Now we move deeper into understanding the
Kingdom of God. If you just came upon this series of studies, you can backtrack
here
and catch up at your own pace. Anyone wishing to move ahead faster can find
them in the CAP lessons. - CL
This study is extensively
cross-referenced to scripture. By all means, take the time to read and study
those verses. You want to become familiar with the Bible narrative and the only
way to do that is from the Bible. The book is only our track. The 15 stages are
clearly outlined within the text.
We know that the first
step in the transformation of the earth is God's sovereign grace in
extending salvation to individuals. He regenerates them, adopts them, and
calls forth from them an acknowledgment of His lordship. He extracts from them,
in principle, their unconditional surrender. By grace are men saved, through
faith, and that not of themselves; it is a gift of God, lest any man should
boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).
The second step
is the response of men in acknowledging the assignment of God's dominion
covenant. Men are to subdue the earth (Genesis 1:26-28; 9:1-7). This
assignment is basic to man's being, and men carry it out, either under the
lordship of Satan or the lordship of Christ. The Satanists, having no
autonomous law, and therefore no tool of dominion, are unable to carry out this
assignment. We know that in hell and then the lake of fire, men are impotent,
passively being consumed forever, "where their worm
dieth not, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:48). When salt is poured on
a city, it is destroyed; nothing will grow in that soil (Judges 9:45). A little
salt acts as a savor, which is why Christians are referred to as the salt of
the earth (Matthew 5:13), and why salt was required in the animal sacrifices in
the Temple (Leviticus 2:13), but too much salt is a sign of God's total
judgment, which is why Lot's wife was turned to a pillar of salt (Genesis
19:26). This is the curse of hell: total impotence. "For every one shall be salted with fire, and every
sacrifice shall be salted with salt" (Mark 9:49). Sin requires a
sacrifice, and if man does not choose to cling to Christ's sacrifice, then he
shall become the sacrifice. Rebellious man becomes an eternal sacrifice burning
before God.
God
is using His people as salt. They are the salt of the earth, as a savor,
but they also serve as salt to Satan and his kingdom. Christians are
salting over the city of Satan, destroying it, causing it to become impotent. This
is the salt of the gospel. It is savor to the regenerate and death
for the unregenerate. It is like salt in a man's diet: too little makes for
boring food, and too much can make us sick.
Thus, when men who are
regenerate take seriously God's dominion assignment, and they adopt God's law
as their tool of dominion, they begin the process of salting Satan's kingdom,
which is the other side of the dominion coin. The flourishing of God's
kingdom is the salting over of Satan's.
The third step
is the use of the law to subdue one's flesh, and then one's environment.
Paul's anguish concerning the war between his flesh and his spirit tells us
what we are up against (Romans 7). So does Paul's description of our spiritual
warfare in Ephesians 6: “Put on the whole armour of God,
that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." (v. 11)
Truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of
salvation, the sword of the Spirit, and the word of God: here is our equipment
(w. 14-17). The word of God provides us with our moral guidelines.
Biblical law also
provides us with a tool of external dominion. God promises blessings for that society which surrenders
unconditionally to Him, and then adopts the terms of His peace treaty
(Deuteronomy 8 and 28).
Fourth,
the
blessings of God begin to flow in the direction of His people. “A good man leaveth an in heritance to his children's
children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just." (Proverbs
13:22). As
Benjamin Franklin said, honesty is the best policy. Capital flows to those who
will bear responsibility, predict the future accurately, plan to meet the needs
of consumers with a minimum of waste, and deal honestly with both suppliers and
customers. Again, Deuteronomy 8 and 28 show us the nature of this
wealth-transfer process. This wealth-transfer program is through market
competition and conformity to God's law. Satan's kingdom is progressively
decapitalized.
