Reclaiming the 7 Mountains of Culture, Part 1
By Os Hillman
What Happened?
As I listened to his story (Loren Cunningham's) I could not
help but ask myself, "Well, if that began more than thirty years ago, why
are we in the condition we are in today? We are not winning the culture; we are
losing it." Loren Cunningham and Bill Bright have done a wonderful work
for the Kingdom. Who could question how God had worked in and through their
ministries. Yet, I had to ponder whether the strategy that was used to
respond to this message was the best strategy.
You
see, one of the mountains of culture is Religion. This is also known as the
Church Mountain. The door that was used to reach the culture by Loren and Bill
was the Religious Mountain. They trained young people in the Church Mountain
and sent them out as missionaries.
These young people were being trained to win the
world through evangelism. Once they won one person to the Lord, they moved to
the next person. They appealed to the young people to be missionaries to win
the lost. This appeal was seen as a higher calling. They often had to raise
support and live on only what they needed to exist. This also contributed to a
poverty spirit mindset and a dualism that said, "This is a higher call
than working in a secular job." This sacred-secular divide became rampant
among evangelical Christians and can be traced back to the Catholic era of 300
A.D. in which paid clergy were elevated to a higher "spiritual"
position than common working people. Consequently, over the centuries this has
affected men and women to believe there is actually a higher call in vocational
ministry. Decades passed and these young people were a byproduct of a cultural
mindset that did not see secular education as a means of impacting culture, but
saw it as a cop out and even a lesser call, or in some cases, evidence of
backsliding and selling out to mammon and an ungodly society.
I wonder what would have happened if we
had trained them biblically and then encouraged them to go to Columbia University
or Harvard or Yale and prepared them for a career in business, government,
media, or entertainment to reach the culture through the these mountains. This
is where real societal change is going to take place because this is where the
authority lies to make societal change.
Gospel of Salvation vs Gospel of the
Kingdom
Landa Cope, author of The Old
Testament Template, tells how several years ago a British journalist did a
documentary on the most Christianized city in America. She wanted to know the
impact that a city which was the most Christianized had on the culture of that
city. Christianized meant the city had the largest concentration of church
attendance The city that met that criteria was Dallas, Texas.
Her research compared statistics on:
•Health care
•Hospitals
•Emergency care
•Contagious diseases
•Infant mortality rate
•Job availability
They compared general economics such as:
• How easy is it to get a job?
• How easy is it to get housing?
• The relationship between potential income and
potential housing.
• Homelessness
• Racism
• The existence of abuse
• Crime rates
• Economic discrepancies
The results of her findings were
that the city was one of the lowest ranking cities in the nation providing core
services and the city was having little positive impact on the condition of the
city. No one would want to live in a city in that condition. This should be
very disturbing to every follower of Christ in that city.
When the
journalist asked a group of Dallas pastors their response to their findings
many made this statement: "Those things do not concern us. We are
spiritual leaders".
I was
reminded of a statement Martin Luther said many years earlier: "A gospel
that does not deal with the issues of the day is not the gospel at all."
This case study is another evidence of
the preaching of the Gospel of Salvation versus the Gospel of the Kingdom.
Jesus preached the Gospel of Salvation but focused on the Gospel of the Kingdom
more. This was because He wanted to bring the Gospel into every aspect of a
person's life-including their work life. The early church gospel changed the
culture and everything in it. Today, we often stop at salvation, which is a bit
like sitting down after crossing the Jordan River. We have only fulfilled a
small portion of the mission. This has led to a more liberalized society. We
have become a society more concerned with the rapture than thinking about ways
the Gospel could penetrate every sphere of life.
God's
First Instruction to Man
In order to understand God's original intent for
mankind we must go back to the first book of the Bible. In Genesis we find
these words: "God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase
in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the
birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground"
(Gen 1:28).
God wanted man to rule the earth in cooperation
with Him. We were to be stewards of the earth. The Bible tells us that God
created everything and rules over everything. "All things were created
through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things
consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the
firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence ( Col
1:16-18).
God's
original intent was that individuals and nation's were to obey God and if they
did so they would:
• Prosper in every way
• Fulfill their unique purpose
• Fulfill God's overall plan
• Receive their God-ordained inheritance
individually and as a nation
In essence, all creation would reflect His glory as a result of their obedience to Him. This would allow them to have dominion over all the earth and fulfill what He spoke to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 28:1-2:
"If you fully obey the LORD your God and
carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the LORD your God will set
you high above all the nations on earth."
We have an obedience problem
So what
happened to this wonderful plan? Adam and Eve changed this when they decided to
sin by eating from the tree of good and evil. God had set up boundaries that
they had to live within, but they chose to go outside those boundaries. What was
lost in the garden? Several things were lost as a result of man's sin in the
Garden of Eden:
• We lost our intimate relationship with God.
• We lost our ability to work unhindered. Work went from joy and worship
to sweat and toil because the ground had been cursed, making it more difficult
to earn a living from the soil.
• Women would have pain in childbirth
• There would be strife between people
• Evil entered the world and resulted in murder, shame, guilt and
various sorts of evils that became byproducts of this fallen state.
Dominion
was lost in the Garden. However, when Jesus Christ returned to earth He did so
for one purpose: to reclaim that which had been lost in the Garden.
Jesus came to reclaim what Satan took in the garden.
•"For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which
was lost" (Luke 19:10).
•"For God was pleased to have all his fullness
dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself allthings,
whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood,
shed on the cross" (Colossians 1:19-20).
"There is one body and one Spirit- just as you were called to one hope when you were called- one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all" (Eph 4:4-6).
