It speaks of God's whole program for His entire creation from eternity to eternity. It reveals what God wants man to know about God Himself, His creation, and His purpose with His creation.
The word appropriate is japheh which means meaningful or beautiful.
Our problem is not so much what happens, our problem is our perspective of it after it happens.
We go back to God and think "what kind of God is it that would allow this to happen resulting in this tragic set of affairs?
If I look at life as it is laid out before me and dealt out to me and do not see through the eyes of faith the hand of God, I will not understand why certain things happen!
When I see things through His eyes and recognize divine timing and the fact that in His time, he makes all things beautiful and meaningful, then I give Him praise.
It is the timing of God that is related to our doctrine of dispensations.
God has not only put things in perspective by having a time table in which events run their course but He also has put within every human being's heart a curiosity about tomorrow....and about life.......and about life beyond.
Since that is true and since we will not find out about tomorrow or the beginning from the end without God, our pursuit must be of Him.
Meaning that you are not really ready to handle life until you are ready to handle death and eternity.
"I am going to prove that academic achievement is a substitute for fellowship with God." , ECC 1:13-18.
"I'm going to go out and have a good time"and in ECC 2:1-11, he went all for kinds of pleasure.
"What I need, says Solomon, is someone to carry on the family name. I'm going to find my pleasure in heritage."ECC 2:12-26.
PSA 127:3 Behold, children are a gift of the Lord; The fruit of the womb is a reward.
Solomon's next quest for happiness, he is going to say in chapter 5, "What I need that will really make me happy is money!
He had the education but he didn't have the doctrine! He had the pleasure but he didn't have the doctrine! He had the heritage but he didn't have the doctrine!
After discovering that money won't give him happiness and pleasure, Solomon said "What I really need to do is just to build a reputation so people will never forget me. ECC 7:1-20.
The trouble was in ECC 7:1-20, no doctrine in the soul!
"I'm going to go SEX crazy" in ECC 7:26-29.
He had no doctrine and no capacity to love and that's why he says that out of his thousand women, there wasn't one good one that he could find.
For the Bible teaches that experience in sex does not make you a good lover, virtue does; Pro 5.
He tried a few other things but he finally came to the conclusion that while there are a lot of wonderful things that God allots to us in time, they're no good without Bible doctrine in the soul!
He came to realize that without Bible doctrine in the soul, the believer with the best of everything is the most miserable of all.
The believer was designed in time to have his capacity for these allotments through Bible doctrine in the soul.
"in His time" is the key and the doctrine of dispensations deals with the timing of God.as other translations have it, is literally in its own time.
eternity is 'et-haa`olaam which means the eternal or the desire for the eternal.
There is a deep desire or a yearning for that which is eternal placed in the hearts of all mankind; PSA 42:1.
Although this desire is in every person, every person does not have this desire fulfilled.
Unless the believer understands this and divides the Bible accordingly (2Ti 2:15), he will become overwhelmed and confused by its vast scope and perplexed by its differences.
If the believer neglects to study and sort these differences out, he will cheat himself out of understanding not only God's plan and purpose for man in general, but also for himself in particular.
God has purposely made the crucial subjects of sin, man's accountability to God, Christ's substitutionary death, and personal salvation so simple a small child can understand them.
These clear yet vital doctrines are referred to as the "simplicity that is in Christ" (2CO 11:3).
He wanted to provide a salvation so simple that a person could understand it and get saved after only being presented with the gospel once.
He also wanted some other matters more detailed and complex so one would have to labor in the Scriptures a certain degree to sort them out.
He is soon confronted with various laws, judgments, ordinances, commandments, doctrines, kingdoms, covenants, testaments, dispensations, gospels, priesthoods, feasts, tribes, churches, etc.
The Exodus, Israel's Captivity, Daniel's Seventieth Week, the Rapture, the Judgment Seat of Christ, the Tribulation, the Millennium, the
White Throne Judgment, the New Heaven and New Earth, etc.
Once a person gets to this point questions usually arise: Where do all these subjects belong?
Do they all apply to everyone in every age?
Is salvation exactly the same in every age?
Does every precept mentioned in the Bible apply doctrinally to a Christian?
What about the doctrines that appear to contradict each other?
The major differences in the Bible can be reconciled by rightly dividing it into dispensations and keeping the different doctrines found in the dispensations in their proper place.
Throughout the Old Testament, we see that God commands the Israelites to steal and plunder livestocks and goods of their neighbors.
God impregnated Mary without asking or even informing Joseph about it first.
DEU 14:26 "And you may spend the money for whatever your heart desires, for oxen, or sheep, or wine, or strong drink, or whatever your heart desires; and there you shall eat in the presence of the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household.
LEV 10:9 "Do not drink wine or strong drink, neither you nor your sons with you, when you come into the tent of meeting, so that you may not die‑‑ it is a perpetual statute throughout your generations‑‑
JDG 13:4 "Now therefore, be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing.
ROM 14:14 I know and am convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but to him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.
PRO 23:31 Do not look on the wine when it is red, When it sparkles in the cup, When it goes down smoothly;
LUK 7:34 "The Son of Man has come eating (good food) and drinking (good wine); and you say, 'Behold, a gluttonous man, and a
drunkard, a friend of tax‑gatherers and sinners!'
As long as you pay attention to language, context, and cultural and historic context then there are no contradictions.
God often commanded the Israelites into wars with other nations as a way to punish the other nations for their wickedness. "Thou shalt not kill" refers to murder, not war.
Did Jesus break the Sabbath commandment in the law of God as found in EXO 20:8-11; DEU 5:12-15?
“I have kept my Father’s commandments,” He said (JOH 15:10).
Thou shalt not kill but there are times that He in EXO 12:29-30, God killed the firstborn children of every household.
A king shall not multiply --- yet God said to David I would have given you more; 2Sa 11.
The point is in 2TI 2:15 the Holy Spirit states His word has divisions and the "workman" must "study" to "rightly" divide them.
Many of the different manners, methods, and doctrines in the Bible which often trouble people are reconciled, and the believer begins to see the "big picture" of what God is doing.