John Nelson Darby is considered 'the father of dispensationalism'. He was the first one to construct a system of theology based on the idea that God dealt with man by dispensations rather than the historic understanding that God deals with man through His Covenants. However Darby was inconsistent in his references to the dispensations, sometimes mentioning a dispensation but then stating that it is not really a dispensation1.
In Larry Crutchfield's book The Origins of Dispensationalism: The Darby Factor2, he reconstructs Darby's original dispensational scheme from his voluminous writings. Crutchfield spends two full chapters (73 of the book's 237 pages) describing Darby's original plan of the dispensations. Following is his reconstruction:
1.
Paradisaical State: Innocency - from creation to the fall (not a
dispensation*)
2. Conscience: from the fall to the flood (not a dispensation*)
3. Noah: from the flood to the call of Abraham
4. Abraham: from the call of Abraham to the giving of the Law at Sinai
5. Israel:
Under the Law
Under the Priesthood
Under the Kings (from Moses to Nebuchadnezzar)
6. Gentiles: from the captivities until the second advent
7. Present/Spirit/Christian/Gentile/Church: from Pentecost to the Millennium. (there are at least these five names given for this dispensation in Darby's writings!!).
8. Millennial Kingdom3 (the thousand-year reign of Christ)
9. Eternal State (not a dispensation*)
(2) Larry V. Crutchfield, The Origins of
Dispensationalism: The Darby Factor,: University Press of
America, 1992
* Indicates the 3 dispensations
that Darby describes--that he says are
not really dispensations! (J. N. Darby, op. cit.)