon the hearts of these penitent believers, they have the grace of Sonship with the witness of the Spirit in their hearts, crying Abba, Father. The word of God in this dispensation is not yet the law of liberty in the soul, but like an armed bodyguard it goes before him saying, “Thou shalt be this and thou shalt do that,” and like an armed rearguard it declares, “Thou shalt not be this and thou shalt not do that,” and thus the word of God as it marches before him and behind him has the power for the repression of sin, but not the power of extermination.

I. The conscious experience of sustaining grace in this dispensation is variable. As Theodore Cuyler says, there is a lamentable alternation between a foaming fullness and the pitiful dribble of an August drought. There are transfiguration scenes and then cock crowing experiences. There are soarings on the wings of some Spiritual Hail Columbia, till the soul would here no longer stay. Then tossed on the bosom of some pestiferous doubt, the cry of the fool is heard, "There is no God.”

2. The soul life of this dispensation while it is freed from the dominion of sin seems to be walled in with traditions, ordinances and sectarianisms. The letter is learned, but the great, loving spirit of Jesus is not fully received. And the ears of Jesus often hear this statement: "Master, we saw some casting out devils in thy name and we forbade them because they followed not us.”

Contentions are frequently heard. I am of Paul, and I am of Apollos and sometimes the church dedicated to the God of Love, seems to be in sympathy with the goddess of discord, whom Aristides describes as having fierce eyes, a wan countenance, pale lips, long fingers and a dagger in her bosom. Love is so mixed with self-interest and personal ambition that it can scarcely be called love. There are thousands of Christians living in this variable, irregular life, which God intended to be a short experience as an introductory to a greater life in Christ. We pass from this period with the following soliloquy. A vineyard exists for the purpose of maturing vines and obtaining grapes. He must be a curious vinedresser who denies the existence of vines and grapes in a colder climate, or who doubts the quality of grapes because they are larger and ripen sooner in a warmer climate beyond the precincts of his own vineyard.

III. We come now to the third dispensation, that of the Holy Spirit. It is true the Holy Spirit worked in the first dispensation producing repentance and godly fear. He also applied the blood for the forgiveness of sins and produced the new birth in the second dispensation. But now the Holy Spirit as the Official Successor of Jesus, becomes the abiding Comforter who remains with us forever.

The Believer who is in the third dispensation is one who has gone through the ministry of repentance and followed Jesus in the regeneration and then by an act of entire consecration and an incessant faith in the cleansing blood of Christ, has received the Pentecostal baptism with the Holy Spirit.

First, we saw the dimmest light, and in the faintest tones heard the voice of God, and we longed and struggled in the dark to return to our Creator.

Then we saw the Divine method of return — the revealed way of access over which blessings and prayer may pass and repass with confident golden feet. Then comes the further revelation of truth in which the eternal virtues are manifested to us in the most intimate and blissful relations of which a man is capable. Not through creation, or providence, nor by the letter of the law being crystalized into doctrines and commandments, but the rear guard has closed up on the vanguard and the Word of God itself is transcribed in the heart and becomes a law within, through which the soul is freed from all fear and is surcharged with the Holy Spirit. And this Divine Spirit mingling with our spirit fills us with the peace of God which passeth all understanding, and the joy of the Lord which is unutterable and full of glory.

Not that this is the climax of life, but merely the entrance into the land that God has promised to give us and which is yet to be possessed.

The wine of ancient Italy was so luscious that when the Gauls tasted it they refused to trade for the wine, or buy it, but held a counsel of war and resolved to conquer the whole land where it was made and possess it themselves!

So when the third person of the adorable Trinity comes into these tabernacles, he makes the truth so delicious, the service so delightful, the communion so rapturous, that the whole soul resolves by the grace of God, upon the conquest of all the land and the whole Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.

I. One thing of special observation now is the vigor and reach of faith.

In the first age physical manifestations were demanded. Faith leaned upon torches, sights and sounds and dew on the fleece, cloud by day and fire by night; manna from the Heaven and water from the flinty rock were all demanded to sustain the faith.

Then in the second dispensation, faith is often weak for the evil heart of unbelief is only repressed and not extirpated, brought under dominion, but not cast out, and it often gives us battle. But now faith begins its triumphant march. The march of faith is like an army moving through the heart of the enemy’s country. It reveals its progress by scattering along its path the things it has learned to do without. Faith begins down there where desires lord it over us and we cannot do without luxuries at the table, cannot do without a cigar or a glass of wine. Then we rise above the grasp of appetites, money, praise, honor and ease into the higher necessities and truths of God, till we can say with the disciples after they had left their boats and nets, “Lord, show us the Father and it suffice thus.” Then pressing on into the essential life of God, He will give us in some way or another that wonderful levitation of soul when we can be happy, and go on doing without the sun, moon and stars.

