That salvation is different in different dispensations is a challenging topic. It stirs up considerable controversy. I have heard fundamental Baptist pastors declare that whoever says anyone ever got saved in any other way than by grace through faith apart from works is a heretic. They have learned to twist any Scripture to agree with that. Once a seminary dean told me that he did not need Scripture to support this view, because it would impugn the very character of God to suggest He would save different people in different ways.
I have placed extensive Scriptural evidence for God’s different methods of salvation in different dispensations in the PowerPoint slides Dispensational Salvation, so I will not attempt to place those arguments here. But within the first few chapters of God’s words to us, it is evident that Adam and Eve had unique choices to make concerning right and wrong. Likewise, no other person on earth has had the promises and opportunities that God offered to Abraham and his descendants. God most certainly does deal with different people in different ways.
Accept God’s Justice
In every case where God has dealt with man there are inevitable similarities. God in every situation has the same character and attributes. Man in every case has human nature. But within those parameters, humans can be marvelously different from each other, live under vastly different conditions and face staggeringly different situations. God deals with each person individually. And he deals with people in ways we may not count as fair. For when we question His fairness, He asks, “O man, who art thou that repliest against God?”
God has, indeed, placed within us a sense of what is just and what is not. But we attempt to apply that sense of justice with limited information and limited understanding. In Scripture God has also given us details of His interactions with various people in various circumstances. It is these details that help us to understand God in His dealings with men. It is entirely inappropriate for us to undermine what God has written with our own limited sense of justice.
Understand Dispensations
Our limited sense of justice probably sustains our strongest resistance to accepting that God has dealt with mankind differently through different dispensations. But one will have very limited understanding of the Bible without recognizing such dispensations. But even dispensationalists have resisted the truth that God’s method and nature of salvation is different in different dispensations. This resistance to truth greatly confuses our understanding of Scripture even when we accept that there have been dispensations.
To assign God’s present method of salvation to all dispensations, does not directly hinder evangelism in this Church Age. But it does greatly hinder our understanding of the Bible in other dispensations. To fully understand Scripture we must accept that God has said what He meant to say; and that He means what He said. The slides Dispensational Salvation present a full step in that direction.
Yes, this can be a challenging topic and many will disagree. You have obviously spent much time on this topic and presented it in such a way that it can be studied by others.