Dominion Theology Guarantees
The Labor Of The Church
Will Not Be In Vain

Will God save Sodom for the sake of "five righteous"? According to dominion theology, as goes the church, so goes the nation.

OK, hold the fort. Dominion theology? Aren't we stepping over the line with that one?

Whatever happened to good old "separation of church and state?" The church has nothing to do with the state, right?

Matter of fact, you'd be a little hard pressed to get the early Americans to swallow that one. They didn't seem a bit embarrassed to mix the two with impunity.

But actually the concept makes some sense when you stop and think about it. We have seen that a nation’s culture is nothing more than the outworking of its religious faith in every aspect of life. What people believe quite naturally affects what they do.

When the church fails in her duty to transform the culture, the nation under the influence of humanism, sinks inexorably into the maelstrom of God’s judgment. Some have described this as "integration into the void” – the antithesis of dominion theology.

Dominion Theology

Thankfully, the mercy and grace of God abound even in the midst of judgment. Therefore, the judgment of God for His people is judgment unto restoration, not judgment unto death. Thus, we know that the lost cause will not be lost forever. This is the hope of dominion theology.

Before the captivity, Jeremiah was commanded by God to purchase a field and record it in the municipal record. Specifically, he charged Baruch to place the evidence of purchase in an earthen vessel at the court, in which it "may continue many days" (Jer. 32:14).

At this time the Babylonians were already building siege works against the city. Jeremiah reverently questioned the purpose of God in commanding him to invest seventeen shekels of silver in a piece of land that was soon to be repossessed by the invading enemy. Was this not a lost cause?

Even though Jeremiah was not to enjoy this parcel for long, it was a symbol of God’s merciful intention to one day establish his descendants in the land. Long-range cultural victory was assured in the face of a seemingly lost cause. The dominion theology of the Bible guarantees it.

God told Jeremiah that He would grant repentance to His people in the captivity and restore them to their land. Their fields would once again be bought and sold. Jeremiah’s field was an earnest of that promise.

The judgment and captivity were to have a two-fold purpose in the sovereignty of God. For the enemies of God this was a judgment unto death, used by God to cleanse the land of evil and restore it to rest and productivity. The same judgment was used to purify and perfect the people of God and prepare them to return to the land in total victory.

Dominion Labor

The Proverbs 31 woman, because of her prudent preparation, is described as one who "laughs at the time to come" (Prov. 31:25, RSV). She has worked hard to lay up a store of goods for her family and for the poor, so she knows that God will take care of her when hard times come. Her husband "is known in the gates, where he sitteth among the elders of the land" (Prov. 31:23). He drew strength and encouragement to serve the community from his wife’s support and prudent management of his household.

Scripture states this in different ways. The church is to be salt, or preservative in the world. The church is to be on the offensive against the gates of hell. The purpose of godly civil government is to actively restrain evildoers.

This victory is not to be won by means of a holy war, but by the works and words of the believer and the community of saints. In the power of the Holy Spirit, men and nations will be persuaded of their need to turn to God. Many times it takes a crisis for them to see this need.

It was just such a crisis that gave birth to the Protestant Reformation. One of the major themes flowing out of the Reformation was the priesthood of the believer in his so-called "secular" calling. This doctrine in fact supplied the theological underpinning for the development of Western Civilization.

As this doctrine works itself out, the believer is increasingly elevated to higher levels of responsibility and authority. Through the service of diligent labor he gradually assumes dominion in his sphere of influence. The cumulative effect of this process over time is a free society, as the church moves out into the world dissolving the chains of tyranny in the process.

In one sense, work is the result of God’s curse resulting from the disobedience and fall of man. With the fall of the creation, strenuous work became necessary for mere survival in the earth. This curse has extended even to the present day and prompted Paul to exhort the Thessalonians to work if they were interested in eating (see 2 Thess. 3:10).

However, work predated the fall, and God in His grace has now made the curse the very means of blessing for mankind. Consecrated work is to be the means by which men fulfil their divine mandate to subdue the earth. Frequently, in Genesis, men were distinguished by their job descriptions or titles, an indication that this was the means by which they fulfilled the dominion mandate assigned earlier (see Gen. 4:20-21).

Because of their faithfulness "on the job," believers have a platform from which to communicate the gospel of Christ to those around them. Their works as well as their words are a powerful testimony to Christ in the real-life, real-world context of the marketplace. This dominion theology is the primary means that God has ordained for Christianity to permeate the culture and gradually transform it for Christ.

Conclusion

The patient labor and evangelism of the people of God, empowered and blessed by His Spirit will again prevail.(12.10) And it will be "not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the LORD of hosts" (Zech. 4:6).

This was the hope of our Christian forbearers: "Strong and certain was the conviction of the Christians that the church would come forth triumphant out of its conflicts, and, as it was its destination to be a world-transforming principle, would attain to dominion of the world."(12.11) The hope of their dominion theology was that the lost cause would again prevail.