A Modern Guide for Sniff-Testing Your Church..

Does it smell?

As a historian, I’ve learned that what we call “Christianity” has expressed itself in drastically different ways since the days when the Lord assured His disciples, after the resurrection, that “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

After countless hours reading 18th century journals and newspapers, I couldn’t help concluding that the Christianity of the founding fathers was drastically different from the various versions I saw growing up, and I’ve been exposed to quite a few traditions.  I left Mormonism when I was 19 because I didn’t believe Joseph Smith or Brigham Young were inspired, or particularly righteous, men.  I wandered through agnosticism, Roman Catholicism, Fundamentalist Bible churches, Calvary Chapel congregations, and finally settled on what I would call the Reformed tradition.  (I have Baptist and Presbyterian friends, and I understand their differences, but I’m speaking to a broader audience today.  I’m trying to sound a simple, and necessary warning.)  There are far better scholars who can lead you into greater understanding, but I want to speak in very broad strokes today, because I believe our country is at stake.

Pietism and Neo-Pietism

From the 16th to the 19th century, (and still today), there’s a flavor of Christianity that is very bland.  It’s waiting for the seasoning that will come after the Second Coming.  When believers ponder the words, “My kingdom is not of this world,” they mistakenly assume that EVERYTHING about this world is corrupt, evil, and under the power of the devil, but they forget that Christ marveled at the beauty of a lily, drank wine, and celebrated the wedding feast.  They forget that Christ braided a whip and scourged the temple, which is a reminder that we need to bring heaven down to both the church, and the earth itself, sometimes by powerful condemnation and earthly judgment.

Pietists, however, are too “holy” to participate.  They don’t believe Christians should be politicians, policemen, or soldiers.  I once encountered a homeschool family of pietists who, when challenged, admitted that if their mother were being raped by thugs, they would make no effort to defend their sisters against the same fate.  In the sermon on the mount, Jesus spoke of very slight offenses that need to be forgiven (a slap on the cheek, bearing armor), but in the most hyperbolic sermon in scripture, He didn’t say, “if they are torturing your older brother, give them your little sister.”   Pietists tend to make the mistake of believing their sacrifice is equal to God’s sacrifice on the cross.  That is blasphemy.  The Lord told us to sell our cloak and buy a sword, because there are evil people in the world, and the Romans 13 mandate, for magistrates, is shared, in some degree by all of us.  Are you a terror unto evil?  If not, you might not be a Christian.

Pietists also “major in the minors.”  Like Bill Gothard, who had all sorts of modesty standards for women, but secretly had sixteen year old ministry girls sit on his lap in their nighties, they tend to get screwed up with false holiness.  Pietists need to remember that Jesus was very concerned with the “weightier matters of the law.”  In other words, if you wax indignant about a woman’s low neckline, but you don’t have an abortion-abolition ministry in your church, something is terribly wrong.  Be on guard for pietists in your church.  They squeeze the joy out of life, and they eventually kill the congregation.  Ponder Matthew 23:15.  (This reminds me: there’s a very dear Baptist pastor I love, and he wanted me to join his congregation.  I told him, “you would deny me communion because I drink wine, but you give communion to people who vote for abortion.  Do you see the conflict there?”)

Dominion

The theology that built this country was based on the Christian notion of “dominion.”  When Noah and his family were delivered from the flood, God gave them this promise..

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every animal of the earth and on every bird of the sky; on everything that crawls on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea. They are handed over to you.  Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I have given everything to you, as I gave the green plant.

