Progressive Revelation of God
This is a subject so profound and so comprehensive that to intelligently understand it, we must view it from the scope of continuous and progressive revelation. Like water baptism of the Christian believer, the operations of the Holy Ghost must be apprehended in its successive stages of revelation; otherwise, we shall be unable to distinguish between the operation of the Spirit in the Old Testament and the baptism of the Holy Ghost in the New Testament.
A successive dispensation of God never destroys a preceding one. On the contrary, it conserves its spirit but broadens its scope.
This is obviously seen by comparing the Patriarchal, Mosaic, and Christian dispensations.
In the Patriarchal dispensation, we see God appearing to man at long intervals. Abraham furnishes the best example. God appeared to him at intervening periods of time, twenty and forty years apart. The Patriarchal age may therefore be designated the dispensation of God’s revelation to man.
There is a perceptible advance under the Mosaic dispensation to a deeper, clearer, and more pronounced manifestation of God. He was ever present in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. Afterwards, His visible presence abode in the Shekinah glory overshadowing the mercy seat. This was God with man, not to man, as in the Patriarchal dispensation; but rather, God leading, guiding, directing, forgiving, sanctifying, abiding with man.
Coming to the Christian dispensation, we obtain a clearer and more palpable revelation of God than in the preceding Mosaic dispensation.