Scriptural dispensationalists have identified seven basic periods during which God is sovereignly ruling the world as He executes His plan for history through progressive stages of revelation. In his popular reference Bible (1909) C. I. Scofield identified these periods as Innocency, Conscience, Human government, Promise, Law, Grace, and Kingdom. During each dispensation mankind is tested in respect of obedience to some specific revelation of the will of God. Failure to live up to God’s standard brings judgment. The Fall of Adam and Eve’s during the first dispensation brought expulsion from the Garden of Eden and eventual physical death.
The Lord had patiently given the guilty husband and wife an opportunity to defend their actions, but when He turned to the serpent His manner changed. He asked the Tempter no questions, gave him no chance of defense, treated him as already condemned, and immediately pronounced sentence. Additionally, whereas the sentence handed down to Satan would forever seal his doom, that given to Adam and Eve gave hope and promise.
Mr. Pember noted, “And here we cannot but pause in amazement, and render thanks for the great mercy vouchsafed to the fallen parents of our race. God could not, indeed, give Adam a direct promise at a time when the man was waiting as a condemned criminal to receive sentence. Therefore His loving kindness devised the plan of first pronouncing judgment upon the serpent, and therein implying that the fallen should not sink hopelessly to the condition of their deceiver, but be set in sharp opposition to him; until, after a painful struggle, the woman's conquering seed should bruise him under their feet, and make both the death from which they shrank—but must now undergo—and Hades, the dread place of unclothed spirits, to pass away forever. And so a bright ray of hope broke in through their despair, and they were strengthened to hear their own doom of woe.”