What is Christian dominionism?

Have Christians been commissioned by God to set the world right? Are they set as kings upon God's holy hill of Zion to dispense judgment and justice in the earth? They are NOT. But a day is coming in which CHRIST will be, according to Psalm 2 and Psalm 72, and other scriptures. The putting of the world right will be quickly accomplished by Him at His second coming.

327 I do not now discuss whether multitudinous bodies are right or wrong, but they are multitudinous bodies, not a gathering of saints, as such, to Jesus' name. They are not — cannot pretend to be — the body of Christ, nor a part of it, nor even the true family of God. Further, their object is to impose religion on the state, to make the state act on Christian principles. The gathering together in one the children of God, which were scattered abroad, does not enter their minds, but getting the state to act Christianly; and they insist on the authority and independence of the church exactly on popish grounds, not that of a little despised flock suffering under its persecution, but pressing its own principles on the state. That Christianity has modified men's habits is quite true. Men do not do in the light what they do in the dark. But making the world Christian in its ways is not gathering together the children of God. It is a return to Judaism, as indeed the Covenanters, true-hearted people as they were, clearly did. They took the sword, and perished by the sword.

Take another instance, which the system of these brethren furnishes of the havoc it works for all the practice as well as the truth of the church. Indisputably Christians are called to be unworldly, suffering, separate, and subject like the crucified Lord here below. Now if Dan. 2:44 (p. 140) is thus misapplied to the kingdom already set up, the church has to subdue and destroy the imperial powers, or "anti-Christian systems," as they are styled. That is, it must, like Popery, subjugate and overthrow all opposing powers that be. Thus does the church, through that error, become a rebel in Christ's name, instead of a holy sufferer, as Christ and His servants taught and practiced. Take it as God's kingdom when Christ comes "in the days of these kings," the ten toes of the statue, and all becomes true, plain, and consistent. No need then to metamorphose the instant and irreparable destruction of the powers into the slow dealing of providence, any more than to rob Christ of His prerogative of filling the whole earth with indisputable authority, immediately consequent on His judgment of the quick. Dan. 7 confirms this as the only true interpretation. The Ancient of days comes when judgment is given to the saints of the high or heavenly places. Then they will safely and holily reign with Christ to God's glory. To attempt it now is a sin and a lie; it is in theory if not in fact to play the part of fifth-monarchy men, whether Papists or Protestants, Covenanters or Roundheads.

In current missionary literature no phrase is much more common than "the conquest of the world for Christ!" and yet no such phrase is found in Scripture. The kingdoms, of this world are indeed going to become "the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ" (Rev. 11:15); but this as the result of woes and judgments, and not of the preaching of the gospel. There is a great difference between subduing the world to Christ and gathering people out of the world for Christ. The divine plan must be one or the other. It . cannot embrace both at the same time.

The thought is all too common even amongst true believers that the mission of the Christian is to improve, and in this way, if possible, convert the world; hence they fling themselves, often with great ardour, into all sorts of schemes for the betterment of humanity, and plunge earnestly into political controversy, endeavouring to further the cause which they deem to be right.

Rev. 2:26-28. The politics of a Christian — reigning over the earth with Christ. The answer to all ideas of setting the world right now. Christ has to wait for His kingdom, — so must we. To try to rule the world now is to go before Him and to go without Him — a grievous dishonour to Himself. We shall reign with Him if we endure for Him.

Christendom fell away, though never so much as in the last century and half, into the dream of the church triumphant, not suffering, and of a world-wide victory for the gospel during the Lord's absence. All distinctive truth and heavenly hope are surrendered by an error as stupendous for principle as for practice. For it levels the N.T. to the footing of the O.T., and obscures, where it does not destroy, the characteristic force of both. The result for thoughtful minds, we say not for believers, is an enormous impulse given, both to superstition which in its blindness seeks to amalgamate Judaism and Christianity, and to rationalism which has no faith in the word of God, and no divinely given perception of Christ; who is little to both. Scripture, it is plain, speaks of the gospel of the reign, Christ's reign, which goes out before the end of this age comes, never of the reign of the gospel, the delusion of the worldly-minded.

This is exactly what has materialised in church history. As William Kelly once put it:[4] ‘Then follows the rise of what was great in its littleness till it became little in its greatness in the earth’. The idea that things will gradually improve throughout the time of the kingdom and that, somehow, the preaching of the gospel will lead to the conversion of the world runs against (not only observation but) the plain teaching of this chapter. It is the confusion between ‘gospel of the reign’ with an imagined ‘reign of the gospel’. The kingdom will be established in power, through judgment, not through the gospel.

Firstly, the dominion theologians say that there is a fundamental difference between the Kingdom our Lord preached and the one the apostles preached (in view of the destruction of the temple). In reality, the Kingdom preached by the Lord and the apostles is the same, though it adopted a different character when the Lord was rejected by the nation (Matt. 11-13) and during His absence (Luke 19:11-27). It will be seen in glory again in a different character, but it is the same Kingdom.

The Dominion school of thinking is linked with the so-called preterite interpretation of the books of Hebrews and Revelation, and the Olivet Discourse. Although there are variations in their positions, the preterites teach that the prophecies have been fulfilled in the destruction of the temple and that the millennium started in the year 70 AD! Of course, we have to bear with our brothers and sisters in the faith, but it is important to see the consequences of these and similar erroneous teachings, especially when these views are not privately held, but are imposed on everyone.