Fifth,
the
stewardship principle is universalized. God owns the whole earth: “The earth is the LORD'S, and the fulness thereof; the
earth and all they that dwell therein" (Psalm 24:1). The steward must acknowledge his Lord's total
authority over him, yet he is expected to administer this property faithfully,
efficiently, and profitably, as Jesus taught in the parable of the talents
(Matthew 25:14-30). God finally comes as the owner to dispossess those
who have not recognized His absolute sovereignty over His own land, as Jesus
warned the Jews in His parable of the vineyard (Matthew 21:33-41). In every institution, God
dispossesses Satan's subordinates and replaces them with His subordinates.
To retain derivative sovereignty over the earth, men must honor the
original owner. Everything is held by lease. This lease has terms
attached to it, and the terms are spelled out in God's law.
The whole idea of the
Jubilee year, where every 50 years the land of Canaan returned to the original
Hebrew families, points to a final Jubilee, when God returns the land to His
adopted sons (Leviticus 25:8-17). Dominion men purchase back redeem every
institution that they can afford, steadily, until that final day, just as Jacob
purchased his birthright from his older twin brother Esau, even though God had
promised Esau's birthright to Jacob (Genesis 25:23, 29-34). As God makes more
capital available to His people - more money, more tools, more influence - they
can afford to lease even more of Satan's kingdom, which he holds as a squatter
anyway. God's law begins to dominate every sphere of life, across the face of
the earth.
Sixth,
those
who conform themselves to Biblical law, and who subdue their environments by
the appropriate laws, will rise to prominence. This is what God said
would happen to Israel, as nations marveled at Israel's laws (Deuteronomy
4:5-8). Men who seek
responsibility in terms of their faith in God tend to have the responsibility
given to them by those who resist taking responsibility. Joseph was
master of Potiphar's house, although he was a slave officially (Genesis 39:6).
Then he was placed in prison, and soon he was the real keeper of the prison
(Genesis 39:22). Finally, he became second in command in all of Egypt
(Genesis 41:40-43). Ungodly men can exercise dominion only in terms of power,
since they reject God's law, and God steadily removes their power from them.
Satan refuses to subordinate himself to anyone or anything, but dominion is always exercised by
those who are subordinate to the One who exercises sovereign power. Satan
becomes wholly subordinate on the last day, but then all power is removed from
him. He never surrenders, and therefore he is destroyed. He refuses to
surrender to God unconditionally; he is therefore destroyed absolutely.
Seventh,
the
treaty of peace is extended to all areas of those cultures that surrender to
God unconditionally. The whole of society must be put under
dominion. Societies can rule under God's sovereign authority, as Israel was
called to do, or they can become tributaries to God's conquering kingdom, as
the nations far from Israel were expected to do (Deuteronomy 20:10-11), or
else they are to be destroyed (Deuteronomy 20:12-15). There is no "King's
X," no escape hatch.
Eighth,
this
provokes the nations to jealousy (Deuteronomy 4:5-8). They see the wisdom of
God's law. The church is to be a city on a hill, for we Christians are the
light of the world (Matthew 5:14). We are not to put our light under a bushel
(Matthew 5:15-16). People
want external blessings. These blessings are the product of a social order which respects the law
of God. They have to get the blessings on God's terms. They must capitulate.
Any blessings received except in terms of God's law-order are preludes to
destruction (Deuteronomy 8:11-20).
Ninth,
even
the Jews will be provoked to jealousy. Paul cited Deuteronomy
32:21 concerning the Jews: "But I say, did
not Israel know? First Moses saith, I will provoke you to jealousy by them that
are no people, and by a foolish nation I will anger you" (Romans 10:19). The
Gentiles have received the great blessing. "I
say then, Have they [the Jews] stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but
rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke
them to jealousy" (Romans 11:11). This becomes a means of converting the
remnant of Israel in the future, and when they are converted, Paul says,
just think of the blessings that God will pour out on the earth, given
the fact that the fall of Israel was the source of great blessings for the
Gentile nations. "Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world,
and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their
fulness?" (Romans 11:12). When the Jews receive their promise, the
age of blessings will come. When they submit to God's peace treaty, the growth
of the kingdom will be spectacular. This is what Paul means by his phrase,
"how much more."
