POWER
28th May 1959
2 Kings 2: 9-14; 6: 14-17; 13: 14-19
We have spoken, dear brethren, of the day of the Spirit in which we find ourselves, a day when there should be an answer in the saints in the power of the Spirit of God to all the thoughts of God concerning man.
It is great grace that we should be found among those whom God has received: “he has chosen us in him before the world’s foundation”, as it is said, and each of us is personally foreknown, and each has a name, as the Lord says: “… your names are written in the heavens”, Luke 10: 20. All this should come into our position here in the testimony. What I am thinking now, by reading these scriptures, is that our Christianity should be marked by Christ, and it should be entirely in the power of the Spirit. The world, or rather, the part of the world in which we are, has embraced Christianity, but the world has pressed its own character and its own characteristics on it, so that Christianity viewed publicly is completely different from what God would have it. But the Acts of the Apostles brings Christianity in its beginning to us and the writer of the book brings Jesus before us in the first verse. He reminds us of the gospel of Luke. He says: “I composed the first discourse, O Theophilus, concerning all things which Jesus began both to do and to teach”, and then, in the second verse, he brings in the Holy Spirit, saying, “until that day in which, having by the Holy Spirit charged the apostles whom he had chosen, he was taken up”. Thus he brings Jesus before us, and Jesus as the One who was taken up. The phrase “taken up” appears four times in this first chapter. That gives us the impression that Jesus is recognised in heaven. He is the One acknowledged of God. Christianity should be marked by Him, and the power for it is not from men, but from God. Then everything should be through the Holy Spirit. Well, if we compare this with Christianity in public, I think we will see that what is around us is completely different on each side. The man of the world appears in public Christianity, and human resources are the origin, thereby keeping the whole system going. We remember, in Acts 3, Peter said to the lame man, “Silver and gold I have not”. Silver and gold are the great resources that people possess to keep their world going, but Peter rejected them. Yes, he had none, and apparently the Lord had no money about Him either. He had to ask another to show Him a denarius. I am not saying this, dear brethren, so that we do not want to use money, but I just want to show that Christianity, as it was introduced, was not dependent on human or natural resources, but it was entirely dependent on the Spirit of God. I believe that God wants to bring us back to the features that characterised Christianity in the beginning. He wants to give us an impression of these two things: that Christianity should be marked by Jesus, and that the power for this is the Holy Spirit of God. It must be more and more important to us to keep Jesus truly before our minds and before our hearts, as the standard of the Man whom God has before Him, and the Holy Spirit keeps Him before us as the only power by which we can respond to the thoughts of God. Thus, in these verses in Acts 1, which we have read, the Lord says to the disciples, “It is not yours to know times or seasons, which the Father has placed in his own authority;” but then He says, “but ye will receive power”. It is about power.
You will remember when the gospel was about to be introduced to Europe, Paul and those with him were particularly dependent on the Holy Spirit. They wanted to go in a certain direction, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. They were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to go in a different direction, and therefore they had to submit themselves to the Lord in subjection. Then the Lord told them to go to Macedonia. A man from Macedonia appeared before them in a vision, and when they got there, they could not see a man. All they could see were certain women praying on the banks of the river, and they sat down and spoke with these women. They were an image of weakness that the world does not take account of, but they represented those in whom God was working, and when Paul spoke to them, the Lord opened the heart of Lydia, that she would attend to what Paul said. She showed real spiritual instincts; she was baptised and her house, and then she invited the apostles into her house by saying: “If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there”, Acts 16: 15. Thus the Lord established basic activities in Europe. He had received a house, a baptised house, where the truth entrusted to the apostle was received. When they went to prayer, a certain woman followed them with a spirit of Python; and after many days the spirit was cast out, and Paul and Silas were cast into prison. How different are the ways of God from the ways of men. God came into the Western world with His testimony, and it did not correspond at all to the thoughts of men concerning power. The servants moved in weakness that they felt themselves, and so they were now thrown into prison, and then the Lord intervened with an earthquake, and the foundations of the prison were shaken. Philippi was a Roman colony, and the prison was actually under the power of the Roman Empire, and it was shaken to its foundations. The apostles were brought out and the jailor was converted, and with it another baptised house was set up. Now the man was there. The man was there in the jailor, and in this remarkable way the testimony was established in Europe. The assembly in Philippi was perhaps the best product of the apostle’s ministry. I also appreciate, of course, what he set up in Ephesus; but when he wrote to the Philippians from the prison in Rome, the Philippians still went on with him in full fellowship in the gospel, while all who were in Asia, including Ephesus, had turned away from him. I mention this only to show that the power in which God brings His testimony is completely different from the power that the world wants to use: and we should understand this and be protected from taking refuge in human means. Therefore, we must always remember that Christianity should on the one hand take on the character of Jesus and that the power lies in the Holy Spirit of God on the other.
