How many Dispensation are there really ?

[dan p]

Most don't know what the word dispensation is or what it really means and don't care.

 1) Some say that there are only 2 dispensations

 2) some say that there are 7 dispensations

 3) I say that there are more than 7

 4) In Eph 1:10 , mentions the Dispensation of Fulness of Time, that makes #8


 5) There is also THE  Dispensation of Angelic Testing where Lucifer and his angels failed their test and now we have the devil and fallen angels

 6) this one is hard to see and it runs concurrently with the Gospels, and it is the Dispensation of Christ UN-glorified Humanity, see Phil 2:5-8 . So I see 10 dispensations. MAY THERE BE MORE ?

[Soldier4Christ]

All of this depends on what a person considers a dispensation to be. The word also means a distribution, to administrate, it also can mean in a sense to "grant remission from punishment or exemption from law," and the usual translation most scholars give to the Greek word of oikonomoia "office, method of administration" which is more easily understood to mean the dealing of God to his creatures.

As we can see in the following scripture, Paul speaks of individual, personal dispensations.

1Co 9:17  For if I do this thing willingly, I have a reward: but if against my will, a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me.

[Rhys]

I vote for 7, as 7 is the number of completeness and perfection, the number representing God. Man, represented as 6, is always one short!