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II. The Nature Of The Mandate

 

Apples and Oranges: The Inapplicability of the Genesis Mandate to Fallen World Culture

Not only are the seven mountains of culture irreformable in any but a temporary superficial way, but the concept of reformability based on the Genesis Mandate is self-defeated by the context of the very scripture on which it supposedly stands. This brings us to the second fundamental spiritual reality which mandatism ignores—the nature of the Genesis mandate itself.

 

Even if we were to allow that the Genesis mandate was still in force (which one might argue based on a similar though different charge God gave to Noah in Gen. 9:1 after the fall,) the fact is that the dominion mandated over the earth in Genesis bears absolutely no resemblance to nor has any connection to the world of human culture as we now know it.

 

The original Genesis mandate was given as a "clean slate" mandate toward the earth and its properties and natural resources—an earth on which no developed civilization yet existed. The command to "subdue the earth" was not about "reforming" any "system" or "culture" or "civilization" man had already made upon the earth as if to "take it back" or "return it" to something the way it "used to be." There was no human "culture." There were no human "systems" based in darkened human thinking. The mandate was given in direct regard to the earth itself and its untouched properties under the present tense power of immortal life. It was given in context of a pristine creation to be developed according to the knowing of God.

 

In the mandate's original context, there was no knowledge of good and evil. There were no systems nor any culture based on such knowledge. The original mandate could only be fulfilled in direct regard to the earth and that by the same power of life that existed when it was given.  

 

Yet as shown already, all culture today is founded on the post-fall works of man based on the knowledge of good and evil. Because life is now conducted on an inconvertible knowledge base contrary to the power of sinless life that reigned in Eden, the mandatist concept of "reformability" falls on the sword of its own rationale.

 

Using the Gen. 1:28 mandate to support "reconstituting" culture is not only erroneous. It is self-defeating. For not only is culture outside the scope of the mandate's direct charge regarding the earth, but all worldly systems and institutions now exist as products of sin outside the state of life envisioned by the mandate. They did not, would not, could not exist within that state of life the way they do now.

 

Human culture is by its inherent nature destructive of the earth, contrary to the Genesis mandate. Humanity is unable to steward the earth at all according to the original mandate except by the superimposed intervention of the grace of God.  

 

What does this mean then? It means that if we are to truly live out Gen. 1:28 as if to return earth to the way it was "supposed to be" under Adam, we would not be talking about "reforming" culture at all. We would be talking about abolishing and replacing destructive world culture with a true beneficent stewardship of the earth under immortal life in accord with the terms under which the original mandate was given.

 

This comes clearer as we apply it to specific cultural spheres. At the time of the mandate, there was no such thing for example as "government." It was not needed and never envisioned as we have it today. There was no "media." There was no "entertainment." And there was certainly no "religion!"  

 

Modern government is the product of Nimrod's rebellion in Gen. 11. (See my treatise on Flight from Babylon for more on this. For specific discussion of the recent mandatist "Ecclesia" teaching that interprets the church as a Greek political structure, please see the Addendum that follows this treatise.)

 

Media (as already shown) is but fallen technology based in artificial replication of artificial image. And "entertainment?" What is that about except creating an artificial reprieve from the drudgery and tragedy of sinful life? (Did Adam and Eve need or want entertainment?)

 

And religion?? What does "reforming" the "mountain" of "religion" have to do with life before the fall of man? Religion is the very result of that fall, something to which God is most dedicatedly opposed! How and why would He "restore" it?   

 

Get this please: Three of the seven cultural spheres embraced within Seven Mountains teaching are themselves direct products of sin. Only the spheres of the family, education, arts and possibly business are conceivable in Eden. Yet even these under present life do not function as they would have in Eden. The existence of the others was never contemplated under the Genesis Mandate. So the idea of "reconstituting" any kind of cultural sphere as we know it now, even those conceivable in Eden, can never fulfil and is not justified by appeal to the Genesis Mandate.

 

Instead, for the Genesis Mandate to be fulfilled, what must happen and what will happen at the manifestation of Christ's kingdom is that Nimrodian government and worldly culture are to be abolished and replaced by a different kind of order. This is consummately proven by Nebuchadnezzar's vision in which the stone cut from the mountain destroys and replaces the statue of world empires and their fallen cultural spheres. (Dan. 2) It doesn't "convert" the statue!

 

When Christ returns, what remains of human culture after all the wars and nuclear fallout is going to be dismantled "brick by brick." Gradually, but surely, remnant technologies from the age of human knowledge are going to be replaced by heavenly inspired "technologies" (for lack of a truer word) that are harmonious with God's purposes for the creation of man and the care of the earth.

 

In the coming manifest kingdom, the earth will be "liberated" from the curse of the cultural technologies of this age which destroy it. As God has said, He will destroy those who destroy the earth (Rev. 11:18). There will be no television, no computers, no electric grid or cell towers messing up the landscape, no cars, no nuclear or other pollution-emitting energy technologies, no democracy, no genetically modified plants, no artificial chemicals added to foods, no junk food, no pesticides, no pills, no drugs or drug industry, no movie theaters, no film industry, no entertainment industry, no central banking and fiat money system. All these carnal, banal mediums are going to be increasingly replaced by new heaven sent ways and means never before revealed. These ways will come to and through the Lord's glorified people. In this we get our first true glimpse of what it is to mean for God's people to truly "subdue the earth."




Part 5



Chris Anderson
New Meadow Neck, Rhode Island

First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org

04/12



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