This repetition of God’s promise to our first parents means, very simply, that the earth is under man’s dominion.  We are meant to challenge the earth, engineer it, tame it.  The history of mankind in the Christian era, when you think about it, is very triumphant.  We no longer wear bear skins and wander from hunting ground to hunting ground.  We till the earth.  We build homes.  We educate.  We find sources of heat.  We cool, with modern technology, the unbearable summer heat. We build huge hydro-electric dams.  We tame the atom.  We send satellites into space, so that we can talk to our loved ones on the other side of the earth — INSTANTLY.  When a Christian stands in the way of a progress, to save some sort of milkweed, you can tell they don’t take God, or His scripture very seriously.  There’s nothing wrong with wise environmental stewardship, but it ALWAYS needs to be calculated with mankind as the primary beneficiary of that stewardship. If you are keeping a young couple from building a home, in order to protect a rat, you may not be a Christian.

On the political front, dominion also means that Christians should seek political authority and influence over our legislation and our cultural landscape.  If you wonder why your children, in public school, are being taught to be gender-confused, it’s because your church may have surrendered the battle, and avoided the dominion mandate.  A tell-tale clue: if someone tells you “Jesus doesn’t care about who you vote for,” you can tell they have abandoned God’s dominion mandate.  Jesus cares about EVERYTHING.  He is NOT JUST THE LORD OF YOUR SALVATION.  He is the Lord of ALL your choices — political, cultural, and spiritual.

Dispensationalism

This is tricky territory.  I don’t divide with any believer as to their interpretation of end times events, but we should know that the historic Christian church was largely post-millennial and amillennial.  This may be alarming to some of you, but ponder this:  when the Bible claims that God owns the cattle on a “thousand” hills, it is poetic, hyperbolic language.  God owns FAR MORE than the cattle on a thousand hills.  He owns it ALL. The millennial reign isn’t just for 1,000 years.  It is forever.   Post-millennials have believed that this reign began at the resurrection of Jesus, when He promised His disciples, (repeating again), “all authority in heaven AND ON EARTH is given unto me.”

When I talk to Christians who lament the evil of our day, I ask them,

• “Would you like to live in Pre-Columbian Mexico, where you could be dragged to the top of a temple and have your heart cut out for the Sun God?”
• “Would you like to live in second century Rome and go celebrate the killing of gladiators in the Coliseum?”
• “Would you like to live in the pre-abolition years of the worldwide slavery trade?
• “Do you really think “Manifest Destiny” was a bad thing?  Would you rather have your nose cut off and your body tortured by merciless Comanches?

The point here being that the founders of our country saw an infinite march of progress, an increase of wealth, and wisdom, and comfort, and virtue.  Yes, when we lose sight of our obligations to God, we experience, troughs in history, depressions, as we are seeing right now, but when real REVIVAL returns, we experience something like what old Israel did when they discovered, tearfully, they had forgotten God’s inspired scripture.  When we do remember that scripture, we are giving our marching orders, and the march of Christ continues at a better clip.

With respect to modern dispensationalism itself, I have found there to be two sorts of dispensationalists: the  ones who are always crying “it has to get worse,” and the ones who want  to be found WORKING THE VINEYARD when the Lord returns.  Be the latter.  Work the vineyard.  Make it more productive.  The Lord may return in five seconds or five thousand years.  Don’t be the sort of dispensationalist who told some of my pro-life friends, praying at an abortion clinic, “you are only delaying the Lord’s coming by trying to make it better.”  Polish the brass on the Titanic, in other words, because you may not be on the Titanic after all.

Take dominion

If you are in a church where a pastor closed his doors in fear of Covid, forever, if you are in a church that can’t seem to decry the obvious evils of Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, if you are in a church that seemed to think “it’s horrible Charlie was killed, but isn’t it awful that he couldn’t have been more winsome in his communication?” you are in an effeminate, cowardly, craven assembly.  Get out of it.  Find a “seven day a week” church like Doug Wilson’s or Jeff Durbin’s or Jack Hibb’s.  Educate together.  Work together.  Trade together.  Write novels together.  Sing together.  Get married young, have lots of children, and prosper together.

God gave us a beautiful promise in Deuteronomy 28.  Read it, one of these days.

Categorised in: Dominion

This post was written by Jim Riley