This view of Scripture was introduced by Darby and Scofield in the early 1800’s. The idea was the God’s dealing with people was distinct and different in presumably seven dispensations throughout history. Further, God’s dealings with people was based on those periods, often in the scope of covenant, and that there was no overlap between them. God’s dealing was different from dispensation to dispensation. They would like to use 2 Timothy 2:15, calling us to “rightly divide the Word of Truth”, and interpret that to be the division of the Dispensations.
This method of interpretation misses the mark by miles. This method of interpreting says the church is a pause between the offer of the Kingdom by Jesus and it’s inauguration in the Millennium. Many arguments are floated to try to support this system of thought, but it relies upon certain premises which are provable to be false, as the sections following will demonstrate.