A biblical term used by Christians in general, of the old and new dispensations, corresponding to the Old and New Testaments, or to the Jewish and the Christian systems, which are different, yet form part of one plan of salvation.
But the original two biblical dispensations were later expanded by some theologians. For example, there was some subdividing or adding of dispensations by ecclesiastical writers such at Tertullian and Origen, by Joachim in the Middle Ages, and by Cocceius in more modern times, yet nothing as far-reaching as the system of dispensations described in the present “dispensationalist” system of interpretation. Modern dispensationalism is the product of the elaborations of John N. Darby (founder of the Plymouth Brethren), and appears in its most popular form in the notes of C. I. Scofield in the Scofield Bible. This system partitions world history into seven ages, or “dispensations”-time periods-in each of which God is supposed to deal differently with humanity. In this scheme the “church age” (the Christian Era) is regarded as a “parenthesis,” or gap, in prophecy; as an age of pure grace between a past Jewish dispensation of law and a future one in which the Jews will be again the people of God and will rule the nations under a restoration of the Mosaic code. This system of seven dispensations is claimed by its adherents as basic to or synonymous with premillennialism, so that in the public mind it is likely to be attributed mistakenly to several classes of premillennialists who do not hold it. It is in complete contrast to the Seventh-day Adventist type of premillennialism.