TSW ~ Eric W. King "The Shepherds Way" blogger.com: The Second Dispensation

The Antediluvian Dispensation

(The Second Dispensation)

By Eric William King

A basic outline of the Second Dispensation looks something like this;

Antediluvian Responsibility: Genesis 3:5,7,22; 4:4

Antediluvian Failure: Genesis 6:5-6, 11-12

Antediluvian Judgment: Genesis 6:7; 7:11-14

*Using Biblical chronology this dispensation lasted 1656 years.

The Antediluvian Dispensation starts with the new Adamic Covenant. God pronounced sin on the human race. All humans entered this second dispensation with a different awareness, one which involved new emotions of pain, guilt, anxiety. They also had a disconnect in their relationship with God. God would almost become silent.

This dispensation is also called, “The Dispensation of Conscience” because in it they had only their fallen conscience to be their guide, minus God.

This is the first dispensation after “the fall” (the historic choice of Adam and Eve to sin). By the fall all of humanity was alienated from God. Redemption and salvation from the fall are accomplished through Jesus Christ, the Second Adam.

So this dispensation is after “the fall of Adam and Eve” and before “the flood” thus it is the Ante (before) Diluvian (the flood) dispensation.

This is the first dispensation which demonstrates how humanity leads itself with just a basic understanding of right and wrong minus God. Man only left with conscience, guided predominately by only his five senses with a new innate urge to sin is in trouble.

Human conscious can bring many emotions and feel guilt and condemnation but it cannot stop sin. Human strength cannot stop the sinful nature. God had enough relationship with man in this second dispensation to communicate a way in which guilt and justice could be dealt with. We need to begin to understand dispensations as school classes in the Global School of Life.

Defining Dispensations

The Bible gives seven basic time periods, each different in length which are introduced by a covenant or “agreement” given by God to His people.

These time phases are called “dispensations”. The Greek word for dispensation is oikonomia. It comes from a verb which basically means “to manage” or “regulate” time. God has “dispensed” these portions of time as programs, like school classes for His people.

In a dispensation God tests man in respect to a specific revelation of His will. Each dispensation showing how God is working out His purpose through differing economies. Theologically we also talk about “ages”. We make a distinguishing difference between “dispensations” and “ages” here. We say that an “age” stands for a period of time between two great physical changes on the earth’s surface while a “dispensation” stands for a covenantial probationary period between God and His people.

The Bible clearly outlines “Seven Major Dispensations” and “Three Earth Ages”.

Life in the Second Dispensation

Adam and Eve may have spent some time thinking about what happened (leading up to the end of the first dispensation) before getting into a basic routine on how to live under extremely new conditions. Eventually Adam and Eve had their first son, Cain. Following right after Cain she had Abel.

These two sons fulfilled the accomplishment of the Adamic Covenant that two “seeds” would come forth, one in opposition to the other. Cain represents the “Seed of the Serpent” and Abel representing the “Seed of Hope”.

After leaving the Garden of Eden they began to mingle with all the other races created on the “sixth day”. Cain even getting his wife from the “Land of Nod”. We can imagine many earth ages before Adam and Eve. Some say that our last ice age was about 10,000 years ago. If the ice melted the first 4000 years and after that the “new creation” or “recreation” of earth’s surface occurred that would put Adam and Eve at about 6000 plus years ago. This is extremely accurate theological anthropology.

We do not know how long the first human races lived on earth without sin (or proper knowledge of sin) before Adam and Eve but it could have been for awhile. All the human races were of course created on the sixth day. Adam and Eve were created after the Seventh Day and for reference we say the “eighth day” (Genesis 2:7).

Note: To more fully understand TSW's position on the "6 day creation" click here.

Adam and Eve were placed in a perfect atmosphere for sinless people. A beautiful garden, even with angelic visitors. Even God walked in this garden to visit His children. Yet it was in the beautiful Paradise that Adam and Eve had made the wrong choices.

God allowed all of this to happen for His marvelous plan of salvation that His true children must and will experience. At the time of this Second Dispensation (after “the Fall”) intermarriages among the children of the same family were not forbidden. It wasn’t until after the Flood (which ended the Second Dispensation) that intermarriage became forbidden.

So during this Second Dispensation families were big.

The Cain Family Skills

Cain and his wife had a son and named him Enoch. Cain started to build a city and the first “worldly” civilization. Cain’s offspring were gifted in music, art, building, they were metal workers and they used their gifts to become powerful (Genesis 4:17-22).

