Like former Australian Christian Lobby managing director, Jim Wallace, Dave Hodgson is a former member of the SAS (Rhodesian rather than Australian). Hodgson, a ‘committed Christian’ is the founder and CEO of the $50 million property development and acquisitions Paladin Group of Companies..
Like the Australian Christian Lobby, Hodgson appears to subscribe to the dominionist 7 Mountains strategy for reclaiming ‘the culture’ for God. I wrote about this some time ago for ABC’s Religion & Ethics.
Next week, Hodgson is the special guest speaker at a fundraising dinner for Sunshine Coast chaplains. It is a connection between chaplaincy and dominionist theology which helps to confirm what I believe is the underlying purpose of the chaplaincy program; to use Australia’s state schools as a means of recruiting an ‘army for God’. And, if you think this makes me sound nuttier than a fruitcake, please reserve your judgement and read on.
The Reclaiming 7 Mountains project* is no conspiracy theory. It’s a strategy which has been successfully employed in places like Nigeria and Uganda; places where homosexuals now live in fear of their lives, and children are burned as witches under the influence of the fundamentalist Western zealots who have infiltrated and colonised those cultures and mentored locals into perpetuating the particular prejudices of the Pentecostal and Apostolic churches. It’s also working pretty effectively in the USA where fundamentalist Christians have infiltrated and taken over the Republican Party.Why ever would we think they’re not also at work here in Australia?
Indeed, Hodgson’s interest is in raising money to advance exactly this kind of project in Australia.
“Dave has spent the last seven years funding strategic areas of the Kingdom of God, activating others to do the same, and counselling the believers to impact the marketplace.”
In this context, Hodgson lectures for the Australian Christian Lobby sponsored Compass program (not to be confused with the television show of the same name).
Regular readers of this blog will recall the Compass program seeks out talented Christian students in schools and universities in order to mentor them into positions of power in education, the public service, government, business, the arts and entertainment, et cetera: the 7 Mountains of Culture.
Director, David Yates explains that in setting up Compass , the Australian Christian Lobby, was “thinking about 15 to 20 years down the track, who will be in the media, education, politics, law, and history?”
“If you can get through government and policy makers then it can influence laws and it can have a disproportionate effect within the culture,” Yates explains.
Since I published this post, the following comment has been made by a reader. I thought it important enough to bring it into the main text of this article. Posting as ‘theconsciencevote’, the reader says:
“While she was at high school, my eldest daughter was targeted for recruitment by the Compass program. After initial contact (and conversion) at Planetshakers events, they told her that God had a plan for her life, which was to graduate high school, go to a nominated Bible college, work as a youth pastor for a few years then become involved in politics. The ultimate aim, they said, was for her to represent the Kingdom of God in the Federal Parliament – and she would be supported by a prayer circle to keep ‘demons’ from sabotaging her mission.
Their message was very well-tailored; tell a teenager they’re special, that they’re chosen, that the disengagement or frustration they feel is due to an external force holding them back from their ‘true’ potential, and that here is a group of warm and friendly people who understand them and want to help them.”
It took a lot to convince her that she was being manipulated. Luckily, her fellow Christian students overstepped the mark and tried to ‘exorcise the demons put about her by her family’. That opened her eyes.”
Compass operates in line with the strategy to infiltrate and conquer the 7 Mountains of Culture.
Until I started writing about this, the Australian Christian Lobby’s support was openly acknowledged on the 7 Mountains website – but, in the manner of these things, has since been deleted. Never mind. I took a screenshot.
Here is an overview of the 7 Mountains movement:
And here’s Dave Hodgson:
I think the similarities are obvious.
Hodgson presents for all the world like a General in an army which seeks, by infilitration rather than violence, to commandeer the world’s secular and non-Christian governments and install Christian administrations. If you’ve ever turned up to a Parents and Citizens’ group meeting at your local school and found that every member is also a member of the local evangelical church, you’ll be familiar with how the system works.
The goal, outlined in the Reclaim 7 Mountains movement, is to create a ‘Kingdom of God’ here on earth. Some Christians believe, that until this is achieved, Christ will not return.
