Recently, one of my friends left me an article found through Charisma Magazine in which Dr. C. Peter Wagner, Chancellor of the Wagner Leadership Institute, expounded some of his eschatology and spoke against Pretribulation Rapturism. It was pretty insightful as to some of the finer points of Dominion theology, about which I have experienced a bit of ignorance.
The article is as follows
I can still remember prophecy teachers who tacked rows of charts and diagrams on the church wall and explained spell-binding details of the past, present and future. I cut my spiritual teeth on the Scofield Bible and devoured Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth. My seminary professors instructed me in pre-tribulationism and premillenialism. I quickly categorized anyone who disagreed as a “liberal.”
Now I look back on those days with a strange combination of regret and amusement. How is it that I was so wrong for so long? As I analyze my change, I can sum it up by admitting that I simply did not understand the kingdom of God.
Let me explain what I mean by starting with the Great Commission.
The Great Commission has been central to my life. I committed myself to missions the night I was saved when I was 19. I spent my first 16 years of ministry as a field missionary and the next 30 as a professor of missions.
My heart’s desire was to help fulfill Jesus’ mandate to “make disciples of all nations.”
However, the time came when I had to make a radical shift in the way I interpreted those words of Jesus.
Formerly, I thought my task was to go to as many nations of the world as possible and save as many souls as possible and plant as many churches as possible. Now I take the Great Commission more literally when it tells us not to make as many individual disciples as we can but to disciple whole social groups—such as entire nations. This is kingdom theology.
When God created Adam and Eve, He told them to take dominion over all His creation (see Gen. 1:28). This was God’s plan until Satan succeeded in persuading Adam to obey him rather than God. The result was that Satan usurped Adam’s authority and took dominion himself.
But Jesus came as the second Adam. He brought the kingdom of God to earth and sent His disciples out to preach the gospel of the kingdom. He has now commissioned us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to advance His kingdom, to push Satan’s kingdom back and to retake the dominion that rightly belongs to the human race. This is the Great Commission.
It still includes healing the sick, casting out demons, saving souls, multiplying churches and feeding the hungry, but it goes far beyond these activities. It is putting feet to the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray: “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
How has this played out? The human race is enormously better off now than it was when Jesus died and was raised from the dead 2,000 years ago! Satan is losing ground more and more rapidly.
Those who think the world is getting worse and worse are missing the big picture of human history.
I now regard my former pre-tribulationism and premillenialism as escapist eschatology.
I do not plan to give any territory back to Satan or his Antichrist.Yes, there will be setbacks, but the advances will far outnumber them. Instead of an escapist eschatology, I expouse a victorious eschatology!
My favorite term is “dominion eschatology.” Why? Because Jesus did not give His Great Commission in vain.
The battle will be ferocious, and we will suffer some casualties along the way.However, we will continue to push Satan back and disciple whole nations.
We are aggressively retaking dominion, and the rate at which this is happening will soon become exponential. The day will come when “‘The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever’” (Rev. 11:15, NKJV)!
C. Peter Wagner is president of Global Harvest Ministries, chancellor of Wagner Leadership Institute and presiding apostle of the International Coalition of Apostles.
I would like to respond the the article as follows, point by point, evaluating the article on its own, since I know very little of Wagner’s other writings.
I can still remember prophecy teachers who tacked rows of charts and diagrams on the church wall and explained spell-binding details of the past, present and future. I cut my spiritual teeth on the Scofield Bible and devoured Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth. My seminary professors instructed me in pre-tribulationism and premillenialism. I quickly categorized anyone who disagreed as a “liberal.”
Wagner starts off by describing what many evangelicals have seen: the charts of endless timelines: Some of the usual pillars of dispensational premillenialism. And, like many dispensationalists at the time, he also anathematized anyone who held an opposing view as liberal. So it is a summation of how he used to view eschatology, and then says, presently, that he remembers those days with regret, and his change from Premillenialism was based on a changed outlook of the Kingdom of God as described in the Great Commission.