This
leads to stage ten, the explosion of conversions and blessings.
If God responds to covenantal faithfulness by means of blessings, just consider
the implications of widespread conversions among the Jews. When the fullness of
the Gentiles has come in, then Israel will be converted (Romans 11:25). The distinction between Jew and
Gentile will then be finally erased in history, and the kingdom of God will be
united as never before.
Eleventh,
the
kingdom of God becomes truly worldwide in scope. This involves the
beginning of the restoration of the cursed world. The curse will then be lifted
progressively by God. One result is longer life spans for man. This is a down
payment on the paradise to come after the final judgment. God says: "For, behold I create new heavens and a new earth:
and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind" (Isaiah
65:17). But
this process of creation is part of history, to be concluded by the final
conflagration. It has preliminary visibility, in time and on earth. How do we
know this? Because of verse 20, one of the crucial teachings in the Bible
concerning God's preliminary blessings: "There shall be
no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days:
for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being a hundred
years old shall be accursed." Isaiah 65:20 therefore points to a time before
the final judgment, when people still die and sinners still operate, but
which resembles the long life spans of those who lived before Noah's Flood. This passage cannot possibly be
referring to the world beyond the final judgment, yet it points to external
blessings, namely long life, that do not exist in our world. These words cannot
legitimately be "spiritualized." They refer to life on earth.
They refer to a specific blessing on earth. It is a blessing that is a down
payment on paradise, a testimony of God that He can deliver this fallen cursed
world. This testimony, however, is not based on a radical break with the
processes of history, but is instead a testimony that stems from the steady
expansion of God's kingdom. There
is continuity in history, and there is also progress in external
affairs. This is not some hypothetical internal kingdom, but a visible kingdom
of flesh and blood.
Twelfth,
the
forces of Satan then have something concrete culturally to rebel against. They
will have the testimony of the success of God's kingdom, in time and on
earth, to point to their failure. They will have to conform themselves
outwardly, as spies do, in order to retain the external blessings of God. They
will be as the foreigners dwelling in Israel were: under the law, protected by
the law, and blessed in terms of the law. They will have to become subordinate
in order to gain access to the blessings. Yet ethically, they cannot
remain subordinate forever. Satan couldn't do it in heaven, so he won’t do it
on earth. Neither will his followers. But they must rebel against something.
Their kingdom is being invaded, not Christ's. They are fighting the
defensive strategy; we aren't. They are headed back toward the last outpost,
not us. They will rebel (Revelation 20:7-9a), but they will not succeed.
Thirteenth,
Satan's
rebellion is immediately smashed by Christ and His angels (Revelation
20:9b-10). Satan
tries one last time to defeat Christ, but he rebels from a position of
weakness. He sought in Eden to beat God by using His creation, mankind, against
Him. God has reversed the tables on Satan. He has defeated Satan's kingdom by
using man as His instrument of dominion, exactly as He said he would in Genesis
1:26-28. Satan has no victory to claim. He has been proven wrong about the
impotence of Christ's human followers, just as he learned from Job, once God
had taught Job what He was all about. God did not save Job by a miraculous intervention, after
all God saved Job by the testimony of His word, by carefully teaching Job the
doctrine of the sovereignty of God. Then He restored Job's health
and wealth. Why should we expect something different on this side of the cross?
Why should we expect Satan's victory now, when he was decisively beaten in his
challenge against Job? At the end of history, Christ and His angels visibly
defeat Satan, where he is trapped in hell, desperately hoping that the gates of
hell shall prevail against the church. Yet the history of Christ's victorious
kingdom, in time and on earth, will already have destroyed the basis of
that last hope of Satan.
Fourteenth,
the
final judgment leads to Satan's confinement to the lake of fire. The
contents of hell are dumped into the lake (Revelation 20:14). This is the end
of Satan's quest for dominion apart from subordination to God.
