After 1907 Cyrus Ingerson Scofield not only worked on his famous Reference Bible but also promulgated dispensationalist doctrines through his Correspondence Bible School. One of the classic statements of his beliefs is the essay "Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth," first published in 1907. In the essay Scofield lays out his complex vision of humankind's dispensational past, present, and future. Time is divided into the following seven dispensations, each characterized by a new "test" of humankind from God and ending with humankind's "utter failure" to meet the challenge.

I. Man Innocent — Beginning with creation, this dispensation lasted until the fall of Adam and Eve.

II. Man Under Conscience— From the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden through a period of increasing wickedness despite humanity's newly acquired knowledge of good and evil until the great Flood.

III...