The apostles saw in Acts 1 how Jesus was taken from them. It says, “And having said these things he (that is Jesus) was taken up, they beholding him, and a cloud received him out of their sight”. They saw Him being taken up. This gave them an impression of a Man in whom heaven was well pleased, a Man who was taken up to heaven. And then two men stood by them and said, “This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, shall thus come in the manner in which ye have beheld him going into heaven”, that is, the dispensation should end as it began. It began with Him being received into heaven, and the Spirit being sent down, and it will end with Him coming again. And when He comes, He will come as they have seen Him going into heaven, that is, there is no change, the dispensation should end exactly as it started. I think we have that presented in these two men who gave the disciples this impression that the Man they saw and who was taken up to heaven should mark the whole dispensation to its end.
That is why John is on a similar ground in his letter. It goes back to what was from the beginning. He lived in the days when Christianity was already corrupted and people were already talking about development. That is why in his letter he goes back to what was from the beginning, “the word of life”, he says, that is, the expression of life in a Man, as he had known it in Jesus.
I think all of this is presented to us in the history of Elisha. It is very interesting that Elisha served in Israel, that is, in the ten tribes who had departed from the centre of God; and that is why this represents for us the present position in Christendom, where the truth has been publicly abandoned. We must acknowledge that we are in it. We cannot expect things to be outwardly in great power. It was impossible that things could be in great power in Israel after they departed from Jerusalem, and from God’s king, who was the son of David. Thus the position in Christendom today is the same, namely that the deviating from the truth characterises Christendom everywhere, and we cannot expect conditions of great power. And yet the power is present in the Spirit and is at our disposal, but only if we have the right conditions for it, and only if we have that One, who is God’s standard of man, before our thoughts and our hearts.
Thus the time had come when Jehovah wanted to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind. He is a type of Jesus as the Man who was taken up to heaven. What a faithful servant Elijah had been. We do not need to be occupied with his weakness and breakdown. We can learn a lot from all these details; but let us look at Elijah on Mount Carmel, where he stood firm for the rights of God in the presence of four-hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah. How he kept all that was due to the name of God! That is why he is in a special way a type of Jesus as the faithful and true witness, of the Man who has been taken up to heaven.
Now, Elisha understood that Elijah was to be taken away from him and that he should remain in the place of the testimony in his absence. That is precisely our position; that the man in whom God finds His pleasure has been received into heaven, and that we are still here in the scene of the testimony, in order to maintain the testimony in conditions of external weakness, which had been maintained in such fidelity by Elijah. That is why we can well understand Elisha saying: “… let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me” And Elijah says, “Thou hast asked a hard thing: If thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so to thee; but if not, it shall not be so”, that is, the Spirit wants to identify Himself in power with those who hold in their hearts the Man who has been received into heaven, and who understand that He is God’s standard in Christianity, even if the world may take other standards; even if the world makes Christianity something worldly, the truth remains, and the Spirit is the Spirit of truth. And we should see that we are governed by the truth, whatever those around us may do. Thus it is said, “And it came to pass as they went on, and talked, that behold, a chariot of fire and horses of fire; and they parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into the heavens. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father! the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof!” It was not the chariot of Elijah, but the chariot of Israel. It is a matter of taking up all the resources available to the people of God. “The chariot of Israel and the horsemen”. It is a matter of understanding that the resources available to us are spiritual resources, first of all in the Holy Spirit of God Himself and then also by angels. For angels are spirits. “Who makes his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire”, Heb 1: 7. These are the two great resources for the testimony of God now, namely the Holy Spirit of God on the one hand and the service of angels for all that man may do. Thus we find how angels were used in the initial chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. The apostles were thrown into the prison, and an angel opened the gate of the prison and told the apostles to go and stand, and to speak in the temple all the words of this life. What life? It was the life that was to be seen among the saints, a life that was completely different from the life of the world, a life marked by unity and love, and a testimony for Christ. The angel opened the gate of the prison, and the apostles went and stood in the temple, as they were told. And then the government sent to have the apostles taken out of the prison, and when they sent there, they found the gate of the prison closed, and the guards standing by, and despite that the apostles were no longer there. One can well understand how baffled they had been. The resources of the testimony are spiritual, and it is imperative that we understand that, on the one hand, it is about the power of the Spirit of God, and on the other hand, it is about the service of angels.
