“I want the Braille Bible for the blind believers in my Church.”
Despite his visual impairment, Pradeep is a man who hungers for God’s Word. Unable to hear or speak, he communicates with others by writing on their palms, or by typing on a computer.
“I have downloaded the Bible on my laptop, but the Braille Bible is better and easier for me when I am travelling”, he shares. His desire to have the Braille Bible led him to visit the Bible Society of India, to see if they had any Braille Bibles available.
Making the Word of God known to all peoples is not merely making the Bible available in different languages, but also in different formats—so that people from all walks of life may experience the transformative power of the Word for themselves.
Currently, in India, only 43 books of the Bible are available in braille, much still needs to be done to translate the entire Bible into braille, so that many others like Pradeep will be able to receive God’s love through His Word.
As the Bible Society works to meet the needs of those who hunger for the Word, we also need your help to sustain our efforts. We invite you to contribute to the Bible Mission, so that more will be empowered and enriched by the living Word.
Reader’s Question: How should biblical Christians assess Dominion Theology or the Seven Mountain Mandate?
According to the leaders of the movement called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), God in these last days will empower the church and her prophets and apostles to take control of the world’s major institutions and govern the nations. Known variously as ‘Dominionism’, ‘Dominion Theology’, ‘Reconstructionism’, ‘Restorationism’ and the ‘Seven Mountains Mandate’, this radical doctrine presents a vision of the relationship between Church and State that can be best described as a form of theocracy.
NAR is a movement that began life in the early 1990s. According to the late Peter Wagner, one of its chief spokesmen, the leaders of this movement believe that in these last days God has begun to restore the office of the apostle which the church has marginalised for most of its history.
These end-time apostles, accompanied by the prophets, will be responsible for preparing the Church for Christ’s return. The leaders of this movement believe that unless the Church is sufficiently prepared, Christ cannot return and the parousia will be delayed indefinitely. This means that God has placed the consummation of his eschatological kingdom in the hands of his apostles and prophets.
The leaders of NAR also believe that it is the mission of the church to transform the world and to establish the kingdom of God on earth. They argue that this radical transformation can only be effected if Christians (i.e., the apostles and prophets) take control of the important institutions on which society stands.
In his book, Dominion: How Kingdom Action Can Change the World (2008), Wagner describes this as a ‘new call for a triumphant Church’. He firmly believes that the time has come for the Church to exercise dominion over the nations: ‘We have the tools to do it, we have the gifted personnel to do it and we have the power of the Holy Spirit to do it. It will be done!’
According to the proponents of this doctrine, the major institutions – the seven mountains – over which the apostles and prophets must exercise control, are:
Government / Military
Education
Religion
Family
Business
Arts / Entertainment
Media
Although it is critical that all the seven mountains be brought under the Church’s dominion, according to Johnny Enlow, a self-styled NAR prophet, the most important mountain is the government because ‘it can establish laws and decrees that affect and control every other mountain’.
The version of dominionism advanced by NAR is very similar to the teaching associated with the heretical Latter Rain Movement that sprung from Pentecostal soil in America in the 1940s. In fact, many of the doctrines and practices associated with NAR can be traced to that movement, albeit dressed in a more contemporary garb and cleverly repackaged.
The Assemblies of God denounced the teachings of the Latter Rain movement in a statement issued on September 13, 1949.
The editor of Media Spotlight, Albert James Dager has succinctly summarised the teachings of dominionism in his book, Vengeance is Ours: The Church in Dominion (1990) thus:
Dominion theology is predicated upon three beliefs: 1) Satan usurped man’s dominion over the earth through the temptation of Adam and Eve; 2) The Church is God’s instrument to take dominion back from Satan; 3) Jesus cannot or will not return until the Church has taken dominion by gaining control of earth’s governmental and social institutions.
How should Christians respond to the Seven Mountains Mandate?
Christians should reject this doctrine because it finds no support whatsoever in Scripture and because it distorts the Church’s understanding of its relationship to the State and the eschatological kingdom of God. This doctrine is the result of a number of erroneous exegetical and theological moves that led to serious aberrations and departures from Scripture.
