Faith on Earth? – What’s it all about? – Part 2

Who is the God of this World? – Christ or Satan?
Humanistic Dominion
We saw in part 1 that Jesus gave Christians responsibility for the nations of this world. They were told in the Great Commission to teach the nations to obey all His commandments; this is nothing less than a requirement to make this world a Christian world. But this command, this commission of Christ has not been obeyed, as it should have been. Here we are two thousand years later and the world is by no stretch of the imagination a Christian world.
The Lord told us that there must be no compromise with evil, sadly, we have done nothing but compromise, compromise, and compromise. We submitted to the idea of religious pluralism and thereby have allowed evil to come to dominate in our schools and universities, in the entertainment industry, in the legal profession, in government and in just about every area of public life. We have believed and followed false teachers that have told us that Christ is not Lord of all (as He said He was) but that Satan is the god of this world and that, no matter what we do, the world will get worse and worse until Jesus returns. This is a damnable heresy from the pit of Hell and it needs to be seen as such. It has stripped God’s people of the power that they should have had and used to fulfill Christ’s Great Commission. It needs to be recognized for what it is and relegated to the dustbin of history.
Godly Dominion
God said that the Seed of the woman would crush the Serpent’s head. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross liberated all believers from Satan’s grip, forming the new humanity, His body and thereby sealed Satan’s fate. The outcome is certain but this work has not yet been completed; many are still under Satan’s dominion and are serving him rather than the Lord. It is the task of Christians, as we pursue the work of the Great Commission, to crush the Serpent’s head. This work has begun but much more is yet to be done.
Christians must rally behind the truth of Holy Scripture and work to correct false teachings that have blocked progress in the past and continue to do so today. We need to go out and claim the world for Christ; we need to declare that He—not just will be, but is today—King of kings and Lord of lords. It is He that this nation and all nations must obey. Our rallying cry should be, as it was in the early church, “Christ is Lord!” He is Lord of all and His law, God’s law, should be the foundation of all the laws of all the nations of the earth.
This simple concept: CHRIST IS LORD! is where we must start and, of necessity, it will be a small start. But, as we are faithful, it will grow, perhaps more rapidly than we might imagine. There are many Christians in America today. As these truths begin to penetrate into the Christian community and begin to take hold, we might be amazed at the effect it produces. It might be slow at first but it can grow very rapidly when the sleeping giant that is America’s Christian population begins to wake up. The important thing is for each of us to remain faithful to our Lord, to avoid like the plague the temptation to compromise the message. We must continue “stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
In doing this, we must realize and remember that: “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds. Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4,5). To be sure, we are involved in a war but it is a war of ideas not a physical war or a political game in which we seek to gain control of the use of force (government). Our objective is not to defeat so much as to win our opponents to our side. The means we employ is not revolution but regeneration but this does not mean that we become doormats and just lie down and permit the enemy to walk over us. We must do all we can, within the limits of existing civil laws, to speak out and exert whatever influence we have to assert the eternal and universal kingship of Christ. He, not all the officials of Washington DC is Lord. They are, or should be, His administrators, His servants, as we all are.
The Great Commission involved baptism, which implied the need for the dissemination of the Gospel message. But the requirement of obedience to Christ’s commandments also brings God’s law into the picture; it is the law that defines obedience. The first task would naturally fall to missionaries, pastors and teachers, those that have the knowledge and skills needed. The greater task, though, falls to individual believers; it is they that must shape the cultures and laws of their nations to bring them into conformity to the law of God. The entire body of Christ is addressed here and each and every believer is called to be an integral part of the Great Commission. This must begin at home!
Fulfillment
For it to be successful, the churches must teach–and Christians must understand that they, not the pastors and missionaries, are the major force behind the implementation of the Commission. Each individual must see himself as God’s servant with responsibility and a role to play in this ages-long conflict with evil. Rather than dwelling on the seeming impossibility of the challenge, they should think in terms of what they will say to Christ when He asks them what they did with the talents He gave them.
Christ did not give us an impossible mission. He promised to be with us (in the power of the Spirit) to the end of the age. Would He ask us to pray, as in the Lord’s prayer, for the impossible? It is not impossible and, if this generation is too worldly or too impotent, then a later generation will arise and it will be fulfilled. God’s word assures us in many places that there will be a future age of worldwide faith and that: “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9, Habakkuk 2:14). And just how well do the waters of the sea cover the seabed? Totally! Not an inch is exposed and so it will be in the fulfillment. The nations will become Christian and “Jesus shall reign where ere the sun doth his successive journeys run.”