Enoch and Elijah traveled along this highway of faith, casting off one necessity after another, taking God as their portion in one calamity after another, assimilating higher truths and virtues till at last their faith took in God only, their mortality was swallowed up of life and they were not, for God took them.

2. In this period humanity is always greater than technicality. The church has squandered a vast amount of time and wasted a vast amount of energy in quarreling over technicalities, while souls have perished for lack of knowledge, but in this period the soul overflows the logical statement of creeds and the life rises above the walls of sectarianism. I remember a large cotton plantation in one of the valleys of Alabama. In the spring the slaves with plows and shovels built low mud walls between the farms and planted the cotton seed. The seed sprang up and kissed the sunlight, and the cotton grew; and the rains beat down the walls, so that in the fall these farms were not only white as snow, but they were joined together in one great valley of whiteness. We have been like the cotton fields in the spring, but we are growing and whitening and when the Holy Spirit comes down like rain upon the mown grass and as showers that water the earth, then we shall all be washed in the cleansing blood and made whiter than snow, then we shall clasp hands over these covered walls and be united and inseparable forever, having one purpose, one heart, one faith, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all.

3. In this dispensation every believer is endued with the constraining power of love and is a propagandist. The soul has reached a period of exclusive devotion to benevolence, when its supreme concernment is not self-interest or family pride, church or ecclesiastical glory, but the evangelization of the world. The enduement of the Divine Spirit is the efficient, crowning impulse for the redemption of the race.

The fact of the soul’s value is not of sufficient force to carry us through the trials of the cross. The fact of the soul’s danger is not of sufficient force to make us triumph over the enemies that are destroying it. The fact of human sympathy with wretchedness and woe is not of sufficient force to keep us effectual in the service of God. Only when the heart is surcharged with Divine Love fresh from the heart of Jesus is it pained with such anguish for lost men that it can easily die, but cannot give them up.

Why do men go to the Black Hills because gold is there? That is not the full answer. Because gold is imprisoned in the rough mountains and they want to make it useful? That is not the full answer. This is the answer in classic phrase. Plutus, the son of Jason and Cerez, has implanted in their souls a consuming love for gold and away to the hills they go. The Black Hills of humanity are in the distance. The dark tents are upon their sides, and in the valleys, shall we wait for someone to come from the canons or the low lands and tell us of precious souls, their value, sin, misery and danger and beg us to perform our duty? Will that arouse us? Will that give us an impulse that will last till we die? Is that the philosophy of salvation? Out of which side of the chasm springs the bridge of salvation? Out of the side of Misery and Woe or from the side of Love and Glory?

Did some towering man, growing beyond his fellows, overlook the battlements of heaven and waken with his loud cries, for pity and mercy, a negligent and forgetful God? Oh, no. Activity began on the other side. It is the very soul of the gospel that we love Him because he first loved us. The commendation of our Gospel is that when we were yet sinners Christ died for us, thus making a bridge across the gulf from the divine side of existence, over which we may walk back into the joy and glory where we belong. This divine love is the impulse that will carry us to the ends of the earth. This divine love came into the heart of Scotland’s great man and sent him to the Black Hills, carrying the rudiments of civilization with him, teaching the people the first elements of Christianity, till shut out for five long years from the civilized world, in the very heart of Africa, on the shore of Lake Bangweolo, David Livingstone said: “Build me a little house in which to die. I am going home. Heaven’s blessing come down on everyone who will help to save this Dark Continent.”

This same Supreme love, dwelling in the heart of Bishop Taylor, constrained him with an army of workers to take the Dark Continent in their strong arms and lift it up to God.

We linger in this dispensation a moment for meditation. These are the times of Holy Spirit. He is the greatest need of the church today. How much he is needed, more than talents, knowledge, facilities and resources. How much He is needed in the hearts of the people that we may all have an intense, incessant and eternal impulse to finish at all hazards the world’s redemption. He is needed in our hearts, homes and churches to quench all the suppressed fire of sin within us, to consume all our neutrality, lethargy and unholy criticisms and send us out like flames of fire through the land.

O, Thou Loving Spirit, come and dwell more perfectly in us that we may stretch out our right hands so all may see. that in their palms no sword is clasped, that we may reach forth our left hands that they may see the fingers that are quick only to cover a brother’s fault or save a sinner’s soul.

Give us the white robes of perfect love that all may see our bosoms of pearl and stainless hearts. “With malice towards none and charity for all,” we bow with profound reverence at thy tribunal. We acknowledge the sway of thy scepter, we swear eternal allegiance to thy standards and marshalled under thy banner we clasp hands with Christians of every name, around the cross of Christ to work and fight, to give and suffer, to preach and pray till all the discordant tongues of earth are translated into the sweet language of the angels anthem.

“Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth and good will to men.”