In Hebrews 12 myriads of angels are mentioned among the things we have come to, and in the first chapter of this letter it is said that they are all sent out in service for those who are to inherit salvation. That is why I believe that Elisha meant this when he said, “My father, my father! the chariot of Israel and the horsemen”, that is, that Israel, the people of God, had spiritual resources at their disposal. Then it says, “Then he took hold of his own garments and rent them in two pieces”, that is, he renounced all that he was in himself. For us, dear brethren, it is about learning to dismiss the old man and to put on the new, because as is the heavenly, so are the heavenly. And then it says, “And he took up the mantle of Elijah ... and went back and stood by the bank of the Jordan”. We are not told that he wore the cloak of Elijah, but he took it, he had it with him, that is, he was constantly reminded of the measure of the man who had been received into heaven. And we should keep thinking about this, of the measure of Man who has been received into heaven; the work of the ministry tends this way, for it is said: “… until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ”. The thought of the mantle is that it is the measure of the stature of the Man who went to heaven.
You will remember that Paul wrote to Timothy to bring the mantle he left at Carpus’. I believe that Timothy was to be reminded of Paul’s measure, because the Spirit of God allowed Paul to present himself as an example. He says, “Be my imitators, even as I also am of Christ”, 1 Cor 11: 1. Therefore Timothy was to bring with him Paul’s cloak, that he may have the measure of Paul continually before him as the measure of a servant. Paul was not perfect, but he was very much in agreement with Christ and revealed in himself what is possible in a person of like passions to us.
And now in chapter 6 of this book we see how the king of Syria surrounded Dothan because Elisha was there. The king of Syria would like to take Elisha captive, and it is said, “and they came by night (that is, horses and chariots, and a strong army) and surrounded the city”. The servant said to Elisha, “Alas, my master! how shall we do?” Elisha was completely at peace, but not so the servant, so that Elisha asks Jehovah to open the eyes of the servant: “Jehovah, I pray thee, open his eyes that he may see. And Jehovah opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha”. Elisha, we can say, was the bearer of the testimony, and the horses and the chariots were around Elisha. God cares about the testimony of our Lord; and all His angels are available to do anything that must be done for practical protection. Elisha’s eyes did not need to be opened, but they had to be opened to the young man; and I believe that the epistle to the Hebrews is written, among other things, so that we may have opened eyes for the fact that spiritual resources are abundant in support of the testimony. The Spirit Himself is here as the Spirit of truth, who guides us into all the truth, and who is particularly concerned about how the saints proceed; for the Holy Spirit says in the epistle to the Hebrews, “To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts”, Heb 4: 7. Therefore, when one of us becomes careless, when one of us permits other things, the Spirit sees that they control us more than the things of God to which we are called. The Spirit therefore says, “To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts”. Therefore, the Spirit diligently ensures that we move forward and also cares to what extent we correspond to the truth that has been presented to us. But combined with this great provision in the Person of the Spirit, we have myriads of angels sent out for the service of those who inherit salvation.
Well, in this last passage, which we have read in chapter 13, it is a question of having appropriate conditions. The king of Israel came down to Elisha. Things got worse and worse in Israel, and Elisha was about to die, he fell ill with the disease from which he died. The king of Israel came down to him, and wept over his face, saying, “My father, my father! the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof!” as if he had absorbed what Elijah had said years earlier. But did he himself have faith in it? It is absolutely true that we have spiritual resources at our disposal. The Spirit of God is here in undiminished power, and all angels are at the Lord’s disposal to support His people, but it is a question of the conditions we are providing. Therefore the prophet said to the king first of all: “Take bow and arrows. And he took a bow and arrows. And he said to the king of Israel, Put thy hand upon the bow. And he put his hand upon it: and Elisha put his hands upon the king’s hands; and said, Open the window eastward. And he opened it. And Elisha said, Shoot. And he shot. And he said, An arrow of Jehovah’s deliverance”. This means that first of all the king had to obey the prophet, and help came in when he obeyed. But then the king was tested. The prophet told him to take arrows and strike the ground. The prophet did not tell him how many times he should strike; he left this to the feelings of the king; and the king failed, that is, he did not go all the way. He struck three times and then stayed. In this way we are also tested whether we really go all the way in the rejection of the flesh in one form or another, so that the power of the Spirit is unhindered. The king struck three times and paused. And it is said, “And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then wouldest thou have smitten the Syrians till thou hadst consumed them; whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice”; that is, they were only partially successful, because the king did not go all the way.
I think we should learn this from these scriptures, dear brethren, it is easy enough to see that what characterises Christianity—the thoughts of God are connected with an order of man according to Christ, and the position is maintained only in the power of the Spirit of God. The test for us is whether we really keep these things before us and whether we go all the way by preparing the conditions in which the Spirit of God can act unhinderedly. I believe that if we are helped in this by the Lord, then we will be surprised at what things we are being brought into. Undoubtedly, the Spirit of God has for all of us a complete correspondence to Christ in His thoughts. It reads: “the Spirit and the bride say, Come!” The Spirit and the bride have one mouth and one thought, so to speak, and say: “Come” to the Lord Jesus. If this is truly our wish, then we will also make sure that we have suitable conditions for the Lord Jesus among us. May the Lord bless the word to us!
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