How can I understand the Bible is probably one of the most asked questions among Christians that rarely gets answered to anyone’s satisfaction. How do I know? Because I struggled with it for years. “What the Bible is all About” is a book written by Dr. Henrietta Mears and endorsed by Dr. Billy Graham. It was published in the 1950s but can still be purchased today. It gave a brief description of what each book of the Bible is about, its theme, author, and general outline, but it really didn’t help me understand the Bible as a whole.
I grew up in a church where I heard preachers talk about the Dispensations of the Bible. I had a Schofield Edition of the King James Bible, and I found the seven dispensations listed in the footnotes in Genesis. There are (1) the Dispensation of Innocence, (2) the Dispensation of Conscience, (3) the Dispensation of Government, (4) the Dispensation of Promise, (5) the Dispensation of Law, (6) the Dispensation of Grace, and (7) the Dispensation of the Kingdom. I memorized these dispensations, and repeated them but never really understood their purpose for understanding the Bible.
When I first went to Bob Jones University, the school did not take an active stand; some of the professors were Dispensationalists and some were Reformed, though at the time I had no idea what Reformed meant. Then I went to a Bible Institute for a year and a half. They were definitely Dispensationalists; they were also the Bible Institute for a mission board I really thought about joining. And it was during my time at the institute I purchased a book entitled “Dispensationalism Today” by Dr. Charles Ryrie of Dallas Theological Senimary. Dr. Ryrie was a real promoter of Dispensationalism as were all the faculty at DTS. But this book changed my life.
After reading the book, I was convinced I did not believe in Dispensationalsim. The teaching contradicted so much of what I found while studying the Old Testament Prophecies. The two just didn’t square in my mind. So, I began searching for another way of understanding the Bible as a whole. After years of searching, I discovered the Reformed interpretation.
Reformed refers to the theological understanding of the protestant leaders of the Reformation. And basically, the Reformed interpretation of the Bible involves two covenants God made with man. The first covenant is the Covenant of Works that God made with Adam in the Garden of Eden. Adam was created in the image of God and was free to do whatever he wanted in the garden, eat of any fruit, except for the fruit of one tree, the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Can you imagine being able to live your life with only one prohibition? Don’t we wish we could live like that? The second covenant is the Covenant of Grace that is divided into two parts: grace before the death and resurrection of Christ and grace after His resurrection.
See Part-2