Unleashing the Kingdom, Clash of Kingdoms: Taking Dominion Through the Unity of Men and Women

By Susan Dewbrew and Steve Pixler

The Kingdom is unleashed when men and women are united. Yet the greatest challenge to male-female unity is male-female equality. As long as men are viewed as superior and women as inferior, true unity is impossible. Men and women can form uneasy alliances, even work together to do loads of good in the world. But the true creational, covenantal u

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kingdom Brewing
• Release date: Aug 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781737221647

Book preview

Chapter 1

Buckle Your Seat Belt

T

he world is changing. There is a move of God being unleashed throughout the earth, and it is shifting the balance of power that has dominated human society for millennia. The Kingdom of God is being unleashed.

This sets up an epic clash of kingdoms, a cosmic war between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. The kingdom of darkness held sway over the human race until Jesus came and brought heaven to earth. When the incarnate Christ descended into human history, He unleashed the rule of heaven on earth. After Jesus died, rose again and ascended into heaven, He was enthroned as King over all creation. Then, He poured out His kingly Spirit at Pentecost and released the Spirit of heaven into the world through Spirit-filled people. The Kingdom of God took root in regenerated humans and through them started flowing out into the real world where humans live, work and play. The Kingdom within became the Kingdom without as changed people changed the world.

Divide and Conquer

Prior to the victory of Christ, the kingdom of darkness held sway over the human race through division. By dividing humans into sub-groups and setting them against one another—the age-old divide and conquer strategy—satan successfully dominated world history before Jesus came. So, when Jesus came, He struck at the heart of demonic power by striking at the hostility that divided us. By making peace at the cross, Jesus reconciled humans to God, and through that reconciliation, reconciled us to one another. By re-connecting human identity to the image of God rather than to the factions that divide us, Jesus laid the foundation for a new way of being human and a new way of forming human society. The old divisions are obliterated in Christ, and the new unity-in-diversity that celebrates individuality-in-community now defines what it means to be truly human together.

Hate is inhuman. Bigotry is inhuman. Racism is inhuman. Sexism is inhuman. Ageism is inhuman. Any other ism’s I’ve missed? Every ism that divides humans is a schism, and all schisms have been cancelled by the cross. The Kingdom of God declared war on the kingdom of darkness, and one soul at a time is being liberated from the lies that broke us apart and ghettoized human existence.

The move of God that’s happening is a unity through

The move of God that’s happening is a unity through identity movement that totally reorganizes the structures of human society.

identity movement that totally reorganizes the structures of human society. By bringing people into the true identity for which they were created, the identity hidden for them in Christ before the foundation of the world, Holy Spirit is forging a new human unity rooted in the reconciliation purchased for us by Christ at the cross. Our reconciliation with God produces reconciliation with one another.

As Paul put it,

For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:26–29)

When we become sons of God through faith, we are submerged into Christ and emerge as the new self we were created to be in Him. We are clothed with Christ. In our new identity, we arise to live out a new human oneness formed in Christ. Now, in Christ, all human divisions are broken down. Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female all become one in Christ.

This unity is a unity-in-diversity that celebrates individuality without exclusion. The unity formed in Christ is not a bland unity-through-uniformity that suppresses uniqueness and individuality. Not at all. It is only as each regenerated individual discovers their identity in Christ that the manifold glory of God is manifest. It takes a a great multitude which no one could count to fully manifest the glory of God. (Revelation 7:9) Each person is like a vibrant thread woven together to form the cosmic tapestry that reveals the universal image of God. It takes each thread in its individual glory to display the overall picture.

The tear in the cosmic tapestry started with Adam and Eve. It started with a division between man and woman and then worked its way out from there. By rooting human division in the original human relationship of male and female—which is the relationship from which all relationships spring—satan fiendishly wove division into the warp and woof, the threads that form the fabric, of human society. All human division flows from the division between mom and dad. And this is why I insist that the Kingdom of God must get to the root of division, to the rips and tears that fray male and female relations, so that unity can flow out into every other area of division.

The unleashed Kingdom that transforms the world starts in the transformed relations between men and women. We cannot expect the Kingdom to change the world at the highest levels of society if we are not willing to let it change us at home. Moreover, we cannot expect the unleashed Kingdom to change the world if it does not first change the Church. Male and female relationships will be permanently transformed only when the Church realizes its essential role in mediating reconciliation between men and women. The Church must reject the centuries-old traditions that have institutionalized and ecclesiastical-ized division through the oppression of women.

Here’s the point: the Kingdom of God is unleashed in the world when women are unleashed. The clash between kingdoms is sure to favor the kingdom of darkness as long as half the warriors in Christ’s Kingdom—the female ones!—are subdued and silenced. Women must be unleashed. We cannot celebrate the liberation of slaves, of all races, of all ethnic groups and nationalities while still justifying the suppression of women.

As we demonstrate carefully throughout this book series, there is no biblical justification for preserving the ancient ban on women leading, teaching and guiding the Church. And my objective in Book 2 of this series, the one you’re now reading, is to show how the gospel of the Kingdom is absolutely essential in the quest for equality. The Kingdom is actually a big