THE TWO POWERS
THE TWO POWERS
We must first know our true calling before we can know either the power for us, or the power against us. Satan always suits his power to the position we occupy. It is against the place into which we are set for God that he is opposed, and hence according to the progress in the true position, there is a different kind of opposing force. There is opposition all along the course; which even when overcome has not died out, for if we were in the place where it could reach us, we should suffer from it still. Progress, or the power to pass on, frees us from one form of opposition, and though we are exposed to another, yet we are more assured of the power which worketh in us - just as David was prepared to meet Goliath - the enemy in his present position, because [p. 115] he had overcome the lion and the bear in a past and lower one. It is a complete system of opposition from the beginning to the end. If it be Pharaoh at the beginning, it is the Canaanites at the end; and the one who may have triumphed over the former, Pharaoh, may have been compromised by some other form of Satanic power, or even by the latter, the Canaanites, as the Israelites were.
The great distinctive difference between the leading of God and the opposition of Satan, is, the former has little or nothing visible to assure you; while the other, sways you by the imposing aspect which it presents. Eve surrendered faith in God, because of what she saw; the visible swayed her, and perverted her heart from the unseen place which she had with God. Satan’s power at first is like a net; there is every visible inducement to draw one into it. Hence the world is the great engine of it; the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life is of the world: all the great avenues to our hearts naturally are besieged; and, therefore, it is only faith that overcometh the world. But when the net has been escaped, then the fire of persecution is stirred up. Satan’s great object seems ever to be to conceal himself behind his visible agency, while the blessed God ever desires that we should rise above everything visible, be it great or small, and see Him who is invisible in every step of our course. Satan would deceive man by the tower of Babel. God leads Abraham by nothing visible, to leave all and go out, not knowing whither he went - looking for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
We are not spiritual enough to distinguish between these two powers until we are in our true calling. True, like Israel, we have many experiences before we are in happy occupation of it; that is, until one feels one is in the large place. When I am spiritual I can see, as it were, behind the scenes; and I am made sensible of contending, not merely with what is visible, whatever be its aspect, but with wicked spirits in heavenly places. There is [p. 116] never a movement or action of grace in us, that there is not a new and counteracting effort of Satan; and this redounds to our advantage, because the trying of our faith worketh patience, though it be tried by fire.
Now, as I have said, we cannot know the greatness of either power until we are in practical possession of the place to which God has called us. When we reach this - when we truly and happily accept our calling of heavenly men on the earth - we encounter Satan’s power in quite a different way. Up to this it was Pharaoh, Amalek, or Balaam, not to speak of the giants and the cities walled up to heaven, which had so discouraged them that they proposed to return to Egypt, and thus proved themselves unworthy of the land. The effort of Satan, and the forms of his power up to this was to prevent their entering the land - reaching the calling of God. But once we have admitted that to be heavenly here is our only true calling, then the power of Satan is concentrated and organised, that is, everything in the world is against us. Man and every one of his works are distinctly hostile to the heavenly man. Satan makes no secret of the world’s hatred, and as long as we are confronted or opposed by the mere world we are aware of our foe. But, besides the open and positive hatred and hostility of the world which is simply the first and general form of Satan’s power against the heavenly man (and this Jericho represents), there are religious pretensions, or feints, if I may so call them, to seduce the true man from his standing. The open hostility of the world is always safe, because there is nothing to deceive; though there be great tribulation, there is always the manifest assurance that we are in the right; it is perdition to them, but salvation to us. (2 Thessalonians 1). In the typical Canaan the power of the world, as I have said, was the first thing distinctly presented, and opposing. The heavenly man who patiently continues in armour and prayer will eventually, through the power of God, triumph over it.
We get, I apprehend, in Joshua 6, how we are to [p. 117] combat the power of Satan, now concentrated and organised to resist our obtaining space for Christ on earth; not as some have in their zeal ignorantly supposed, that it was acquiring material space for Him, and hence have fought with carnal weapons in order to obtain it: but it is moral space, only acquired by the power of God’s Spirit working in each of us.
The form of the power in Canaan is, (as Jericho sets forth), from every side. All human greatness has to be contended against, and overcome. There is nothing ostensible in it to connect it with Satan, but all that is of man’s ability is there concentrated, and organised to oppose Israel, in taking possession of the land. The full force of every previous opposition is concentrated here. Satan counts largely on the visible. Hence he always displays the magnitude of the means which he uses, and this at the very moment and place where God gives no manifestation of His power, but requires of the heavenly man to walk on in patience, confronting the greatest combination of human power. This is the first form of Satanic power in Canaan; because Satan always used the world first to check the heavenly man. But the great and most important difference between the form of his power in the wilderness and in Canaan is, that in the former there is very little spiritual antagonism: while in Canaan, defeat was always connected with internal unfaithfulness; and eventually Israel lost the land, because, unable to displace the inhabitants of it, they were led into false modes of worship. And thus has it been with the assembly, even in the memory of this generation. As the truth in its simplicity was acquired, not merely were all human means arrayed against it, but there cropped up an opposition to it in a religious way. When the assembly, about fifty years ago, was awakened to the coming of the Lord, the opposition which in a peculiarly effectual way for the time, hindered the progress of it, was the assertion that we could not meet Him unless we had the Spirit of God, and that as we had not the Holy Spirit and He was [p. 118] not here, therefore, we should be entirely occupied in praying for the Spirit. This was Irvingism. Thus the heart was diverted from the great truth of the coming of the Lord. Again, ritualism was introduced by Satan, in order to check the growing desire of devotedness to the Lord, by presenting a counterfeit of it, to be attained in a natural way. And, thirdly, I need not dwell on how the assembly, the object of Christ’s love, has been overlooked in the great ardour to seek souls; the enemy succeeding in diverting earnest men from the full work by engrossing them exclusively with a part of the work; a very great part I admit, but still only a part.
Still later the desire for holiness has been diverted and perverted by a new school which taught ‘holiness by faith’ and deceived many, because it made one’s own conscience the standard, and thus satisfied it.
In fine, the peculiar characteristic of the power of God is, that it is invisible, known and reckoned on by faith. The power of Satan delights in display and in coercing us sensibly by an overwhelming force. We have at Philippi (Acts 16), a very striking way in which the two powers act. Paul is called there by the Lord; he is for some time there, and there is no appearance of the man who had been the visible agent in inviting him. Then Satan offers to countenance him in a religious way: offering him help when he evidently required it, and in a way that his conscience and his knowledge could not object to. Paul was spiritually tried by it, and at last, not satisfied with declining it in his own heart, he openly denounces the evil spirit. The religious feint is exposed, and now Satan stirs up Jericho, all the power of the world in one combined antagonism to crush the very men whom he had instigated one of his dupes, to proclaim to be servants of the Most High God. How humiliating! but the unjust knoweth no shame. Then Paul, having been thrust into prison and his feet made fast in the stocks, in prayer and song walks round Jericho in patience; and at midnight the power of God, the invisible [p. 119] power, no means, overturns everything. All is changed: the prisoners are loosed, and the jailor converted.
Thus we see that the more fully we are led of the Spirit. of God, the less visible any agency will be because there is nothing that appeals to the senses; but all to faith, while on the contrary, Satan is always seeking to divert us from faith and from the invisible, to occupy us, even be it only in a measure with the means, where he has a place, and where he can in some degree do that on which he is bent, even to damage the work of the Lord.
May the Lord keep us in simple faith counting on the unseen power, the great and grand characteristic of our present calling, and may we in heart and voice refuse every aid which is not of the Spirit of God.