Fifteenth,
God
creates the final version of the new heaven and new earth, wherein
grows the tree of eternal life (Revelation 22:2). Men now have access to it. No
longer is it in Eden, with a flaming sword to keep men from gaining access to
it on the basis of their own works and power (Genesis 3:24). He demonstrates
that His down payment on this final dwelling place had been wholly reliable.
It is strange that Christians today cannot envision the
program for conquest God has established for His people. They lack confidence
in themselves, it seems. They lack confidence in their understanding of their
own responsibilities. They have misread the plain teaching of the Bible,
finding alternative outlines that remove their guilt for inaction. They prefer not to acknowledge their
personal ethical burden of striving to fulfill the terms of God's dominion
assignment. And even when they
admit that this assignment really was given to man by God, and is still in
force, they conclude that it's an impossible task, and God never has believed
that regenerate men can fulfill their assignment, in time and on earth. They
lack confidence in God's program for earthly victory.
It would be very
interesting to be able to go back to the era of the Judges, in order to
discover if theologians and popularizers of the defeatist faith in that era had
rewritten God's dominion assignment regarding Canaan. We can imaginatively
reconstruct some of the possible arguments. The first approach might have gone
something like this: "Well, yes, God told us either to drive the
Canaanites out of the land, or to destroy them utterly from the face of the
earth. But, of course, His language must be understood as referring to spiritual
victory. God in fact has allowed us to conquer in His name. We are not to
have anything to do with the gods of Canaan. We are to live as though we had
successfully driven them out of the land. In principle, we have, since we have
driven Canaan's gods out of our hearts, our lives, and our congregations. Of
course, we live as strangers in the land which God had promised for our
inheritance (Judges 2:34). We are not, however, spiritual strangers to the land
of promise. No indeed! We dwell victorious in the land in the hills, perhaps,
since the Amorites won't let us come into the valley, but victorious in
spirit. And when they finally attack us in our mountain strongholds, as we
know they will, and burn our walled cities, as surely they must, we will hold
out, praying to God for martyrdom, or else His triumphant return with His
angels, which will definitively prove to everyone that we are more than
conquerors." This is the "continuity of defeat" version, also
known as the triumph of Satan's leaven, in time and on earth.
Another variation might
be the "temporary interlude of defeat" version. It might have gone
something like this: "Yes, God told the generation which came out of Egypt
that they could conquer if they were faithful to His covenant. But they weren't
faithful to that covenant. So God abrogated that covenant. He brought our fathers
to the very edge of the land (Deuteronomy 34), but they did not pass over. His
covenant has been suspended during our period of history. He will bring
His people into the land, driving the Canaanites completely out of the land,
but not until He returns in power and might with His angels. Then He
will re-establish His covenant with His people, and the Canaanites had better
look out then! But God did not plan on our entry into the land. True, we
are here in the land, but God has a new administrative principle for our
generation. We are to preach the gospel to the people of the land, but we know
that they will not convert in huge numbers, and they will seek to drive us out
of the land. But they will not succeed. Just before they try, Christ will
appear secretly, and secretly remove us to heaven. After seven years we will
return, in our restored bodies, to serve as princes with Jesus, subduing Canaan
for a thousand years, fulfilling God's command given to our forefathers in
Egypt. So it's not our responsibility to drive the Canaanites out of the
land. (Besides, those guys are tough!)"
Excuses, excuses, excuses: man never
runs short of excuses. The problem is: God never accepts them. Adam and Eve
didn't escape, just because each of them blamed somebody else for the problem. God
holds His people responsible for laboring continually to subdue the earth to
His glory by means of the grace of law. That responsibility is with every
generation, and God expects His people to extend the dominion of His
kingdom, generation by generation, culture by culture. He has told us that
Christians can do it, and that eventually His people will do it.
It may take a thousand years, but they will do it. Man was created for this
very purpose, and Satan will not successfully thwart God's plan. Angels will
not take the credit for Satan's long-term retreat into his last stronghold; the
redeemed adopted sons of God will take the credit, under the sovereignty of
God.