Following the teachings of the Latter Rain Movement and Christian Reconstructionism, NAR leaders maintain that the dominion that Adam was given the privilege of exercising (Genesis 1:26-28) must be understood as his reign over the whole created order. However, Adam forfeited his right when he sinned against God.
NAR maintain that in these last days God has given this mandate to the Church, which must exercise dominion over the nations by taking possession of the seven mountains, the power centres of the world. The NAR prophet Steve Schultz could therefore declare: ‘We as the Church are becoming properly positioned to rule and reign with Christ and establish the Kingdom of God on earth’.
Needless to say, this is a complete distortion of the cultural mandate found in the first chapter of Genesis (1:28). By this mandate, God invites human beings made in the divine image to take care of the creation in the way that truly reflects the providential love and grace of its Creator. In other words, in obeying this divine mandate humans are to serve as stewards of the creation, not its overlords.
NAR has also twisted the Great Commission that Jesus gave to the Church (Matthew 28:16-20) by interpreting the command to make disciples in a way that supports their political agenda. In his book, Transformation: Change the Market Place and You Change the World (2006), the Argentinian evangelist and apostle Edgardo Silvoso declares that ‘The discipling of nations is our primary task on earth’.
In the same book Silvoso supplies examples that illustrate what he meant by the expression ‘discipling the nations’:
The Romans ‘discipled’ nations conquering and imposing on them Pax Romana. Lenin and his followers ‘discipled’ Russia and the Soviet Union by molding them in a regimented and all-encompassing way the lives of millions with Communist philosophy. Mao did the same in China, the largest nation on earth. Militant Muslims actively take over nations and disciple them a la Ayatollah Khomeini; and even though they don’t use the term disciple, they are making entire populations into followers – disciples – of Mohammed.
This is a serious misreading of the Great Commission of Christ.
In concert with its interpretation of the Great Commission, NAR has also construed the kingdom of God in essentially political terms. The Dominionist theology of the kingdom (also known as ‘Kingdom Now’ theology) is clearly articulated by Bill Johnson, an influential figure in NAR.
Since God’s original plan for Adam has been derailed by the latter’s disobedience, Johnson argues, ‘[w]e, the Church are called to extend His rule on this earthly sphere, just as Adam was called to do’. This, according to Johnson, is what is meant by the petition in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’.
This vision of the kingdom of God is diametrically opposed to that of Jesus’. In his reply to Pilate, Jesus said: ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world’ (John 18:36).
In 2000, the Assemblies of God in America issued a statement entitled ‘End time Revival – Spirit-Led and Spirit-Controlled’ to address the erroneous doctrines and practices that have arisen in some churches. One of the doctrines that it rejects because it contains ‘misleading and unbiblical elements’ is Kingdom Now or Dominion Theology.
The AOG in America describes it as an ‘errant theology’ which promotes a form of ‘unscriptural triumphalism’:
… this errant theology says that Jesus will not return until the Church takes dominion of the earth back from Satan and his followers. By taking control, through whatever means possible, of political, ecclesiastical, educational, economic, and other structures, Christians supposedly can make the world a worthy place for Christ to return and rule over. This unscriptural triumphalism generates other variant teachings.
In his book entitled Divergent Theology (2017), Richard Moore rightly observes that ‘Dominionism is so heinous and dangerous because it gives Satan more power than he has, and gives man more authority than he deserves’.
While this is no doubt true, this theology is far more insidious and the distortions it unleashes in its wake are far more pervasive. For Dominion Theology disfigures many of the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith: Christology, ecclesiology, anthropology and eschatology. It presents an altogether different gospel.
Hope Initiative Alliance collaborated with Lutheran Community Care Services, Care Corner Counselling Centre, and Trauma Healing Institute, to organise The Invisibles exhibition at Far East Plaza. Held from 12 – 21 July 2019, the exhibition aimed to promote the importance of mental wellness through various installations and activities such as a mime and a preview of a Bible-based trauma healing programme. The exhibition raised awareness about mental health issues with three focal points: creating an open space to talk about pain; dealing with unresolved trauma; and learning how to reconcile dissonance within oneself.