Jesus
returned to reclaim His Lordship over all domains of influence: (not just Lord
over salvation)
He re-established His position as:
•King of Kings - the Lord of
Justice
•Jehovah Jireh - Lord of
Economics
•Father, Lord of the family
•Creator God, Lord of science
& technology
•Living Word, Lord of
communication
•Potter, Lord of the arts &
beauty
•Great Teacher, Lord of education
After
Jesus returned it was up to followers of Christ to appropriate what He did on
the cross be reclaiming all that had been lost. We are His representatives on
earth to finish the reclamation mission. Many of us have not done this because
we believe the earth is not God's and is now in control of Satan and so we have
given over society to him. This is not biblical theology.
God
wanted to establish this relationship through Moses
God desired to make Israel a new nation that would
model what He had set up in the Garden of Eden. He did not want to establish a
religion but a nation of people who would love, serve, and honor God. "But
you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special
people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness
into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9-10). In the New Testament Jesus told His
disciples what their assignment was to take every nation and make it His.
"And Jesus came and spoke to
them, saying, 'All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go
therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,teaching them to observe all
things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end
of the age.'" Amen (Matt 28:18-20).
God knows
that man will be fulfilled the most when people lead them who lead by the godly
principles He established from the beginning. He tells us in Proverbs,
"When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a
wicked man rules, the people groan" (Prov 29:2). Each of us needs to ask
some important questions as to where we are individually and in our community
as it relates to God's original intent. Would the community notice if our local
church shut its doors tomorrow? Would our workplace notice if we were no longer
there? Is our industry different because of me? What would my nation look like
if we modeled Deuteronomy 28 and became the head as a result of modeling
Christ-like leadership and servant hood?
We are
each called to impact the sphere of influence God has called us to influence.
As each of us does this, we reclaim the culture one person at a time, one
industry at a time, one mountain at a time.
- See more at:
http://www.reclaim7mountains.com/apps/articles/default.asp?blogid=4347&view=post&articleid=41492&fldKeywords=&fldAuthor=&fldTopic=0#sthash.3KfpXU4V.dpuf
•Father, Lord of the family
•Creator God, Lord of science & technology
•Living Word, Lord of communication
•Potter, Lord of the arts & beauty
•Great Teacher, Lord of education
After Jesus returned it was up to followers of Christ to appropriate what He did on the cross be reclaiming all that had been lost. We are His representatives on earth to finish the reclamation mission. Many of us have not done this because we believe the earth is not God's and is now in control of Satan and so we have given over society to him. This is not biblical theology.
God wanted to establish this relationship through Moses
God desired to make Israel a new nation that would model what He had set up in the Garden of Eden. He did not want to establish a religion but a nation of people who would love, serve, and honor God. "But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9-10). In the New Testament Jesus told His disciples what their assignment was to take every nation and make it His.
"And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, 'All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.'" Amen (Matt 28:18-20).
God knows that man will be fulfilled the most when people lead them who lead by the godly principles He established from the beginning. He tells us in Proverbs, "When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan" (Prov 29:2). Each of us needs to ask some important questions as to where we are individually and in our community as it relates to God's original intent. Would the community notice if our local church shut its doors tomorrow? Would our workplace notice if we were no longer there? Is our industry different because of me? What would my nation look like if we modeled Deuteronomy 28 and became the head as a result of modeling Christ-like leadership and servant hood?
We are each called to impact the sphere of influence God has called us to influence. As each of us does this, we reclaim the culture one person at a time, one industry at a time, one mountain at a time.
Let me just mention the military.It was in a prayer meeting in 1971, or maybe 1972, I don't know, around there, in Switzerland, where God showed us to give away 100,000 Bibles among the V-Corp army of the military, US military in Germany. Well, we went, and I talked to Dr. Kenneth Taylor and he was coming through just for two hours in Germany, and I told him what had happened in the prayer meeting the day before, and he said, "That's strange, I have 100,000 Bibles left over from a Billy Graham crusade.I'll give them to you, free, but you'll have to get the transportation." So I went to my friend, the chaplain, who was over the V-Corp army Colonel Lamberman, and he was over all the other chaplains, and I shared this vision with him, and he said, "That's good.Tomorrow, I'm to meet with the generals.And I want you to give them the gospel, and then tell them what you want to do with the Bibles." So I did that the next day.And then they said, ok, we'll help you. If you can get the Navy and the Air Force to bring it over, we will get the green trucks to back up," {and if you consider 100,000 Bibles, these were big, thick Bibles, they will fill lots of trucks,} and they used the trucks to do it. And then the army, and the Navy and the Air Force, they brought them over, from Chicago, and we saw those distributed to the V-Corp army.At the funeral of my father, Colonel Lamberman and his wife were there, he said it was the greatest move of God he had ever seen: As the military guys were getting the Bible, and they were starting to apply it in their lives and we were praying and we were witnessing and we were working with them, they says they saw more people saved then any other time that we've seen-the power of the word. And then his wife spoke up and she said, "You know, when we joined the military, we didn't know of any top military, generals or majors even, or even colonels that knew Jesus, and now it's full of them.And many of them were saved during that time of Bible distribution. I thought, "Oh, God just wants us to get his word out."
1 Timothy Chapter 4 verse 4 says, "Everything created by God is good, and is received with gratitude," and verse 5 says, "and they can be sanctified all the things that God has created can be sanctified by the word of God in prayer." So that's a part of discipling. If we're going to disciple, we've got to use the word, and use prayer, because that's the way it's gonna get done. And that's what we want to see. People, as they're transformed, who will transform all spheres of society. All those mountains can be achieved, like Caleb got his mountain, we can get into those mountains, as we do so with the word of God in prayer.
Interview conducted by Kelle Ortiz and Os Hillman
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