This article is badly needed today
Not this one I’m writing, but this one from the herescope website entitled Restoring the Gospel of Salvation.
The last couple of posts on the website has been about something called Dominionism. It is a “christian” belief basically saying that Christians need to take over the world, or what is now called, “the seven mountains of culture” back from the world and sanctify it for Christ. The idea is that Christ won’t come back until the world is reclaimed for Him. The movement is full of those “prophets” who have many visions and dreams and do things with “signs” that deceive people.
Even in this apostate time, many “Christians” would not fall for those sort of ideas. But many evangelicals are being drawn into the movement. And the Herescope website documents how. What is happening is it is linked symbolically with Tea Party movements. I see it in two sort of waves. First is the political Tea Party, where patriotic Americans are tired of how Washington is doing things and demand change. The second is tied and yet is different from the first. I’ll call it the religious Tea Party. Many of those patriotic Americans are also Christians (including the truly born-again and the cultural ones).
The political Tea Party’s leaders are those such as Ron Paul, Glen Beck, Ronald Reagan, and anyone from FOX news. On the religious side you have leaders such as James Dobson (Focus on the Family) and other popular evangelical leaders (which may or may not include Joel Osteen). The tendency is for these two to overlap due to the nature of their goals, but the focus can be different. Some focus more on gun control and border issues while other conservatives focus on prayer in schools, evolution and the 10 commandments.
What has been happening is that the group of fringe christians who are for Dominionism are slowly making themselves and their ideas mainstream. Many conservative Christians you would ask today would tell you that they would like for America to be as Christian as possible. People tend not to be moderate, we like swinging from one extreme to another. These conservatives see the excessive “liberalism” in our country today, and understandably, want to fight back. But what they are now doing is wanting to force Christianity and Christian principles and ideas on everyone.
Dominionists are simply integrating themselves in the popular opinion among conservatives today, they haven’t had a need to convince people of their doctrines and often kooky beliefs. They just have to hide it for a while. Conservatives are naturally shifting to their side.
I can understand and sympathize with those who want to Christianize everything they can get their hands on, but they must realize that cultural and forced Christianity is not Christianity at all. Real Christianity is trusting in Christ to forgive you and save you and trusting and resting on Christ to live your life afterward. The problem I think is that many of these conservative Christians are not Christian at all. They believe what they do because that’s what they were taught. Here is an article on the subject.
Perhaps more are really saved than I think, that would be great, I hope they are. But if so, they have to realize that rules and regulations are not how to live a Christian life. They need to see how forcing unsaved people to live by so called “christian” rules does nothing to further the gospel. We are naturally sinful and want to do wrong. Even if they keep all the rules and are happy with it, they will have still sinned even as Christians do. Can you imagine people standing before God one day and accusing a Christian they knew, saying “You told me that it was wrong, and I didn’t do it, but you didn’t tell me that I can’t go to heaven by keeping rules.” What a sad day if that happens.
Are you trying to live a good life, following some little rules to get into heaven? It won’t work. I know we all want what is best for our children and we feel, or maybe even know that a world with all Christians or under Christian rule would be the safest and best. But perhaps its not our job to make that happen. Maybe its our job to raise up our children to fear and love the LORD and trust Him for our family’s safety. Maybe we should be doing more trusting God and not our own selves.
Bad things happen, and we may never know why, but maybe God wants us to live and trust what He said in Romans 8:28
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
Do we love God? or have we made family an idol
Could being “zealous for God” really be a front for making an idol out of our family?
Look at the seven mountains
1. The home
2. The church
3. Schools
4. Government and politics
5. The media
6. Arts, entertainment and sports
7. Commerce, science and technology