PROGRESSIVE REVELATION - PROGRESSIVE ACCOUNTABILITY

One of the most important factors which supports Dispensationalism, can be found in fact that God has been revealing His truth progressively and gradually through the centuries. He did not give man the Bible all at once.  In fact, everything we know about the first four dispensations (Innocence, Conscience, Human Government, and The Promised Land - the first twenty-five hundred years of man's existence), was not documented until Moses, writing around 1500 B.C., gave us the first five books of the Bible, known as the Pentateuch, or the Torah.  Over the next eleven hundred years, God gradually revealed the rest of the Old Testament.  Nothing written between the time of Malachi and Jesus, including the Apocrypha, has been accepted by the Jews or by the Church, as the inspired Word of God.

There are basically three ways Moses could have written the Torah:  1) He could have made it up, similar to how Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon; 2) He could have documented the oral tradition passed down through twenty-five centuries; or 3) God could have revealed it to him.  Let's look at these three options to see which makes the most sense.

1)  Moses made it up.  This is not a possibility unless Moses had a far greater intellect than anyone before him or since.  Moses wrote of the perfection of Creation (Gen. 1:31), the Fall of Adam as an explanation of our less-than-perfect world, and of twenty-five hundred years in which God worked toward reconciling the world back to Him.  He wrote of the Messiah who would crush Satan's head (Gen. 3:14-15), and of His lineage from Adam through Seth, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah.  He gave the world the Ten Commandments, instructions on dietary laws, circumcision, religious practices and the seven Feasts of Israel, all which are unique to the Jews.  Moses was not that intelligent!

2)  Moses documented the oral tradition passed down over twenty-five hundred years.  It would be impossible for one man to retain all of the oral history of the world, or even to gather together and collate all the material remembered by what would take thousands to recall.  The complexity of such a vast amount of bits and pieces being organized into a coherent, smooth-flowing document, simply could not be accomplished by one man.

3)  Moses received God's Word through direct revelation.  Scripture says, "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.  For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation" (2 Pet. 1:20-21).  Again, the Word says, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:  that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Tim. 3:16-17).


The dispensational divisions found in the Torah clearly show God's progressive revelation.  Adam was innocent, and then he sinned.  Man increased in his wickedness until God said, "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth Me that I have made them" (Gen 6:7-8).  Up until Abraham, there were only Gentiles on the earth, but God chose him to be the father of His people, the Jews (Gen. 12:1-3).

With each new revelation of God's plan and will, man has been held to a greater accountability (Matt. 11:20-24).  Jesus said it this way, "And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.  But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more" (Lk. 12:47-48).

Jesus, the Word, has been revealed in the flesh, He Is God (Jn. 1:1, 14). 
Having such a great Light, we ought to trust and obey!