Dispensationalism is a school of Bible interpretation that is associated with fundamentalist Christianity.
Dispensationalists believe that sacred history can be broken up into several different "dispensations," which mark separate covenants that God is thought to have made with humanity. Usually there are seven such dispensations:
- Innocence - Adam
- Conscience - After man sinned, up to the flood
- Government - After the flood, man allowed to eat meat, death penalty instituted
- Promise - Abraham up to Moses and the giving of the Torah
- Law - Moses to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ
- Grace - The cross to the Millennial Kingdom
- Millennial Kingdom - A 1000 year reign of Christ on earth centered in Jerusalem
Dispensationalism therefore teaches that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will be a physical event, a miracle in which God intervenes directly in human history. As such, dispensationalism is associated with the circulation of end times prophecy, which professes to read omens of the Second Coming in current events.
Dispensationalism was proposed as a specific system by John Nelson Darby, founder of the Plymouth Brethren movement. It was popularised in the United States by Cyrus I. Scofield through the vehicle of his widely circulated Scofield Reference Bible, an annotated study Bible that taught dispensationalism as a system.
Dispensationalism as a school of Biblical interpretation is associated with a number of fundamentalist seminaries, of which the best known are the Dallas Theological Seminary and the Moody Bible Institute.