Jubal was an inventor of musical instruments; Tubal Cain was a worker in metals. Both children of Cain (Genesis 4:21-22). The City of Enoch was the contemporary city of its time. The people of this dispensation became great builders. These were the early masons who took many of their secrets with them.

This was the beginning of the great civilization before the Great Flood. We could say that in this Second Dispensation its “worldliness” was Cainitic. This civilization was more beautiful than that of Rome or Greece but it was on the judgment list. The destruction story of this Kenite civilization morphed over time into the Atlantis mythos started by Plato.

To this day nobody knows just where the City of Enoch existed. No archaeological artifacts of this advanced civilization have been found. The Great Flood must have been traumatic. Perhaps the city was located on an ancient island that now no longer exists.

We have some Ancient Antiochene information on where this ancient civilization might have existed but we will save that for another study. There is the story of the “three rings” of Atlantis which hint of the Trinity or first divisions of an “outer court”, “Holy place”, and “Most Holy place”.

Before all of this, God gave the new son Seth to Eve to replace Abel whom Cain killed. There was a second Enoch born from Seth's line. This second Enoch was the father of the famous Methuselah and he “walked with God.” He had a personal relationship with God and one day God “took him” up (Genesis 5:24). God “raptured” Enoch. In this sense Enoch typifies the Christian Church being “raptured” right before the Tribulation. Enoch was raptured before the Great Flood (Hebrews 11:5)

Civilization Goes Godless

“Then men began to multiply on the face of the earth.” (Genesis 6:1) The godless descendents of Cain had outnumbered the descendants of Seth. Population of the ungodly and moral relativists jumped. Materialism and hopelessness spread.

The “daughters of men” from both the line of Cain and Seth were living in the first dispensation of sin. Adam and Eve had failed and the parents of all the other civilizations started noticing a huge difference in all activities of planet earth. Animal activity, weather activity, human relationship activity, all had now been contaminated by sin.

The human disconnect from the True God made them replace God with superstitions. Some decided “just do what you want, there is no God”.

Different civilizations around the globe began to experience fighting and arguing. Sickness, disease and death came upon the entire human race because of sin. The early civilizations though were spoiled in many ways. Early in this dispensation sin had not yet the power it has today in that it had not demonstrated what it was fully capable of yet. Morality was still trying to be clung to much as it is today in some parts.

After Adam and Eve’s sin some early clans of humans in different parts of the globe killed themselves off through in-family fighting and sickness. In many lands humans degenerated into acting like animals to survive. Most of the gifted Kenites kept building.

Many people became comfortable in sin and complacent (lazy). When everybody was indulging in the comfortability of sin something happened that would forever add more curses to our planet.

Bad gods from the sky

A time came towards the last part of this Antediluvian Dispensation when “…the Sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them that they chose.” (Genesis 6:1-2) Who were these “Sons of God” (Hebrew: Bne-Ha-Elohim)? They are not the sons of Seth. Seth’s descendants lived with Cain’s descendants. Though Cain’s offspring had more proclivities to sin, both Cain’s and Seth’s offspring were sinners. They intermingled.

The phrase “Sons of God” in the Old Testament is a reference to celestial angels. If Cain and Seth’s offspring intermarried and had children there is no reason for this to create “giants” or “Mighty Men”.

So both Cain and Seth with their descendants are “sons of men” from the Adamic race. The “Sons of God” that “noticed the daughters of men” (Hebrew: Bnoth-Ha-Adam) were angelic beings who came down and took on flesh bodies. They ended up having relationships with human females which created a hybrid offspring called in the Hebrew, “Hans-Nephilim” which means “giants” and “Hog-Gibborim” which means “Mighty Men”.

“Nephilim” comes from the prime root “to fall”, contextually meaning “fallen angels”.

Part of this fallen angel plot was to destroy the Adamic-genetic-bloodline through which Messiah was to come. All throughout Scripture we find Satan trying to destroy this regal bloodline.

We have to remember that before God created humans He created angelic beings. These beings (“Sons of God”) were with God when He first created the perfect earth (Job 38:4-7). Since the fall of man angelic beings have been involved with humanity and the plan of God. These angels made a very bad decision that God allowed to happen.

These angels that committed this horrendous sin have been punished. According to the New Testament book of Jude they are being held in “chains” in “darkness” (Jude 6-7). While these evil angels are being held Satan’s angels are allowed to “roam the earth” under Satan’s command. Satan and his angels also have access to the “first” and “second” heavens (Earth’s atmosphere & Outer Space).

