THE UNSEEN POWER

THE UNSEEN POWER

The power of man became distinct and disconnected from the power of God the moment Eve, urged on by her own will, put forth her hand in selfishness to take of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There were then three powers on the earth; the power of God, the power of Satan, and the power of man. The power of God acting when and how it listeth; the power of Satan limited to evil; and the power of man defined by his own natural strength unless he became the agent of either of the other two.

Thus man on the earth was continually reminded of his powerless condition, - and his end, death, was the crown of it. And as he became conscious of his powerlessness, (for his mind gave him a station beyond his means to support,) he in unbelief had recourse to Satan, who in malice was ever ready to help him to do evil.

No man intentionally, unless very debased, could turn to Satan for help; but Satan, knowing the helplessness of man, had provided expedients, which would allure him in the hour of difficulty or temptation. Witchcraft and everything of that class were the devices by which Satan ^[p. 12] allured man in the hour of his impotence to turn to him while to the degraded man he came, and offered to help him to accomplish his evil purposes by entering into him.

When God set up man again upon the earth (Genesis 9), He gave him an increased power which I may call the sword, because it was to control; there was nothing of the ascending character in it. At any rate this new power is confined to man and all below him; it does not bring him nearer to God, while, if used for himself, it has the effect of making him more independent of God.

There was always in the converted soul another power, the power of faith; and this power preserved a line of its own witnesses. Abraham was a witness of it. And often we find that the power of government, and the power of faith, or the unseen power, were vested in one and the same person, as in Joseph, Samuel, or David.

There were, all through man’s time - the old dispensation - wonderful instances of the actings of the unseen power. Eve built; Enoch translated; Babel confounded; the judgments executed on Egypt; the deliverance of Israel from Egypt; the way made through the Red Sea; the passage of Jordan; the preservation of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego in the midst of the fiery furnace: the history of the returned captives; and many other instances too numerous to recount.

Thus there was the power of Satan to do evil, and exercised in that line only. There was the natural power of man, and the sword given to him by God in order to subdue and to maintain order. And there was the unseen power of God working through faith in the souls of men.

Now, as to the power of Satan, no one would admit that he was under it. Alas! we know that many are; but it is not a power which any one would willingly boast of. But the power which God gave man in order to subdue and to rule is, on the contrary, one which every natural man covets, and more or less seeks for. God often did, as I have said, connect faith - His own power - with the same person in whose hands He had placed the ^[p. 13] sword. But at the captivity of Israel the sword, in judgment on Israel, was handed over to the gentiles; and hence, subsequently, the only true power of the godly remnant was the unseen power - faith reckoning upon God, like Daniel in the lions’ den, etc.

Now when Christ came, there was the power of Satan as it had been from the first; the sword was in the hands of the Romans; the Jews had the oracles of God and were in their own land, but having forfeited the sword they were powerless unless they had faith in God.

The Man Christ Jesus was the wondrous perfect expression of the unseen power of God in Israel, when they had no other power unless Satan’s, by which they were afflicted; and they were ruled over by the power of the sword in the hand of the Romans. He was anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power, and went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him. He was the first Man in whom the Holy Spirit abode, as it was said to John Baptist: “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and abiding on him, he it is who baptises with the Holy Spirit”. This was what would specially mark Him:

- a new power descending and remaining on Him, a Man among men, and not this only but “he it is who baptises with the Holy Spirit”.

Christ was rejected by the Jew, who said, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him”, and who induced the Roman governor to crucify Him, saying, “If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar’s friend;” the Jew with the law of God said, “By our law he ought to die”, and the Roman soldiers crucified Him. Thus the law and the sword were both used to exterminate from the earth the blessed One who went about correcting every evil, and removing every suffering which He came in contact with, by an unseen power. Devils were driven out, lepers cleansed, storms calmed, multitudes fed, the dead raised up; and yet no one could see this power.

Now Christ being exalted to the right hand of God,

^[p. 14] sent down the Holy Spirit to dwell in those who believe in Him; and this is the unseen power which is to comfort our hearts in His absence (John 14: 26), and which is to bear witness of Him in the presence of the world which is a coalition of all the powers that are upon the earth.

The unseen power is the Holy Spirit; and now it is not only Satan’s power which should be refused by a saint, but the power which God gave man must also be refused; (that is to say, he must not wield it, though he is to submit to it, as to “the powers that be”,) because man did not use the sword for God, but was found in concert with the prince of this world. And yet in Christ’s death the prince of this world was judged; by a Man in death, Satan was vanquished; Jesus entered into death “that ... he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil”.

Now then we have, first, the unseen power here with the saints; secondly, Satan’s power (though broken by the Lord Jesus Christ) is here, and that in a double way; openly like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour; and secretly with wiles to entangle and hinder those devoted to the word of God; and thirdly, the power of the sword is still here, that which God gave man to preserve order and the like, but which has joined hands with Satan in the death of Christ, and these two last, together constitute the world. Natural power, conferred power, Satanic power, all exerted their forces against Christ, the one Man who alone maintained for God here in the flesh, in spite of all the powers combined. Every power on the earth opposed to the utmost; one Man only was superior to all in an unseen power.

Now if this unseen power, which is the Holy Spirit, be not our power in anything and in everything, we must fall back to the other powers.

Here let me distinguish between the arbitrary use of one’s own natural powers, in what is called self-reliance, and the use of those powers, whether of mind or body, under the direction and sway of the Holy Spirit, as a ^[p. 15] horse is under the rein of the rider. It is plain that the only power on earth for God is the unseen power, and it remains for us to ascertain how we can distinguish the acting of this unseen power, from the acting of the natural or worldly man.

A believer does not lose his natural powers and gifts, but the difference is, that he has received a new nature and an entirely new power, and as he walks according to the new nature by this new power, he yields himself to His counsel and dictation, and not to his own.

Natural power never can effect anything but by a work; unseen power accomplishes everything by a word, “He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast”. Man can accomplish nothing noiselessly and without display! “The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: God uttered his voice, the earth melted”.

The word then is the great distinctive mark between the invisible power and the visible ones. Hence the spiritual man depends on the word of God, not upon any activity or exertion of man’s natural powers; he is used by the Spirit to set forth and express truly the word of God, and thus “by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe”. It is the “still small voice” that is the divinely effective agent. And it is evident that the more the servant of Christ will coalesce with or seek countenance from the other powers the less will he be opposed by them, so that a success may attend his labours which may not be a genuine one. For example, Satan offered to countenance Paul and Silas at Philippi. Had they accepted it their success would have been more visible; but when they refused it their power was an unseen one, and their success though small was genuine, and of God.

One word in conclusion as to the different way in which this power acts in the bright morning of a dispensation and in the faithful residue when all is in ruins. Israel’s first conflict in the land was marked by a most conspicuous intervention of the unseen power. The walls of Jericho fell down flat. For the remnant of the same people in a ^[p. 16] later day, the unseen power was just as great, but not so conspicuous in result. In Samuel’s time it was prayer, after every kind of human means had been even in a measure successfully used by the judges. Prayer effected what the ox-goad, the nail, the jaw-bone of the ass, and the strongest of men had failed to effect.

The captivity returned to Jerusalem shorn of all earthly power, yet the word of the Lord is “my spirit remaineth among you; fear ye not”. It is made manifest to individual faith, but not conspicuously, as it was before failure, and this is the great distinctive difference in the manner of its acting.

With the assembly it has been the same. At Pentecost there were great gifts, and great display of the unseen power. To Paul deserted by all, it was “the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me;” “and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen”.