Originally, the Australian Christian Lobby was an offshoot of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition of America. So, it’s not coincidental that, in his book, The New World Order (p. 227), Robertson explains:
“There will never be world peace until God’s house and God’s people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world. How can there be peace when drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists, New Age worshipers of Satan, secular humanists, oppressive dictators, greedy money changers, revolutionary assassins, adulterers, and homosexuals are on top?”
And the strategy is to change the power balance. As 7 Mountains advocate, ‘Apostle’ Bill Hamon warns:
“God is preparing His Church to become an invincible, unstoppable, unconquerable, overcoming Army of the Lord that subdues everything under Christ’s feet. There will be a sovereign restorational move of God to activate all that is needed for His army to be and do what He had eternally purposed.
…God’s great end-time army is being prepared to execute God’s written Judgments with Christ’s victory and divine judgment decrees that have already been established in heaven. The time is set when they will be administered and executed on earth through God’s saintly army. All that is destined and needed will be activated during God’s restorational Army of the Lord Movement.”
This is obviously a long-term project and many soldiers are needed to fight in this coming Christian army. Where better to recruit them than in schools? As former Scripture Union CEO, Tim Mander says:
“To have a full-time Christian presence in government schools in this ever-increasing secular world is an unbelievable privilege. Here is the church’s opportunity to make a connection with the one place through which every young person must attend: our schools.”
Similarly, chaplaincy provider, Access Ministries‘ great interest in ‘making disciples’.
Note the emphasis in Mander’s quote is on the value of chaplaincy to Scripture Union, not the value of chaplains to the children. Note the negative connotation on the ‘ever-increasing secular world’ . These people don’t see secularism as something which protects freedom of religion and belief but as something which stands in the way of a Christian theocratic government.
I firmly believe that school chaplaincy is a part of this dominionist drive to recruit soldiers to the cause.
Yeah, I know. It sounds like some massive conspiracy theory, doesn’t it? Yet, here’s school chaplain, Wendy Boniface:
“A great article. I have just begun a certificate 4 chaplaincy course(last week) to teach me how to be Christ in the world, workplace etc and I thought as I was learning all these skills that this is what every Christian should be learning to equip us to advance the kingdom of God. The good news is the chaplaincy movement is growing quickly and it seems to be a way of getting out of the pews and into the community. I feel like I’ve finally crossed the Jordan River and am about to take territory at last!”
“Taking territory” is classic 7 Mountains/dominionist language and it’s intimately linked with recruiting young people to fight for the cause. In an interview on a Christian television station in the US, leader of the 7 Mountains movement, Lance Wallnau explains:
“The Seven Mountains are – it’s almost like its a template for warfare. Because the church so frequently does not have a language for how it goes about taking territory…The Seven Mountains is not my message. I think its a mandate given to me from Loren Cunningham and Bill Bright spiritually. Because these two titans in evangelism took youth movements, young people, whether it was Youth With A Mission with Loren or Campus Crusade with Bill Bright. And they literally mobilized the next generation in their day to go evangelize the world. God visited those two men and showed them seven kingdoms, seven mountains, that if they would focus on it, the next generation could take nations.”
They are looking to the next generation; thus, the focus on gaining access to kids in schools through measures like Compass and school chaplaincy. It is a strategic drive to conquer by infiltration and stealth and our government is funding it!
The aim is to ‘take territory’ by ‘invading systems’. Consider: 3,000 chaplains in Australia’s state schools at a cost (spent and committed) of three-quarters of a billion taxpayers’ dollars.
I’d say the Australian education system has been pretty successfully invaded.
Chrys Stevenson
*In fairness, it’s important to note that, at this link, the Reclaiming 7 Mountains project rejects the notion that it is dominionist. I would argue, as would many others, that their rhetoric suggests otherwise.
“Working with children, introducing them to Jesus and helping them to grow and discover Jesus as their Lord and Savior is a wonderful privilege. Helping children discover they have gifts that can be used to introduce others to Jesus is a vital task. Max7 provides resources for leaders to reach and disciple children and young people across the globe.” – Leanne Palmer, Christian Education Program Manager at ACCESS ministries.
Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear 