RENEWAL THROUGH RECOVERY (7)
W Carl Ketcherside

The greatest of the ancient scientists was Archimedes. He was born at Syracuse about 287 B.C. He had a head start because his father was Pheidias, the noted astronomer. Time would fail me to detail for our readers the successful experiments and discoveries of this brilliant man. One writer has said, “Almost intoxicated with the vision of power which he saw in the lever and pulley, Archimedes announced that if he had a fixed fulcrum to work with he could move anything.” It is said of him that he announced, “Give me a place to stand on and I will move the earth.”

Within three hundred years someone did just that. Using the “Rock of Ages” as a fulcrum and the Holy Spirit as a lever, the apostles moved the world. Without the use of eloquent wisdom, the rhetoric of the philosophers, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power, they sallied forth into the world of the Mediterranean. Millions of slaves existed in the Roman Empire. They were regarded as non-persons, as tools and machines, by the society of the day. Hopeless, they heard a message of hope; loveless, they heard a message of love; faithless, they responded to a message of faith. One of the apostles wrote about the call which penetrated their hearts, “Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were of noble birth, not many were powerful.”

By the middle of the second century that was no longer the case. Philosophers began to embrace the message. The call was sounded out and heard in the groves and porches which constituted the schools of philosophy, it penetrated the consciousness of the lecturers and they embraced it. The deserter from the faith whose ambition it was to restore the old pagan gods, the emperor Julian the Apostate, first barred Christians from teaching, then barred their children from even attending public schools. He said, “It is bad enough to be shot down in full flight, but it is even worse when the arrows are tipped with feathers taken from our own wings.”

By the middle of the third century it was all over. Two great ideas had met head-on. One had been forged on the battlefields of the world. It was wrought in agony and despair. It left behind a trail of battered cities, dying men and ravaged women. It was bred of savagery and lust. Its motto was “Might makes right.” The other originated in the courts of heaven. It brought, healing, health and happiness. Its motto was “Right makes might.” It took no lives, but freely gave them. The only blood it shed was the blood of its own proponents. But it had the power of the Spirit, brilliant, scintillating, penetrating, and the wisdom of this passing age was vanquished before it. No earthly might could resist its power — no army, no phalanx, no mass of marching men.

Today we look back upon the dewy freshness of the ekklesia. And we wonder what has happened. Let us wonder no more. It is apparent. The power has gone off. Not long ago we had a frightful storm sweep across our area. Wires were blown down. Clocks stopped. Refrigerators ceased to function. The lights were inoperable. The power was gone. Everything was still in place. The mechanical fixtures were still intact. But we were reduced to using candles which glowed feebly like fireflies through the murky gloom. That is what has happened to the called-out ones. Once they shown as lights in the world, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. They were like a city on a hill, a beacon beckoning in every direction. Then the power went off.

It did not go all at once. It gradually ebbed away as other things than Jesus became the center. Everyone was still in position. They were going through the motions. They were singing songs, offering prayers, delivering homilies. But no one was listening. They were not even listening to themselves. Bible studies became diatribes. Prayer meetings were excused to do everything but pray. Blackness settled upon hearts. The works of the flesh became more manifest. Depression was felt. People dropped out and could give no reason except that their needs were not being met. And still the merry-go-round kept turning. It went ceaselessly on as if it knew no stopping. And that’s where we are now. The world of mankind passes gaily on its way and leaves us mired in the sticky clay of indifference with our wheels spinning.

There is a solution. We must recapture the apostolic power. It was this which enabled men to look tyrants in the face without flinching, to face beatings which left their flesh hanging in strips and the bones exposed, to look death in the face as they confronted the whitened fangs and fetid breath of angry snarling beasts in the arena. It was this which enabled them to die daily. It was promised to them before “he went back to glory. He opened their minds to understand the scriptures, because the burden of that which is written is only understood by open minds. It can never be fully grasped by minds which are closed by tradition, selfishness or hatred. How he opened their minds we cannot tell, but we do know that he immediately said, “Thus it is written.” And then he recounted again the fact of his death and its effect.

He told them that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached among the nations. Not just to the Jews, but to the Samaritans, the Romans, the Greeks, the barbarians. The preaching should begin at Jerusalem because that is where they were. It should always begin where we are. Where we are is our Jerusalem. But it must never stop there, either with them or with us. Then he told them something very significant. I am not sure they fully understood it. I am not sure most of us fully understand it. “You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I send the promise of the Father upon you, but stay in the city where you are until you are clothed with power from on high.”

They could not be witnesses until they had power from on high. There are two kinds of power. One kind everyone has. So Peter said, “Why do you stare at us as though by our own power we had made him walk?” Such power does not qualify one to be a witness of spiritual things. Natural events can be substantiated by natural power. Supernatural events require supernatural power. That is, power from on high. It is part of the promise of the Father. Men must wear it like a suit of clothes. It surrounds them. It keeps them from being naked.

At his ascension he said “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” A witness without power is an anomaly. But the divine dynamic, the exceeding energy which drove them into all the world of their day in spite of hardship and hunger, of pounding and persecution, of death and destruction, was from on high. It animated and vitalized the body. The flesh profited nothing. The thing that counted was the mission. And before they died they could take the words of the psalmist about the starry heavens, and appropriate them to themselves. “Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”

This was not the result of their working in God. It was the result of God working in them. There are three passages in Ephesians which are pregnant with power. One is found in chapter 1, verse 19. “And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might.” Three of the rich Greek words for power are found in this tiny verse — dunamis, energeia, ischus— dynamic, energy and strength. They are immeasurable. Even in these days of computers they are still beyond us, still in the great “out there.” But they are actually resident in one who truly believes. Let your mind feast again upon the superlatives of this verse. They are available unto us.

The second is in chapter 3, verse 7. “Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace which was given me by the working of his power.” Notice again that this power is at work. It is seething, fermenting, driving, drawing, sending. And it provides grace as gift. We are not dispatched powerless as ministers of the gospel. The third is in chapter 3, verse 20. “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly, than all we ask or think.” The power at work is not controlled, manipulated, regulated or governed by what we think. That power, in those who really believe, governs what we think.

Those who worship the power of the human mind can never admit that anything happens in them which they did not originate, or over which they exercise no control. These are the modern gnostics. They are true humanists and thousands of them profess to be Christians. But there is a power at work within us. It is immeasurable. It is great. It is mighty. It exceeds our ability to verbalize, to sermonize, or to put in words. It lies in a realm beyond our thought processes. It is “far more abundantly” able to provide a dynamic than we can ask, dream, envision, fantasize, or think. No wonder Jesus said, “I will not leave you orphans.” No wonder he declared that the other Counselor, would dwell with us, and be in us. Praise God for the Other Comforter.