So these angels which “left their first estate” (Jude 6) to have intercourse with human women are being held in a spiritual place called Tartaros (2 Peter 2:4-5). Tartaros was known by the Greeks to be a “nether world” comparable to Hades. This angelic sin with human kind was so terrible that God decided to wipe clean the part of the earth that they all lived on so He did. God brought forth his servant Noah to warn the people that a Great Flood was coming and that all the land would be consumed by water.

This Great Flood recorded in Scripture for us was a “regional flood” which affected at least one fourth of the land on our planet. The use of the word “earth” regarding the flood is a Hebrew word which can also mean “Land”.

Evil Hybrids Still Here

In each dispensation man is trying to consciously or unconsciously restore Paradise and Create the Perfect man. The bad angels have always interfered. Satan and his angels point people in every direction that points away from God.

We find that after this dispensation which will be destroyed by a Great Flood the Hans-Nephilim appear again under the Legal Dispensation (aka “Mosaic Dispensation”). We read mention of them in Numbers 13:33. This shows that angels came down again for their “human abductions” and sinful sexual activity. They did this through the “descendants of Anak.” (Numbers 13:33)

Jesus warned that right before He returned it would be “like in the days of Noah”. (Matthew 24:37-42) During this time the “daughters of men” were being “given in marriage” to the Hans-Nephilim (angelic beings not from our planet). We see this happening today through all of the so called “extraterrestrial abduction” cases. This along with other strange demonic activity being witnessed on our planet shows that the “fallen spirits of the air” are already here. These beings along with the Kenites make for an interesting planet.

God Instructs Noah

The outcome of the celestial invasion by bad angels is the event that caused the end of the Antediluvian Dispensation. This dispensation is called in the NT book of Acts the “times of ignorance”…a time when God “overlooked” much and showed much “long suffering” (Acts 17:30). There was no written Law yet, this is before the yet to come “Legal Dispensation”. Humans still have much to learn. Again, we can understand the dispensations of time kind of like a giant class room for humanity. In and throughout the "times" God’s children are developing individuality, personality and a personal God relationship. God’s people are to attain Holy Spirit guided experience and to develop Godly Wisdom.

During this time in the Second Dispensation when angelic beings actually came down to commit sin with the “daughters of men” we read; “The Lord saw how great mans wickedness on earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” (Genesis 6:5-6)

God called Noah from the Adamic race. Noah was wise, full of experience and close to God. God instructed Noah to build a first class ship, a giant ark. This ship would hold all the animals from the region. God instructed Noah; “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth (land).” (Genesis 6:13)

When the ark was finished God told Noah; “You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.” (Genesis 6:19) God goes on to instruct Noah to bring food into the ark also. As far as “clean animals” (animals good for food) God told Noah; “Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, male and its mate.” (Genesis 7:2) Some Bible students believe that two from every human race (male & female) were also taken on board. These were the pre-adamic 6^th day people comprised of every race. Remember, all the human races were created on the “sixth day” and Adam and Eve on the “eighth day”.

Noah was of the Adamic race (from Adam and Eve’s bloodline). We read that Noah was “perfect in his generations” (Genesis 6:9). “Perfect in his generations” meaning he was of the Adamic bloodline (of one pedigree) that was being protected, this is the line that the “promised seed” would come through. Noah and his family had also stayed clear of mixing with the Hybrids (the “Hans-Nephilim”). Noah was following God’s plan.

Here Comes the Flood

This Second Dispensation ends with the Great Flood. The Bible predominantly focuses on Israel and the “people of God” because it was through these people that God would unfold His drama…the Great Plan of Salvation.

After the Great Flood we enter the Third Dispensation. God will give Noah another “new covenant” to obey and keep (Genesis 9:1-19). This Naohic Covenant we will soon learn about. It restates God’s authority and adds new responsibilities.

To sum up this dispensation I will quote Dr. A.T. Pierson who wrote;

“First, an advance in fullness and clearness of revelation; then gradual spirit declension; then conformity to the world, ending with amalgamation with the world; then a gigantic civilization, brilliant but Godless; then parallel development of evil and good; then an Apostasy, and finally a CATASTROPHE.”

Please continue our exciting and fascinating Bible studies here at “The Shepherds Way”.

Keeping the Faith in my Savior, Jesus the Christ.

Eric William King (June 2^nd 2020)

Read About: The First Dispensation