The Commission became central to Wagner’s life, and he committed himself to mission from his salvation at the age of 19, and then he nutshells his ministry experience with missions work and teaching work, and his desire was focused on making disciples of all nations.
Then his interpretation of the words “make disciples of all nations” changed from winning individuals to winning whole people groups. Commendable it would seem, I am not sure the text supports this broad of an interpretation, nor does it seem the primary interpreation-the plainest sense of Scripture. I can understand the theological leap, but am not sure that this jives with the rest of ‘Scripture, which says in Revelation that there was a multitude of every nation tribe and tongue. But what are multitudes made up of if not individuals. Granted, discipling whole communities is ideal, as Saddleback Valley Community Church shows, but we are called to make students (individuals) that hail from all nations (people groups). That says we build relationships with said individuals and make gospel presentations to those individuals. Now, if it is possible, I would agree with discipling whole nations and people groups (that is the nature of a church indeed, a group of people being discipled) but that is not always possible or practical.
The Adam and Eve part is a decent interpretation of Scripture, but I am not sure it is applicable to the context of missions or the apostolic. In my own marriage and family, I strive to establish a Pre-Fall environment and Pre-Fall relations, since my wife and I are new creations in Christ, and I would love to pull as much of heaven into my situation and station on earth, but I do not know how much of that is possible. I just want everything I can get that the L-rd has for me and for my family.
Likewise, I would contend the same for my neighborhood, city, county, state, region, nation, continent, and world. L-rd, give me as much of heaven on earth as is possible now. I want everything He has for me, and I suspect you would too.
I agree that there is a dominion that belongs to the human race, and I want to take back as much of that authority and reestablish the kingdom, wherever possible, but it is not so that Christ can come back once I have done the leg work. It is so that I can change the spiritual climate and be a vessel and channel for the movement of the Spirit of God to heal, deliver, and liberate. That is not. We are to heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, plant churches, and influence societal structures as much as possible. But we are not going to completely establish the kingdom fully and completely. But that should NOT stop us from trying to establish a kingdom mentality everywhere we go, and that is the attitude of discipleship and the parables of Yeshua which were all about discipleship and healing and evangelism. All of the fivefolds of the minsitry that Yeshua gave us the church before his ascension were to build up the church into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Ephesians 4:11-13.
Now, where do I stand with respect to dominion Eschatology.
We are called to fight period (2 Corinthians 10:4, Ephesians 1-6). There are demonic forces we are called to wage a war against. We are called to arrest in faith the powers of darkness wherever the Spirit leads. And we are to obey the voice of the L-rd, wherever that leads us. God can and does call us to the political arena, to teaching, busieness, medicine. And we are to disciple and evangelize everywhere possible, by every means possible. There are just as much ministries in the marketplace as there are classical forms.
But, ultimately, until the bowls of Wrath are done being poured out, things will not be 100 percent. We still need Adonai Yeshua ha-Mashiach to do his work. We still need the Millenium to clean things up fully, and we need Christ to set things up once and for all. We can do much to advance the kingdom in every area of life, but we still need that final push to finish the work of Christ. We need Him to sovereignly move. We cannot usher in completely His kingdom, but we can do as much as we are given of the Spirit to assist in that ushering. We are Christ’s apostles, and that means we are ambassadors on a mission from G-d. We have a G-d given duty to do what He has called us to do. We must do everything we can, and we must start now, and we must not put limitations on what the Holy Spirit can do in us.
Dominionism in that we are the ones who fully establish the kingdom seems to have some holes in it, the largest being our assumption of Christ’s role on earth. However, in the sense that we are called to do something, to attempt great things for the kingdom of God, even if we risk failure. That is something worth doing. Lets go for and get all we can and save as many as we can, and just obey and do what He has called us to do.
THese signs will accompany those who believe. In my name they will drive out demons, they will speak in new tongues, they will place their hands on the sick and they will get wel, they will pick up the serpent, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. Mark 16:15-18.
More of this later.