Hope Initiative Alliance collaborated with Lutheran Community Care Services, Care Corner Counselling Centre, and Trauma Healing Institute, to organise The Invisibles exhibition at Far East Plaza. Held from 12 – 21 July 2019, the exhibition aimed to promote the importance of mental wellness through various installations and activities such as a mime and a preview of a Bible-based trauma healing programme. The exhibition raised awareness about mental health issues with three focal points: creating an open space to talk about pain; dealing with unresolved trauma; and learning how to reconcile dissonance within oneself.
Football Plus collaborated with Hope Initiative Alliance to hold a futsal tournament from 6-7 July 2019. 9 teams competed in the 3-on-3 Futsal Battle. There was not a lot of foot traffic but we managed to get a decent response from parents and children who came in to our booths to take part in the peripheral events. Professional football freestylers also performed for onlookers and taught participants how to execute the tricks in their performance.
In total, $2,900 was raised during the two-day competition.
Calling all individuals, cell groups, pastors and church leaders passionate about missions!
Join us in a closed-door Missions Network Meeting to hear first-hand about the situation in Israel and Mongolia. This is a unique opportunity for individuals and groups keen on being part of global missions to network with like-minded people and learn more about the situation in the mission fields.
The modern evangelical church seems to have a penchant for playing fast and loose with the secular culture around it, uncritically absorbing its quintessential qualities and imbibing its ethos.
Many decades ago, scholars predicted that the unstoppable march of secularism especially in Western societies would render religion obsolete, with some even predicting the latter’s total demise. This ‘secularisation theory’, as it is often called, has, however, been proven to be quite false.
Religion continues to thrive in many parts of the world despite the advance of secularism. Even in deeply secular societies in the West, the lamp of religion remains lit, however dimly it may shine.
But the impact of secularism on religion is somewhat subtler – some would say, more insidious – than the originators of the ‘secularisation theory’ had envisaged. While secularism may not have totally eradicated a religion like Christianity, it has introduced serious distortions that would eventually rob it of its significance and force.
We see this miscegenation of secular culture and Christianity played out in theological liberalism in its various expressions. The authority of Scripture and the primacy of special revelation are undermined in favour of an expansive but nebulous natural theology. The great doctrines of the Christian faith – Trinity, Incarnation and salvation – are subjected to radical revisions even as Christianity is reduced to a moral religion and the kingdom of God is seen as nothing more than a utopian future that can be realised through social and political action.
Evangelicalism, however, has always prided itself with the tenacity to resist the cultural pressures to which liberal Christianity has succumbed. It claims to have stood steadfastly on the authority of the Bible and considers itself the theological heir of the sixteenth century Reformation.
But evangelicalism is by no means immune from secularism’s corrosive effects, and in recent decades, scholars and theologians have noted with alarm how it has so mindlessly yielded to the seductions of the prevailing culture.
When I speak of the secularisation of the evangelical church, I am not suggesting that its members now no longer believe in God or that they have suddenly become card-carrying atheists. Rather, I am suggesting that they have allowed an alien ethos or outlook to govern the way they think and conduct their lives.
Put differently, to speak of the secularisation of the church is not to suggest that the church has bought into secularism as such, but rather that she has bought into secularity. The secularised church has allowed the ‘things of this world’ to shape it in various ways, some of which are so significant as to be dangerously erosive to its identity and witness.
An instance of this is seen in the way in which doctrine and theology have morphed in some churches. For example, in some expressions of evangelical Christianity concepts like sin, faith and salvation have been emptied of their theological content and psychologised.
Sin is no longer seen as rebellion against God, but a human weakness to be understood and even accommodated, if it could not be defeated. Faith is reduced to a form of emotionalism where feeling and subjective religious experiences have become its normative expression and gauge.
This ‘move’ is appealing to many Christians as it fits cosily into the pervasive therapeutic culture that we’ve come to inhabit. David Wells saw this clearly when he writes in his book, Losing Our Virtue that ‘This psychologizing of sin and salvation has an immediacy about it that is appealing in this troubled age, this age of broken beliefs and broken lives’. But Wells is quick to warn that ‘The cost, however, is that it so subverts the process of moral understanding that sin loses its sinfulness, at least before God’.
Another evidence that the church has in some profound ways acquiesced to the secular culture is its commercialisation. Authors such as George Barna have long maintained that the church is in fact at war, competing with very aggressive marketeers who are determined to create a niche for themselves and peddle their wares.
If the church is not to lose out in the war and banished to oblivion, so the arguments goes, it has to be nimble and quick to adapt its products to existing circumstances and to the needs of the sovereign consumer. This perspective and approach, however, has serious ramifications to the witness of the church. As Jaco Beyers of the University of Pretoria points out: ‘This diverts the attention away from the content the church is supposed to covey and the emphasis is placed on the form of the presentation. The medium has indeed become the message’.
The tyranny of the business model has disfigured the shape of the church’s mission and ministry. Beyers adds: ‘Leadership is reduced to management; faith in providence is replaced with strategic planning; the gifts (charismata) are reduced to advanced skills; spontaneous kiononia is reduced to organised interaction’.
The office of the pastor is now transformed to that of a manager, a CEO, or an entrepreneur. Barna, for instance, thinks that the portfolio of spiritual gifts (this language too has been replaced with the more secular ‘skills-set’) of the modern pastor is profoundly different from what Paul had highlighted. They now include things like the ability to delegate, confidence, visibility, practicality and decision-making. The competence and effectiveness of pastors are subjected to modern secular assessments like the Key Performance Indicator (KPI).
Even seemingly innocuous shifts in terminologies may be indicative of secularism’s corrosive influence. Just as sacred buildings like churches can be deconsecrated for secular use, so Christian activities can be severed from biblical or theological references. For example, in many churches in Singapore ‘short-term mission trips’ has been re-casted as ‘holidays with a difference’.
Another area of the life of the church that is affected by the invasion of the secular is worship. As many commentators have noted, the corporate worship in some evangelical churches has been driven by the culture of entertainment, characterised by superficial sentimentality and narcissism. In concert with the erosion of theological substance and the absence of the liturgy, worship in some modern evangelical churches is often reduced to religious kitsch.
All this means that a kind of rootless consumerism is allowed to flourish in our modern churches. In ignoring or by pushing to the periphery the rich spiritual heritage that it has inherited, the modern church finds itself becoming subservient to a different god – the god of personal choices.
Driven by the invisible hand of consumerism, the church constantly worries if the ‘products’ she presents in the religious market are able to meet the ‘felt needs’ of her members. It is, after all, a buyers’ market! And knowing how to keep the customers satisfied has become indispensable in this world of competitive religious marketing.
In similar vein, worshippers no longer assess the church by its theological orthodoxy and commitment to the Gospel. Rather they judge the church on the basis of its ability to meet their needs. As Wells describes it: ‘People keep entering, lured by the church’s attractions or just to check out the wares, but then they move on because they feel their needs, real or otherwise, are not being met’.
This has created the phenomenon of ‘floating Christians’, modern religious nomads who move from one church to another in search of the church that would be able to meet their most immediate needs. And in accommodating this religious consumerism, churches have effectively installed revolving doors. Churches may be full each Sunday, but not with the same people. Membership – and the commitment it entails – has become superfluous.
The only way the modern church can arrest this trend or rescue itself from this Babylonian captivity is for it to be steeped in Scripture and the great traditions that it has inherited. The church has to develop a ‘Scriptural mind’ – to use the arresting expression of the orthodox theologian, Georges Florovsky – if she is to remain true to who she is in Christ, and if she is to be his effective witness in this turbulent world.
For as A.N. Williams has rightly pointed out, ‘Like a row of lamps posted along a winding lane’, the great tradition of the church ‘continues to illuminate the way of Christian faithfulness for all future pilgrims’. It is only when the church is grounded in Scripture and tradition that it is ‘sensitized to the sensus catholicus, the sense of what is truly Christian. From this the Christian will greatly benefit in distinguishing what is necessary from what is peripheral or merely trendy’.
